Another shooter masquerading as a space sim; stop giving the genre a bad name goddamit
But space sims are one of my favourite pet genres; it makes me sick to see game after game come out for it that ARE NOT space sims. Like the abomination that was DarkStar One, Spaceforce: Rogue Universe ("S:RU") is just another piece of eyecandy.
Take a look at the other player reviews. Hell, even the official one. What praise for the game seems to all be for the graphics. Fine, fine... but wait a minute, graphics don't make the goddamn game. No more than the paint job on a car makes any different. I don't care if the paint if brilliant if underneath it is a frakking SUV that gets like 1 mpg. Ditto this game. Special effects are all well and good, but where is the rest of the goddamn space sim?
Where are the factions, the random missions other than blowing something up, the escort / cargo runs, the actual different ship types and not just moving stuff around on the same design. I'm sick and tired of watching companies blow 90% of their budget on graphics, and in this game apparently they blew some on voice acting too, albeit it sucks. Hard. As pointed out and agreed on by many other players.
Jesus Christ, people. Space sims aren't hard to design - take a look at games that were successes in this genre (sadly, they are few and far between). Put some bloody EFFORT beyond pretty graphics. Yes, I see you know how to abuse bloom and particle effects. FINE. What more have you got to offer beyond that? Not only is the game that shallow, it can't even get that lousy crap right, what with all the bugs.
We need a genre called "flying FPS" games, because this is one of them. Space sims should meet the minimum requirements as set by classics such as Privateer, Elite, and Freelancer. BARE MINIMUM. Come on, people. We live in an age of multicore, gigahertz speed processors. Our storage space is measured in freaking terrabytes. Surely if old games could manage it on a measly cd / dvd we could be having really great space sims by now? Not more mindless shooter games.