I've been having an absolute blast playing Everspace 2 Early Access and I have to share some of what I've been doing with you. I would love to capture my gameplay in a video and share it with you, but unfortunately I don't have any software to do that and even if I did it would probably take me months to get to the point of knowing it well enough to actually put together a decent video clip for you. So I'm going to do the next best thing and let you watch a video that someone else did and simply point out some stuff. Before I do that I'd like to explain what it is that you are watching. This is from a recent live stream that Rockfish did showcasing the latest build of the game. I'd just like to mention that I absolutely love Rockfish's community ambassador Erich who's doing the streaming. I've watched him do a bunch of stuff now and he's amazing. Not only does he do a terrific job of answering questions and explaining stuff etc, but he's actually pretty funny as well. He's not at all annoying to me which about 75% of the streamers I've seen are.
So starting at about 1:09 of the below video he's actually talking about one of the game options which is the inertial dampeners. As you are all aware objects in space tend to move in the same direction unless something counters that motion so spaceships tend to drift. Well in Everspace 2 to counter that drift your ship has something called inertial dampeners that automatically fire in the opposite direction you are moving when you stop thrusting in that direction which counteracts that movement and you don't drift as much which makes moving about much more controlled. I know crazy right that they actually put all of this into a video game (you can actually see the dampeners firing on his ship if you know what to look for, they are next to the cockpit). Anyway just as the scene opens he's just disabled the dampeners because some people actually like to play these space shooters more like a real space sim so he shows that option and it's pretty realistic. But none of that is what I wanted to show you I just thought it was a neat segway into the next part.
So just after he demonstrates that a bit he gets into some of the best dogfight action that you will EVER see in a video game. I mean EVER. Not so far, but EVER. Just watching the next couple of minutes he uses just about every trick you have at your disposal in this game to keep from being destroyed and trust me that just about anyone but this guy would have been toast because along with being a great community ambassador he's actually pretty darn good at the game.
So let me explain a few things that are easy to miss. First thing you'll hear him say is that he's going to take out the detonator drone. In the video you'll hear it pinging as it's getting closer and closer. When it gets close enough it detonates and it does nasty damage so he takes it out first. Then you'll hear him mention the Webber Drones. What Webber drones do is they capture your ship in something like a tractor beam. In the game you'll see a purple glow around his cockpick when he's caught. That's really nasty too because it keeps you from being able to move around much and once you play this game a bit you'll realize that if you aren't constantly dodging incoming fire, you're a sitting duck and will be blasted to bits in no time. So to counter the webber drones he has a device that allows him to teleport a short distance and it effectively breaks the tractor beam and allows for free movement again. If you watch closely he suddenly seems to jump from one point to another, that's not a glitch he just used his teleport ability. Well there are several of these webber drones and after he escapes one using his teleport, another one grabs him and luckily the cooldown on his teleport ability is over and he uses it again, but then another webber drone hits his ship a 3rd time and his teleport ability is still on cooldown so he can't escape it using teleport and so has to utilize his other device which allows him to do a full booster burn for about 3 seconds which again leaves the webber drones in his wake. It's about this time that he realizes that all these webber drones are going to make quick work of him if he doesn't do something so what he does next is really cool. If you watch closely he drops 2 sticky turrets on a nearby asteroid. Sticky turrets are just what the name implies little turrets that will stick onto surfaces. What the sticky turrets do then is start to fire at the webber drones and other things chasing him which gets their attention, in the meantime since he's no longer getting the attention of the drones, he quickly takes out several of them with his weapons along with the sticky turrets. If you watch carefully you can see that the turrets are taking most of the incoming fire which allows him time to take out a couple of enemies. Even after he cleans up all the incoming bogeys he realizes that something is still firing at his sticky turrets and he realizes that he's next to an installation with it's own turrets and he takes those out next.. It's an absolutely terrific sequence of events that showcases everything that's so terrific about Everspace 2. My adrenal starts pumping just watching this sequence of events.
One final thing that I would like to mention and that is the graphics in this game are stunning and this video doesn't do them justice because of it's size. You can blow it up to full screen but when you do that it looks pretty pixelated. I can tell you there is absolutely NO pixelation when you are playing the game and it runs as smooth as glass. The effects in this game are terrific. You can see the sunlight coming in from behind as he first comes into the area. You can also see some space debris floating around in space. You can see the beams of light as they hit you and then go behind a small asteroid, etc. It's simply amazing just watching the game. I can't believe the graphics engine these guys built. This is all on top of all the enemy ships trying to kill you. Not only does it do all this stuff but it does it so well, I can't think of anytime where I see even a stutter and there are times where there's like 20 different spaceships being rendered at once. It's breathtaking. This game is amazing and you should all check it out. I haven't had this much fun in years playing a video game. I've already put about 60 hours into the game in the last 15 days or so and it's only early access.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EbeByWo1GQ
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