Friday Indiegame: FTL (Faster Than Light)

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
Ha! well that was fun, no? all right, damn it.

Faster Than Light (known as FTL) is made by Subset Games founded by 2 people with the names Justin Ma and Matthew Davis, both former 2K China employees. This game is their first released title which was the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign which raised over 2000% of their requested budget. How much you ask?

Subset Games asked for 10,000 dollars but boasted in 200,542 dollars instead, using the additional funds on music and more content for the game. (alot of the money went to the Music)

Now then! TO THE BRIDGE!

The game is based on a galaxy with different sectors controlled by different races, coalitions and pirates. The player belongs to a once powerful Federation, which has been weakened by the years of war against Rebels, and it's so severe that the Federation is about to be Destroyed.

The crew on your spaceship managed someone to get theirs hands on the secret Rebel plans that can turn the tide of battle. The problem is that the Federation base is many sectors away from your starting position, and to make it more fun; The entire Rebel fleet are chasing you with a reckless attitude.
Not only that, almost all the spaceship you meet on your voyage wants to kill you and use your spaceship for scrap materials.

OK so that was the story behind it, but what about the game and whatnot?
The first thing that happens when you start up a new game is how you can rename the crew and spaceship, You can change the layout or choose a different ship (although you need to finish the game or do certain achievements to unlock them). All the ships have different weapons, layout and looks. You can choose between Easy and Normal, get used to die, because this ain't a happy place when you try it for the first few times.
The start is in a sector where you have to jump from location to locations until you're at the far end of that sector and to phase to a new one. From time to time you will get some distress calls, ambushes, quests and stores.

TO THE COMBAT! 

The combat in FTL is something new (in my eyes at least), you start with 3 crew members and you need to assign them to different locations on your ship, of course you need a pilot but you also need someone to control the weapons and shield, so you send them all around the ship.

The combat starts with you FTL to a new location, there are times you get ambushed, you got the upper hand or simply the enemy is trying to escape. You have the ship's energy that you need to assign to certain utilities on the ship, at the start you probably need to turn of the power on the first aid station to power up all the weapons for a full attack on the enemy ships or to power up your shield so you can survive the attack. The start is the "best" part since you need to think on how you want to engage the enemy ship.

There is a small speed boost to pick up when you assign people to different posts, for an example how the weapons recharge faster when you have a gunner there, and the shield if you have someone working on that post.

To be honest what makes this game is so addictive, is when you start to play you'll just tell yourself "i'll just play one game" and BAM, you've played through the day/night with no clue of what time it is. After you've failed a couple of times and learned how the game works, you've probably paid attention to how the games you've played haven't been exactly the same, maybe the distress call wasn't there the last time, or how you get attacked by a bunch of pirates so often.
This game take a small time to get used to, but when you do it's a game worth playing forever!

And not to forget the setting, the music, sounds and looks! 
First of all, the graphics are so well done, everything goes so well hand in hand.
The music is really enchanting, when I listen to it while i play i get this wanted feeling, or that I'm in space, ready to fight whatever that's out there.
The sounds are the classic "MIDI" sounds but on purpose, making it even better!

oh great... I started playing it again!
oh well, this should make up for the "Friday indiegame" I hope, and dont forget to +1 the hell out of this one if you want me to keep up the 'good' work ;D

Watching other people play

I remember in my youth that we sat in front of the TV screen or the big old CRT monitors watching each other play games, mostly because we didn't have enough PCs or simply couldn't afford all the console ourselves, but also because we loved each others company. So with the consoles  we made a deal with each other, one of us buys Nintendo games and others buy Playstation and Xbox. Saves us alot of money and gives the console owners the "upper hand" in deciding what to play and when.

But Nowadays I can't stand to watch anyone else play video games, well, maybe except Zelda, Metroid and things in that genre. I need the co-operation in games, I can't stand to play singleplayer games alone, but I do love to play them when others are watching, makes it more fun. 
I love spending time playing with friends and families to try to beat the last boss, surviving the horde of zombies rampaging against us, or just simple kill other players and to show them how teamwork is done.

Let's make an example: 

Skyrim

Dont get me wrong, skyrim is a damn good game and it got me hooked for over 150 hours and I haven't finished it yet! The reason for that might be that I was never pleased with the character I've made or the fact that I just started to go randomly around and stopped playing for a while. After a while I return to the previous savegame and I got lost in what I was doing. Therefore I stop playing on that certain character. I need to recommend something for the game though, you got so many mods for this game. Enhancing the graphics, giving NPC's cloaks, Weapons, armors and even new kind of mobs! So thanks to Skyrim Nexus and Steam Workshop for making the Elder Scrolls World even more awesome! (I didn't think it was possible either!)


Sleeping Dogs

Pretty same as above, but there is a small "connection" between the other friends that has it, you got the leaderboard for the longest wheelie, most Roundhouse kicks 
(not sure if that's the name on it) etc.
The awesome part of this game is the combat system, it's not just the boring "punch, punch, punch"  type when you're fighting, there is combo's. certain people even have blocking, so you have to do a certain combo to break it. Or... if you're more of the gun type, just shoot!
Speaking of shooting, The combat system with firearms is also good, there are some flaws here and there, but overall I loved it to the bits.
What kind of a game is it? Well you could say it's GTA in Hong Kong.

Half-Life I and II (with Expansions and the episodes)

Yes, I know what you're thinking: "how the hell can you say that is boring to play Singleplayer? it's one of the best FPS games in the history!" , just calm down and let me explain myself before you try to torch me. 
I love The half-life series as the next guy, hell I might even love it more! But the clue here is: it's singleplayer. I love the story, I was entangled in it when i first played Half-Life in the 90's and Half-Life II in 2004. 
well.. mostly because it was a new engine and it was a continual on the great story of Dr.Gordon Freeman.



But wait! Here's the kicker!: I Can't stop playing it if I have one or more friends watching me play it, by that I mean sitting next to me or I am somehow streaming it just for those folks. This applies to all games that just have singleplayer. I just love the company when I play games, so that's why I always ask the question: "Does it have Co-op?"