Our relationship with High Voltage Software has been an interesting one. Eight months ago, we accused the developer of having an extremely mediocre library of titles, and dismissed some of their future endeavors as highly unlikely. Later, in the summer, we reviewed Gyrostarr, High Voltage's first foray into WiiWare, and found the title pretty to look at, but extremely lacking in the gameplay department. Then, something curious happened: With our minds largely made up on all things High Voltage, the company took a moment to let us try out The Conduit, their upcoming motion-controlled Wii FPS, and explain a little bit about their development process. To our own surprise, we found The Conduit to contain some of the finest controls we'd experienced in any console shooter. Was this the same High Voltage Software we had been so quick to judge?
Last week, we stopped in for a visit with YUKE'S Company of America, who had joined up with High Voltage to publish the developer's newest WiiWare offering. The game's title, "Evasive Space," is more than just a catchy name, it's actually quite descriptive: The game takes place in space, and you spend your time evading several things. When we went hands-on with the game, though, and got a sample of the graphics and gameplay, we had to admit, we were starting to feel a little foolish about our earlier impressions of High Voltage -- it seems that the developer may just be getting the hang of Wii gaming, after all.
YUKE'S Marketing Manager, Nate Fitt, was on hand to give us the rundown of Evasive Space. The first thing he wanted to clarify was the game's genre: Evasive Space, he lamented, is often classified as a shooter, thanks to its familiar top-down presentation and omnidirectional controls, combined with the fact that you're controlling a spacecraft among asteroids and hostile creatures. As Fitt pointed out, though, it seems odd to categorize Evasive Space as a shooter, given that you can't actually shoot. The entire game is spent executing tricky moves, dodging hazards, and playing defensively, your ship completely devoid of weaponry. Fitt preferred to call it a "Space Adventure Action Game," and while we're not sure the genre will start getting its own section on the Wii Shop Channel, Evasive Space certainly attempts to break new ground with its pacifism-oriented gameplay.
The premise behind Evasive Space is straightforward enough: Dr. Dark Matter has stolen the Constellation Stones, causing the stars to start blinking out, and intrepid pilot Konki has undertaken a mission to recover said stones from the unscrupulous parties that the fiendish doctor has sold them to. You know, that old story. In practice, this means that Konki must guide her spaceship through several dangerous areas, collecting fuel, power-ups, level-specific MacGuffins, and the stones themselves in order to save the day (and/or night).
Graphically, Evasive Space is quite nice, featuring simple yet effective models, attractive backdrops, an easy interface, and plenty of flashing, sparkling, explosively shiny visual effects. What's more, all of these on-screen elements move along at a smooth framerate, giving the game a slick and attractive presentation. This seems to be one of the developer's strong points -- in all of their titles, even GyroStarr, let nobody say that High Voltage doesn't know how to squeeze some impressive visuals out of the underpowered Wii system.
What's more important, though, is the way the graphics impact the gameplay, or, rather, how they do not. When we played GyroStarr, one of our primary complaints was the game's tendency to degenerate into a chaotic on-screen mess, preventing players from having any idea what was going on. Given Evasive Space's complete focus on avoiding obstacles, cluttered visuals would spell the game's demise, but the art direction wisely avoids this pitfall. Though the game may become technically difficult at times, with players' ship surrounded by an increasing number of perils, they will never get lost; each game element is very distinct, utilizing wildly different colors and effects to provide plenty of visual cues.
How, then, is Evasive Space played? The control scheme is designed specifically around the Wii's unique mechanical possibilities, played in a point-and-click manner with a single Wiimote; no Nunchuk is required (or even allowed). The ship is controlled not via directional input, but through an Asteroids-style rotation/thrust dynamic, making the player work out his movements through careful control of his momentum.
However, rather than digitally-operated rotation, Evasive Space allows for instant turns and tricky cornering, opening up a wealth of potential challenges based around the game's unique movement. In essence, the Wiimote functions as a directional indicator; when pointing at the screen, Konki's ship will always face directly at the cursor. Thrusting is accomplished via the B button, allowing for quick, controlled bursts, or prolonged bouts of racing speed. As such, with only minimal practice, players can quickly learn to dodge, weave, drift, and dart down long open corridors or between the game's wide array of hazards and hostiles.
Having played a number of other games with momentum-based controls, my hands-on time with Evasive Space involved almost no learning curve. Before Mr. Fitt had even finished his explanations of the gameplay, I was rocketing through winding mazes and asteroid showers at a rapid clip, passing the game's initial set of challenges without incident. I found the gameplay to be reminiscent of several flash games based on similar maneuverability challenges, but not ripped-off or overly derivative -- the impressive presentation, coupled with the game's included variety of missions, helped Evasive Space feel like its own entity.
The variety in Evasive Space spreads across 20 different missions on 4 themed worlds, sending Konki piloting her way through levels composed of crystal, ice, fire, or plasma. Each level will task the heroine with accomplishing one of a few different goals, often including a time limit as well to raise the stakes. The levels, too, will present variations on only a few different themes: "Maze"-styled levels, in which Konki must dodge obstacles and collect items while avoiding a winding series of walls; "Rotation"-type levels, in which the screen continues to push its way around a circular sequence of hazards, while Konki must keep up or be forced off-screen for a loss; and "Open Space" levels, where Konki has free reign to fly around the level, which remains static around her -- though the hazards certainly do not.
Surrounded by these harsh environs, Konki will need to evade her way to one of several assigned tasks: Some levels simply require her to go from start to finish within a time limit, while others may require her to collect a certain number of items, tow a helpless ship along with her, or simply survive without colliding into the level's dangerous denizens. The length and scale of these missions will change, too; some missions will require Konki to conduct a long and involved task over the course of a few minutes, while some will be a mad dash to finish in as little as 30 seconds or so.
Assuming the player is able to bust out his mad evasion skills, Konki will have little trouble restoring the galaxy to its former glittering splendor. The real challenge, however, lies in doing so quickly and efficiently. While most levels of Evasive Space are given a time limit, every mission in the game will save a player's top times to a leaderboard, including online leaderboards via Nintendo Wi-Fi. The game, therefore, lends itself perfectly to speed runs, allowing players to develop quicker routes and sharper moves to shave another few seconds from their best scores, presenting an element of competitive obsession for hardcore evaders.
There is, of course, the matter of what happens to the less evasive among us. Konki's troubles are many, including narrow walls, inconveniently placed asteroids, obtrusive mining drills, hostile laser turrets, and giant angry space worms. Hitting any of these will drain a bit of shield energy from Konki's ship, leading to an obvious problem, but what's worse, taking a hit will stun the ship for a few precious seconds. Konki can counteract these problems by collecting shield power-ups and time bonuses, but when trying for a speed run, losing a few seconds is a score-killer -- and when racing an especially strict level timer, a few hits too many can cost you the entire mission.
Thankfully, not everything in space is out to foil Konki's plans. Apart from the aforementioned mid-level goodies like shields and extra time, Konki can collect glowing purple "Diodes," ship components which remain persistent across the entire game, and confer special powers to Konki's weaponless vessel. After just a few diodes, players will be able to press the A button to activate a shield, lessening the penalties for obstacle collision. From there, the ship can also be upgraded with an item-pulling magnet, a hastened recovery time after impacts, and so on. Collecting these power-ups will prove vital to success in the game's later levels, but they can also lend a hand towards attaining those top scores, allowing players to go back and replay earlier levels with the benefit of their later advantages.
YUKE'S and High Voltage certainly have a promising experience on their hands, well-suited to the Wii's controls -- and to its audience, presenting itself nicely for quick, casual play for just a few minutes per mission. Still, the version we were allowed to play wasn't quite finished, and it showed in a few places: Not only was a promised local multiplayer mode still absent from the game, but a couple of frustrating hiccups harmed the gameplay on occasion, as well. The game designers had made a few unfortunate decisions, failing to balance the enemy activity with the ship's reactions, leading to a few instances where we found ourselves stuck.
For instance, in an early level, we fell prey to a laser turret, our ship stunned in place by an errant blast. As always, this meant we had to wait 2-3 seconds before we could move again. Unfortunately, we had come to a halt directly in front of the turret, which just happened to have a 2-3 second firing frequency. I'm sure you can see where this is going: The very moment our ship was back online, another blast knocked us out again, and then another, and another, until the mission had been failed. Mr. Fitt assured us that High Voltage and YUKE'S were addressing these issues prior to the game's launch, so here's hoping they can evade that little problem. Get it?
We weren't able to personally sample Evasive Space's multiplayer, which was not ready at the time of our preview, but Fitt gave us a verbal description -- judging from his assurances, it sounded like the multiplayer modes would play similarly to the rest of the game, and incorporate just as much variety. We were told that Evasive Space would support four players simultaneously, offering six different gameplay modes across eight available maps (though the maps would need to be unlocked in single-player). Space Evaders will be able to play cooperatively or competitively, racing to collect items, or get the best individual scores or times, or collaborate towards one group score.
All in all, Evasive Space looks like it could be a solid addition to the WiiWare lineup, and may keep improving our opinion of High Voltage Software, and YUKE'S as well. I'm sure, at this point, that you expect us to conclude with a final variation on the "evasion" jokes, saying that "you shouldn't avoid this one" or "try not to let this one elude your attention." Well, I won't. I think we're mature enough to know when we're past such things.
On the other hand, when we asked Nate Fitt whether we could expect DLC or additional post-release content, he dodged our question, so there's that.
Evasive Space is expected to be released via WiiWare in late December or early January, for an expected price of 1,000 Wii Points. It will be rated "E."
Full disclosure: YUKE’S Company of America is a client of TriplePoint Public Relations, a firm managed by Richard Kain. Kain is also the owner of GameCyte’s parent company, Pantheon Labs.
Our relationship with High Voltage Software has been an interesting one. Eight months ago, we accused the developer of having an extremely mediocre library of titles, and dismissed some of their future endeavors as highly unlikely. Later, in the summer, we reviewed Gyrostarr, High Voltage's first foray into WiiWare, and found the title pretty to look at, but extremely lacking in the gameplay department. Then, something curious happened: With our minds largely made up on all things High Voltage, the company took a moment to let us try out The Conduit, their upcoming motion-controlled Wii FPS, and explain a little bit about their development process. To our own surprise, we found The Conduit to contain some of the finest controls we'd experienced in any console shooter. Was this the same High Voltage Software we had been so quick to judge?
Graphically, Evasive Space is quite nice, featuring simple yet effective models, attractive backdrops, an easy interface, and plenty of flashing, sparkling, explosively shiny visual effects. What's more, all of these on-screen elements move along at a smooth framerate, giving the game a slick and attractive presentation. This seems to be one of the developer's strong points -- in all of their titles, even GyroStarr, let nobody say that High Voltage doesn't know how to squeeze some impressive visuals out of the underpowered Wii system.
Assuming the player is able to bust out his mad evasion skills, Konki will have little trouble restoring the galaxy to its former glittering splendor. The real challenge, however, lies in doing so quickly and efficiently. While most levels of Evasive Space are given a time limit, every mission in the game will save a player's top times to a leaderboard, including online leaderboards via Nintendo Wi-Fi. The game, therefore, lends itself perfectly to speed runs, allowing players to develop quicker routes and sharper moves to shave another few seconds from their best scores, presenting an element of competitive obsession for hardcore evaders.
All in all, Evasive Space looks like it could be a solid addition to the WiiWare lineup, and may keep improving our opinion of High Voltage Software, and YUKE'S as well. I'm sure, at this point, that you expect us to conclude with a final variation on the "evasion" jokes, saying that "you shouldn't avoid this one" or "try not to let this one elude your attention." Well, I won't. I think we're mature enough to know when we're past such things.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Nothing wrong with this, at all, people should get it more.