Reentry - An Orbital Simulator - Mercury, Gemini & Apollo

[Burning Bridges]

Game slipped under the radar a bit, totally undeserved it seems. First of all this is not to me mixed up with Go For Launch which is basically just a non-game in a Mercury capsule = crap - whereas Reentry has working systems underneath and you can actually fuck up missions like not separating stages and such.

Project Mercury is mostly complete, Gemini partially complete and Apollo is incomplete. External views are not extremely amazing but much better than you would expect from a budget game. Reviews are very positive.

I have not bought it yet cause I made a vow to stick with DCS for a while, but it's almost a must buy. There have not been many astronaut simulators but this promises to be one of the best.

EA of course - but I wanted to give a heads up as it looks really promising.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/882140/Reentry__An_Orbital_Simulator/

 

[Burning Bridges]

I finally had time to test the game. It's quite well made but also not 100% what I hoped it would be.

Firstly, it's mostly a cockpit clicking simulator. Which is not inappropriate for the subject matter. I read that it also simulates systems and orbital mechanics so I would expect a lot more from this down the road.

But I find it boring tbh. Suspension of disbelief is seriously broken by a couple of things, mostly lack of development resources.. For example there are no fellow astronaut bodies. iyou fly Apollo and the seats are empty, the 2 other guys are still on Earth. This may not sound serious to some people but for me this is impossible. Better just concentrate on Mercury project until you can somehow believably simulate a 3 man capsule.

Ok, subjective. Some people may not mind.

Voice communication is another point that disappoints me. The game uses a few real sound recordings (most of the NASA recordings are freely available). But real radio communication is text. I think the game should eventually use a speech engine of some kind, radio communication is just too important for this kind of game to leave it to text.

Graphics are ok but not great either. Earth is a simple sphere with a flat texture for the clouds. This is so 2008. In 2018 I would expect some scattering, shaders etc.

All in all this is well done and highly educational but as a game I dunno. I mean I thought I was a space race fan but tbh it sounds too much like clicking and too little immersion. That's why I'm really torn on this one. One part of me wants to learn the exact procedures of the missions, which the achieves, another part wants to feel inside the capsule which it doesn't. You cannot move inside the command module, no EVAs, no lunar landings etc. There is too much missing.