Nexus - The Jupiter Incident Preview

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident shows a lot of potential, but it has a few irritating flaws while playing it.  The graphics are well done and the plot is engaging.  Each of the characters has their own unique personalities, from the brash and boastful Admiral the player serves, to the arrogant artificial intelligence, Angel.  All in all the game was fun to play.

The story in Nexus is designed so that the game itself is the tutorial.  As the campaign progresses the players are given access to different weapons, fighter craft, and even other warships to control.  The campaign also introduces the various "fighting styles" in Nexus.  There are three different types of targets available for you to shoot at against other warships:  the outer hull, the shields, and the devices inside the ship.  The hull is the basic structure of the ship.  It can take a lot of punishment, but once it's destroyed the entire ship goes down.  Shields, while not a universal piece of equipment, show up regularly.  Shielded ships take less damage from direct attacks as long as the shield is active.  Some weapons won't work against ships with shields up, some will work -sort of- and some will work just fine.  Devices are the internal components of the ships.  You can target the drive section of the hostile vessel and damage its engines.  When enough damage has been done the drives will shut down.  This is true for all components.

Like, for example, the generators that power the weapon systems for the ships.  Take these generators out and the enemy ship will have to stop firing until the system is repaired.  If you can damage the weapon generator badly enough you'll find the fight becomes much easier...

Ship systems can regenerate if left alone for long enough but eventually the systems will recover and begin to function again.  The only way around this is to completely destroy a component.  It takes twice as long to destroy a component as it does to render it inoperative, but it can be worth it if you're stuck in a firefight for several minutes.  The choices available to the player make this a far more interesting game than I originally thought.  The duels between warships can stretch on for several minutes, leaving the faint feeling of a turn-based combat game.  Since players can customize their ships they can create designs that cater to their style of play.  Do you enjoy disabling a ship and leaving it defenseless?  You can do that.  Do you enjoy punching through the enemy's defenses and blasting them out of the stars?  You can do that too.  It takes a little planning, but anything is possible.

Players can also control fighter craft and marine landing pods, which allow you to attack the enemy or invade their ships to cause more damage.  Fighters can be very vulnerable: they can be shot down by the enemy.  More importantly, most vessels carry point-defense weapons to shoot down incoming missiles and fighters.  On the other hand, if you can disable the enemy's weapon systems, fighters will tear their vessel apart before they can do anything about it.

All this sounds like a good game, and at times it has its moments.  There were a few times when I was frustrated with the interface as well.  You order your ships around using other points as directions.  Move toward this navigational point, fly towards the hostile vessel and engage, or turn around and defend one of your wounded fleet vessels.  This works fairly well.  It takes some getting used to but the learning curve is friendly.  The problems came from having enemy ships engage my own at close range.  Some enemy ships could easily slip around behind my ships and hide behind the drive section of my vessel, where they could pound away while my ship slowly swung around to face them again.  These ships were typically much faster than my own.  When I tried to give new orders to my ship to make it engage the enemy it would take a few heartbeats to maneuver back into position.  Those heartbeats were the only irritation in the game.  I knew that my vessel would respond, but in that moment I was impatient.

All in all I can honestly say that the frustrating moments only stand out in memory because the game itself is well done.  Nexus has an entertaining plot, good graphics, and a versatile system that allows players to construct the ships they want to command.  It offers numerous possibilities for fun.  The missions in the single player game are entertaining.  The objectives can be complicated, but they are fun to complete.  If you are a fan of the space-fleet combat genre Nexus is worth a look.