REVIEW / From Space (PC)

Aliens are generally a problem in gaming. There’s something that makes dev teams keep using these nefarious off-worlders as a means of giving players a really awful time of it. This is fine because murdering little green men (or whatever E.T. is up of a kicking,) is just really bloody satisfying. I’ve been playing From Space on PC and the aliens aren’t green, they’re bright neon pink, but they’re still very much a problem. We’ll get onto how satisfying squishing them is in just a sec.

From Space is an arcade-action blaster with a pretty heavy focus on cooperative play. As I don’t like people I’ve been having this experience solo but I think it’s even more important to note how the single-player campaign feels because not all of us are comfortable playing in a group. So many games have pretty much murdered their single-player modes to force people into pairing up and, for me at least, this doesn’t do much for the overall experience. A game that does both things properly seems to be a thing that is becoming rarer over time. In the case of From Space, everything works really nicely because they haven’t separated the co-op element of the game from the single-player one. The drop-in nature of play means that the single-player campaign has to be good or everything else is going to fall apart. In this case, I think keeping everything together was a really smart move.

There are rest and resupply areas dotted around the map. Believe me when I say they come in really handy.

In From Space, you’ll take the role of one of three classes of heroes comprising six specialists in total, each with their own arsenal of weapons and special abilities. I’ve been playing as The Combat Engineer, who is a support class member. Why? Because I like building dirty big turrets obviously! Incidentally, sticking with this character type was by choice. You can switch to one of the other classes mid-game by using the required station in a safe zone. I just like to be really thorough with my playthroughs so have chosen not to for now. At the moment I’m just feeling my way about the game, helping NPCs and murdering other-worldly horrors. I say horrors but actually, the aliens are kinda cute in their own weird way. In fact, considering that this is a gritty ARPG with some relatively adult themes the graphics look like something from a kid’s cartoon. I absolutely don’t mean this as a negative I’m really loving the look and feel of the world I’m playing in.

It helps to have a buddy, (be it human or AI,) along for the ride.

Mechanically everything in this game is fine. This is an arcade shooter and as such we aren’t really expecting miracles when it comes to innovation. This aside, what we have is a blaster with a bunch of weapons and different abilities to play about with and a good variance of enemies to kill off. I’m having fun playing solo though I can definitely see this being a blast with friends because you can pull more heroes from different classes into the mix and, therefore, strategize accordingly. As previously mentioned, it’s nice that you’re given the ability to call in your buddies whenever you want and don’t have to pull them into a dedicated co-op mode. This means that if you’re getting stuck help should never really be too far away.

This is a nest. Smashing those green glowing eggs is tonnes of fun.

Another point worth mentioning comes with From Space‘s maps. This game feels quite a lot bigger than it probably is and this isn’t by accident. Although the campaign has felt fairly linear so far, with the exception of side quests that you’ll complete as you go, there is a ton of things to find if you look hard enough. Not all of the loot in this game is in plain sight and even quite a bit of the stuff that is can be found stuck behind doors that you’ll need keys to open. This expands the game nicely and makes you want to take your time with the levels. The level of difficulty is perfect, by the way, so you won’t feel reluctant to go off the beaten path for fear of encountering something far too powerful for you to beat.

That is a drop pod. Can you guess what it does?

Something else I’m liking a lot in From Space is the control setup. I was getting a little bit fed up with PC games with controls that felt over-complicated for the sake of it. There are way too many games that are virtually impossible to play now using a keyboard and mouse on account of having far more commands than necessary. I’ve even played games where it felt like someone had given a gamepad to a gorilla and asked it to map the buttons. From Space is a relatively simple-to-pick-up arcade adventure that feels comfortable to play and I can’t stress enough how important this is from a player standpoint. In addition to this, the UI is beautiful in this game. At no point so far have I felt stuck as to where I need to go next. Even when you do go for a bit of an explore there are always useful map markers preventing you from getting lost.

From Space is one of those games that’s good for the times when you don’t want to do anything too serious and time-consuming. This is the sort of game that’s fairly easy to put down when you need to. You won’t feel like you’re going to lose your thread if you go off and do something else, meaning that you can still play a little or a lot depending on your circumstances, and never feel like your binging or missing out. I think a certain amount of this has to do with the multiplayer nature of the game, you can’t expect to be around your friends all the time, right? Not that you’d need to with the single-player side of things being so enjoyable and fulfilling.

All in all this title is a hell of a lot of fun if you’re just in the mood for a bit of mindless violence. This being said,  there’s nothing overly gory, and that violence, while present, never exceeds the cartoon level. This is an important point to make because it makes From Space a game that can be enjoyed by the whole family and shouldn’t be a problem for younger players. The fact that the difficulty level is more than fair adds to this, meaning that this title will feel fun for all ages. Note, I said this game was fair; not easy. There’s still plenty there for us more seasoned hands to enjoy too.