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- Stardock
- Stardock
- Stardock
- Stardock
Star Control: Origins
Released On: Sep 20, 2018
75
5.9
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
All Platforms
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
75
50% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
50% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 16 Critic Reviews
75
50% Positive
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
50% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Star Control: Origins successfully grasps the perfect balance of serious and silly while making an engaging universe that’s fun to explore. The voice acting is wonderful, the script is brilliant, and the fleet battles are short, sweet, and exciting. With an in-depth crafting system, a living universe, and a multitude of choices that subtly affect the story, Star Control: Origins soars.
It’s nearly unheard of for a company to pick up the rights to a game franchise and actually do the damn thing justice, but here we are with Star Control: Origins. The adventure is fun, funny, and all together engaging. I’m probably as surprised as you are that the game is actually this good.
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 114 User Ratings
5.9
48% Positive
55 Ratings
55 Ratings
17% Mixed
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
35% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average
Based on 114 User Ratings
5.9
48% Positive
55 Ratings
55 Ratings
17% Mixed
19 Ratings
19 Ratings
35% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
I grew up on Star Control, literally. I was six in 1990 and spent much of my youth playing SC1 and 2.
Fortunate enough to be able to become a Founder on SCO, i have watched the game grow and progress over time.
Star Control Origins is a rich universe filled with aliens of many different varieties with fast-paced ship to ship combat thrown in. You can be a peaceful Federation-like explorer or take a darker route and engage in piracy. Whatever path you choose, your goal is to save Earth.
With many years of galactic expansion planned out by ****, plus the upcoming player-made universe support, SCO has a lot of promise in its future.
Seriously, check it out.
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PC
If you enjoy space games, exploring the unknown, establishing communications with potential allies and enemies, as well as shooting stuff out of space, you'll enjoy Star Control: Origins.
Quirky and entertaining space adventure for patient people with a lot of patience, patience and above all patience.
Overall, it’s a decent game. There is plenty of content to go around, but it may lend itself to certain types of players more than others. If you don’t like a bit of grind, it may not go down as well. The story is good, the voice acting is excellent, but the more action-oriented parts feel almost like a more arcadey version of Elite Dangerous (but not like, in a bad way). In the end, Star Control: Origins feels like a game that players will either love or hate.
Star Control: Origins does a great job of creating a new universe and stocking it with a diverse range of weird and funny aliens to fight in intense arcadey space battles. But everything you’re forced to do on a planet’s surface is boring at best and an annoying chore at worst, and that kills a lot of momentum.
At its best, Star Control: Origins urges you to poke and prod into every corner of its intimidatingly vast galaxy, searching out ancient secrets and pun-filled absurdities. At its worst, it drags you through mediocre arcade sequences and generic grind. Genre mashups are far more common today than they were in 1992, but striking the right balance between adventure, role-playing and arcade action remains as tricky as ever.
Star control 2 is my favorite game of all time and I pre-ordered this the moment I had the chance. I did not get to play the beta but having played for about 10 hours I must say I'm pleasantly Surprised how fun this is. It gives me a bit of the taste of Star Control 2. It's a fun game And I hope the community continues to put out new content for it.
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PC
I was a huge fan of the original games, and Origins definitely reminds me of those games. Disappointing that **** and the original devs couldn't work together for a proper Star Control game. Ship combat needed a bit of work. But the personality and feel of the game is there. Overall I was pretty happy with it.
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PC
I never played any previous Star Controls and picked up the game thanks to the Ars Technica extened interview with the creators.
What I liked:
- the music
- resource gathering
- most of the story
- the animated and voiced hail screens
- many of the UI conveniences
What I disliked:
- combat, especially space combat with that vectoring-thrust mechanic
- massive framerate drops due to particle effects on planets
- no easy way to see what new tech unlocked
- the star system/hyperspace drifting
- some form of list or indicator showing all planets in the system
- the "realistic" lighting of planets that made many of them just blend into the background
- no indication what planets I cleared
- point of interest markers not removed
- the Kzanti that hail you all the time and no option to just shoot them immediately or make them go away for good
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PC
This isn't a terrible game. It has its moments and fun bits, but dang does it ever fail to be what it aspires to be. Star Control 2, a game from 1994, had better combat than this, better writing, it had more interesting mysteries, it had twice the amount of content such as alien races, dialogue, size of the galaxy, playtime etc.
