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- Slitherine
- Slitherine
- Slitherine
- Slitherine
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager
Released On: Oct 31, 2014
62
6.4
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 8 Critic Reviews
62
25% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
63% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
13% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 8 Critic Reviews
62
25% Positive
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
63% Mixed
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
13% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
A nice space sim dedicated to fans of Buzz Aldrin.
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager stays true to its spiritual predecessor released in 1993, bringing some interesting additions to it. We hope to see more content when the two expansion packs, already planned, will be released.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 15 User Ratings
6.4
47% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
27% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
27% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 15 User Ratings
6.4
47% Positive
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
27% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
27% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
Spiritual successor of the legendary BARIS, we put ourselves as stewards of the US space agency or Soviet during the Cold War.
Although still not reach the level of its predecessor, each patch, each upgrade is a big improvement over the previous one.
If you love the space race, you have to try.
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PC
I have been playing this game for a year now, and I have to say it is a fantastic upgrade for Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. This developer listens to the fans and has made hundreds of changes based on our feedback. Some highlights:
* Specific artwork for each mission launch/orbit/etc.
* Sounds and chatter that match the mission.
* Ability to combine different rocket stages that never flew.
* Historically accurate missions available.
* 3 different organizations to play: Russia, U.S., GSA.
* Play the race to the Moon or sandbox mode.
* Multiplayer
This is a fantastic game about the space program! I recommend it without hesitation!
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PC
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager is not anything exceptional, and it has not even a particular depth or complexity, but it will be appreciated also by those who have little experience with the genre.
Nevertheless, the game can be enjoyable for someone who has a passing interest in the exploration of space and in management, but it requires more tutorials, better information delivery, and more depth in order to appeal to a wider audience.
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager is a generally addictive management game with an original theme and a few tense moments during the mission execution phase of the game. Unfortunately some glaring issues like the cumbersome game menus and the poor presentation mean that the game is more suited for those who are really big fans of the subject matter.
Quotation forthcomning.
Encyclopedia is the only decent thing about Space Program Manager, but the truly best part is not even in the game. The manual appendices have detailed descriptions of both US and USSR space programs, and even an interview with Buzz Aldrin himself. They should have published a book instead of a game, really.
SPM es un juego en el que te sitúas al frente de una de las dos superpotencias de la carrera espacial: EEUU o la URSS. Es un juego único en el mercado. El objetivo del juego, como no podia ser otro, es ser el primero en llevar al hombre a la Luna. Para los más mayorcetes, Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager es una nueva versión del mítico Buzz Aldrin Race into Space (BARIS), publicado en 1993.
El juego empieza en 1955 y cuenta con un sistema de 4 turnos por año y solo termina hasta que una de las dos agencias espaciales llega a la luna. Al principio tendremos que contratar y entrenar a distintos ingenieros, controladores y astronautas y mejorar los edificios e infraestructuras. De el nivel de nuestras instalaciones y personal dependerá en gran medida el éxito de nuestras misiones.
Pero llevar un hombre a la luna no es trabajo de un día! Por ello contamos con infinidad de programas espaciales para ir progresando poco a poco. Empezaremos poniendo un satélite en órbita en torno a la Luna, llevar ranas al espacio o probar un avión supersónico. Las posibilidades son enormes, ofreciendo una gran rejugabilidad, además, no hay guión fijo: puedes optar por seguir el camino de la NASA (con misiones históricas como Gemini y Apollo) u optar por misiones descartadas por la Nasa/URSS (También históricas). Es TÚ programa espacial, y tú decides su destino.
Tras seleccionar la misión y su submisión (cada misión tiene varios pasos: vuelo de prueba, suborbital...) deberemos asignarle ingenieros, que antes habremos contratado y entrenado, a distintos roles de la misión. También deberemos de decidir que cohete llevará la misión e investigarlo igualmente (Una vez desarrollado el cohete nos servirá para otras misiones parecidas). Conforme investiguemos las misiones se irá ganando probabilidad de éxito (nunca será 100%). Al ser una carrera espacial, deberemos decidir cuando lanzar el cohete, elegiremos lanzarlo rápidamente para ganar el rival pero con menos probabilidad de éxito, o preferiremos esperar? Como veis las posibilidades son infinitas! Las misiones con exito nos daran prestigio y dinero, los fracasos podran suponer un reves enorme. El exito o fracaso además determinaran los fondos que tendremos a disposicion en el futuro.
Cuando lanzamos una misión podremos ir siguiendo su progreso desde nuestras pantallas, con los nervios que eso supone: será un éxito o un mortal fracaso?
A parte de competir en la carrera espacial también podremos ponernos en el papel de la GSA: La Agencia Espacial Global, en la que iremos cumpliendo encargos de otros países y en el que sufriremos menos estrés y nos dedicaremos a explorar por amor a la ciencia.
Pero el juego no tiene solo modo individual y es que también tiene modo multijugador en el que podréis competir con otras personas en la carrera a la luna, poniendo a prueba vuestros nervios.
Por último cabe destacar el asesoramiento de Buzz Aldrin, segundo hombre en la Luna y que ha ayudado activamente en el desarrollo, incluso prestando su nombre al juego. Gracias a él y a una gran investigación el juego cuenta con una gran enciclopedia sobre los dos mayores programas espaciales de la historia.
Finalmente decir que los desarrolladores siguen a día de hoy incluyendo nuevas características y que el soporte para mods está a punto de lanzarse.
Juego 99% recomendado!!
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PC
Enjoyable simulation of space race and early days of space exploration. Simulation is getting better and is constantly improved. It's great for those interested in space technology and space program managing.
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PC
This game is an updated version of the 1993 turn-based strategy/management PC game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space which players generally refer to BARIS. The original of which was based on an older board game from times past. BARIS now falls under abandonware status, with Buzz Aldrin's name removed, and can still be found on the internet and is free to play if you can get it working through DosBox or similar. For it's time BARIS was one of those games you either painstakingly took the time to learn and loved, or you got frustrated with it and hated it for the unforgiving game mechanics. The one thing everyone can agree on is after 21 years it hasn't aged well. So enter in a small indie developer with aspirations of bringing this game to the present, it went Early Access on Steam last year, and looking at the final release results it seems the only feedback they got were from die-hard fans of the original which didn't improve much of anything.
Having played a fair bit of BARiS back in the day I was able to jump into this game and obtain moon landing wins on my first play through of both the USA and RUSSIA. As there is no real deadline, you play until you win or the game tells you the AI won, but let's be honest, there's no real AI player here just random events moving the AI goals forward via headline blurbs at each turn screen. The biggest part of the difficulty is going to come from understanding the mechanics of the game which nothing in the game lends to help you with, there's no tutorial for instance. But once you figure out the mechanics hidden behind an obtuse and unintuitive UI, that's lacking even basic mouseover tooltips, the rest of the game becomes just optimizing a path from the start to the win goal. And once you discover the optimal path then that's pretty much the game.
And the game itself just consists of people management and training, choosing tech to research that you increase the reliability of, then choosing and launching missions. I mean that's it in your choices, it's pretty cut and dry. Once a mission is launched the game is totally hands off and you await a resounding success or an epic fail while watching cut-scenes. The original game included NASA footage for this, the new version uses crisper graphics which are static animated and are a bit of a letdown and quickly become repetitive after the second viewing. But let's go back to the fails which you'll have plenty of and be penalized severely for. The only panacea will be in discovering that you can reload the last autosave before a mission, and you'll quickly find out why there's an auto-resolve on the mission attempt screen.
Personally I'm torn over whether I consider this a good game or just money grabbing garbage at the $30 price point, especially when I factor in the lack of features in this game that are considered pretty standard. For those who may have wanted BARiS updated with better graphics and OS support for 2014, this is it and it's extremely well done for what it is. But I feel that there was a huge missed opportunity where they could have used BARiS as their starting inspiration and made a completely new game with better than the 21 year old game mechanics that are presented in this game currently with it's fairly obtuse UI that one has to muddle through. Just saying that it may have been better to have this game pay homage to the original game than to have cloned it outright with few additions. Even the play by Email multiplayer, through a proxy login account no less, is a throwback to games in the 90's when direct host turn based play is considered standard on strategy games these days.
Both the game and UI require you to have a working knowledge of all the things in the game but it's tedious to be expected to leave the game to pursue a PDF manual when the info could have been included in the game itself. And if they're really attempting a mobile port of this it's highly unrealistic to expect players to "look up things in a manual" when playing. I'm just sorta dumbfounded at this point with the released game and I really really want to like it, because nostalgia, but when I compare it to so many other games and especially "tycoon" style game that have come in gone in the interim 21 years, this just seems really dated and missing the most basic things gamers have become accustomed in the year 2014. It's just a shame they couldn't bring much more than the game's graphics into the future as well, as the rest of the game is still stuck in 1993.
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PC
Summary It is the mid 1950s and the race for dominance between the US and the Soviet Union is about to move into a new dimension: space. Take charge of the US or Soviet space agencies - your duty is be the first to the moon. Carefully manage your budget by opening programs, spending R&D funds on improving the hardware, recruiting personnel and...
Platforms:
- PC
- iOS (iPhone/iPad)
Initial Release Date: Oct 31, 2014
Developer:
- Polar Motion
Publisher: Slitherine
Genres:
