![]() ![]() ![]() You never really know what lies beyond the next folding of space, only that it’ll burn a set amount of fuel and use up a certain amount of oxygen. Or, more often than not, you’ll simply run out of fuel or oxygen, your ship now a makeshift tomb. Maybe you’ll run into a meteor strike and be pummelled to dust. Perhaps you’ll perish when you try and gather resources from a star, your hull torn to ribbons by the sheer heat of its radioactive embrace. You’ll almost certainly lead your lonely astronaut to his death many times over. What you’re left with is an ambient experience that blends resource management, the exploration of randomly-generated portions of space, narrative choices and a roguelike sense of temporal risk. You’re given a brief tour of your ship, but it’s not long before you’re left to explore and eventually make your way home. A short tutorial later and you’ve salvaged some technology from an abandoned alien space platform and, rather conveniently, acquired the ability to fold space and travel huge distances between systems. ![]() You’re a pilot who was meant to be travelling from Earth to Ganymede, but when you awake from cryo-sleep you discover your ship floating through an entirely unknown corner of the galaxy. Out There: Ω The Alliance is a game that does an incredibly effective job of depicting the desperation, wonder and moment-to-moment danger of travelling through the cosmos. It’s impossible to play Out There: Ω The Alliance and not think of Mass Effect 2's mining escapism, but while the soundtrack may be similar, there’s very little opportunity to relax amid this set of vibrant stars. There are plenty of reasons Mass Effect 2 is considered the pinnacle of Bioware’s grand space-faring saga, but who knew a mining mini-game would remain one of its most enduring qualities? For all the suicide missions and inter-species 'sexy time', it was the sedate pastime of visiting new planets and surveying each one for resources that kept so many of us coming back for more. ![]()
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