The thing that was expanded here is the grindy resource collection, which forces you to spend copious amounts of time on planets collecting resources in an extremely boring minigame, wheras in the original landing on planets and taking off again would be accomplished in a much smaller amount of time.
Yes, you can avoid the grind, but then you don't get to outfit your ship because upgrades are expensive as hell.
This game doesn't quite ****. It's addictive and a good 20 hours worth of fun. But it's a far cry from brilliant, the story is superficial and boring.
It's a bit like a good piece of fan fiction for the original game, but it doesn't deserve the name.
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PC
THIS IS A NON-SPOILER REVIEW.
I was a "Founder" backer of this game and have finished the game, as well as having played very much of it in beta. I never felt strongly enough about a game to write a review on metacritic before now.
Star Control: Origins had promise, but it's marred by blatant attempts to copy the first few games. What's original, fresh, and innovative in this game is generally great, but the developers spend too much time trying to prove they're making a "true sequel to Star Control" as their CEO loves to endlessly rant about when talking **** about Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. But this game isn't a sequel. Or a prequel. It's a standalone Star Control game that on its own would make a good Star Control if it weren't for all its problems.
But the problems with this game aren't the fault of his most hated evil "SJW" conspiracy on Twitter, or the fault of the creators of Star Control (oh darn, ****! I said it! I called Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford what they are!). They are the fault of a development team that spent too much time copying the first two games and wasting precious development time inserting ****y ripoffs of the Arilou and Melnorme to try and support their aggressive trademark claims. A developer who decided that a long campaign of lawsuits over some cover art and retweets, public **** talking to other game developers and threats to shut down the fan community was more important than just making a great game. If all that effort was spent on fixing SCO's problems, it would be an easy 8 or 9.
POSITIVES:
~Star Control gameplay!
~Lots of stuff to explore
~A big variety of ships and more than one kind of ship per species (big improvement from other SC games)
~Some cool, funny and creative species
NEGATIVES:
~Except for a twist at the end (which is vaguely reminiscent of Star Control 3), the overarching plot follows the exact same beats as Star Control 2. The species may be mostly original but the overall plot certainly isn't.
~Tries too hard to copy other Star Control games. Precursors, Arilou, Melnorme (sorry, you renamed them "Maelnir" now).
~The lander gameplay just ****. It's boring, awkward to drive, and the cartoony art style means the terrain is exaggerated and hard to navigate sometimes. And despite what the developers and their brainless fanboys keep replying to Steam interviews with, you DO have to do a LOT of this to get anywhere in the game. It's the only real way to make money unless you want to hopelessly grind enemy ships for a pittance of Resource Units.
~The art style is cartoony. The other games had some cartoony moments, but this is World of Warcraft sort of cartoony. It's grating and makes the game feel corny and stupid, which is annoying because the game generally ISN'T those things.
~Battles are fun, but the arena is way too big and the AI is really, really boring to fight. Most of your time in combat will be spent flying around and not actually doing much.
~The writing is very inconsistent. For every great joke, line of dialogue or intriguing piece of writing, there's 10 bland, "look at how funny I am" moments. It just feels amateurish - most of the writing in this game desperately needs several more passes to get to a level where it's good, but I guess the developers were too busy posting in forums, chat rooms and social media about how evil the creators of Star Control are for retweeting some tweets that had "Star Control" in them. Spend more time on your game, improving the ****y dialogue, and less time blasting fans for their opinions.
Overall, Star Control: Origins comes across as a game with a lot of missed potential. What's original about this game is generally great, but the developers spent too much time trying to re-create a Star Control 2-like experience. They should have focused more on their strong point - the creativity and original things that THEY created - and more time revising their dialogue. And less time ripping off what other people created just so they can boost the strength of their trademarks.
Maybe if they had of done that, the gameplay problems wouldn't be so glaring. But that's a what if. The reality is that this game is decent, but it's not worth full price. I wouldn't pay any more than $15-20 for this game. Wait until there's a sale, because the game just isn't worth the money.
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PC
Summary Explore the galaxy, investigate new worlds, contact new civilizations, and battle hostile aliens in Star Control: Origins. You are the captain of Earth's brand new, state-of-the-art ship, The Vindicator. Your mission is to gather together allies to fight an ancient alien menace that threatens to annihilate the human race.
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Sep 20, 2018
Developer:
- Stardock
Publisher: Stardock
Genres: