Space Pirates and Zombies

Another day, another game with Steam cards that came in the huge bundle of games I bought over the new year. With a name like Space Pirates and Zombies how could this game be bad? Or good, for that matter? The name seems really silly and it would probably be on the list of games I'm unlikely to ever try if it didn't have Steam cards. So I guess they got at least one person to play their game by doing the Steam card thing!

The game itself is a space combat game. You have a mothership with the ability to build smaller combat ships. You fly around to different planets to perform quests which pretty much all revolve around some flimsy excuse to send computer controlled ships at your ships. You control one ship, the AI controls the rest of your ships. So you end up flying around in a circle shooting things until they die, then finding the next thing to fly after and shoot it until it dies. Eventually all the things are dead and you get a reward.

There's a decent overarching plot directing your movements. There's all sorts of things to unlock and level up that lets you build better ships. Different types of ships, different types of modules to put on your ships, and tech levels for each type of module.

A huge randomly generated galaxy to explore, lots of numbers to make bigger, reasonable combat... How could I not want to keep playing this game? Well, the control scheme hurts my hand. This game screams out to be played with a controller. Instead I have to use the WASD keys to go forward, backward, or strafe and use the mouse to aim what direction is forward. And my hand isn't used to that control scheme, and it hurts my little finger to be holding down w almost the entire time I'm playing the game. I want to get the rest of the achievements and see where the plot leads, but I don't think I can without a controller. Oh well.