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3 Nov 2022

REVIEW: From Space on PC (Steam)

Review on Jon Donnis
Developed by Triangle Studios and published by Curve Games, From Space is a brand-new solo and co-op action shooter. Play on your own, or with 3 others, and try to liberate the earth from a weird alien infestation.

Throw in over the top weapons, a post-apocalyptic world and endless missions and side missions, and you have quite an interesting game.

Playing from a top-down view, you will quickly find out the bad guys are pink, aim and shoot, you can collect new weapons, (everything from Rocket Launchers, Miniguns, Flamethrowers etc) and ammo, which are usually left conveniently around the location. Look for safe zones, speak to people, they will give you missions as they get to know you. Simple things at first, then getting tougher. Maybe you need to collect something for someone, or even escort someone from one point to another, without getting you both killed.


You also have access to defensive traps that you can use to help you. For example, a nicely placed piece of barbed wire will not only slow the onslaught, but damage them too, leaving you to be free to pick off any alien that survives. Electricity traps, mines, grenade and turrets can also be left. But use them carefully because once used they are gone, until you can collect more. The same goes with your ammo. It is not unlimited.

Keep an eye out for health packs too, nothing worse than running low on health and being unable to cure yourself as you are about to head into a next of aliens. 

In safe zones there are also save points and workbenches, the workbenches allow you to upgrade weapons. But what do you use to pay for the upgrades? Well when you kill an alien, you can collect "Energy" this is the currency of the game, luckily it can be picked up not just from killing aliens, but also destroying alien eggs and nests as well as in loot boxes.


You can choose to play as one of a number of different "Specialists", you can swap between these in the safe zones, this is worth doing so you can level up each character, and see which one suits you play style the best. Each character/specialist as their own weapon sets, as well as other abilities and perks.

At the end of each level, you will need to destroy the Energy Harvester, basically the boss fight. The more aliens and nests you destroy on the level, the easier this fight is, so sometimes it is worth taking your time and destroying everyone instead of just rushing through a level.

Basically, there is plenty to do in this game, a lot to collect and upgrade, and a decent difficulty level that will challenge even the most experienced of gamer.


The Good
Easy to pick up and play, and although frustrating at first, you soon learn to be a bit more tactical in your actions, just blasting away will just leave you vulnerable to counter attack when you run out of bullets. The side missions are fun, and allow you to further build your character, and gives the game more depth.

The graphics are clear and colourful, well animated. 

The Bad
Some of the controls are a bit confusing, the map is near to useless, and a huge bugbear of mine, is that if you open the menu to change weapons, look at the map full screen or just look at what items you have, it doesn't pause the game, meaning you could be getting attacked and you don't know. I understand you can change weapon by pressing one button on the controller as you play, but sometimes I want to see a little better what I am changing to. Also, a standard PC controller did not work for me, I had to hook up an Xbox One wired controller, which then worked fine. I also had a couple of graphical issues when I went from menu to game a few times. A hard reset fixed it.

Overall
The story is what it is, aliens invade, you have to kill them. The gameplay itself is a lot of fun, I didn't get chance to play multiplayer and I understand the game is pushed heavily towards that, but I enjoyed the solo player mode as much as you can.

There are a few bugs, and this is a new release, so expect an update every few days if not every week as they iron things out after hearing from players.

A few tweaks in the controls and menu system, and this game would improve massively.

A fun top-down action shooter, still a way to go to iron out the bugs, but not too far.

I score From Space on PC (Steam) a fair 7/10

Out now on Steam

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