Review Everspace | After being in early access, Everspace by ROCKFISH Games is now officially released and available in the store. Is there enough space for another space game? LifeisXbox launched their scout ship to investigate.

THE GOOD

• Everspace has quite a bit of replay value. At first, I didn’t expect it, but with every run, you tend to learn more and discover new things. If nothing else you will unlock new perks for your pilot or ship. Repeat play games can be frustrating, but I always wanted to do that next run.
• If you manage to get 10k credits in a run, you can unlock one of two new ships that both drastically alter your experience and playstyle. The scout is fragile, but nimble and can cloak whereas the gunship is a flying fortress, but it has no shields, forcing you to keep enemies at a distance or suffer the consequences.
• The fun banter between you and the shipboard AI. Sometimes it’s just funny remarks about the current situation on other occasions you actually learn more about what you are doing or about the history of this part of space.
• The game is all about risk versus reward in everything. If you stay in an area, you can discover a lot more, but powerful enemies will jump in after a while. You can balance long range versus short range weapons. Choose whether to attack or try to avoid enemies. Jump to an area with low or medium risk. You get the point by now. This makes every run a learning experience and gives the player some control over the level of tension they wish to handle.

MIXED FEELINGS

• The game looks very good, but as you might expect from space, the visuals tend to be a little repetitive, there’s only so much you can do with space.
• The controls generally work great, but I really dislike that you cannot properly roll your space ship. According to the control scheme, it’s done by move the right stick left and right, but that only does a tiny roll movement before it to yaw instead of roll.
• The story mostly gets told when you go through a jump gate through a new sector. The next time, the story clip for that particular sector won’t play. While I don’t want to see the same video over and over, I do imagine wanting to see the storyline videos again if I play this game again after an extended break. I didn’t really see an option for this without resetting your progress.

THE BAD

• On my best run, I came all the way to the end where I had to fight 6 waves. After the first couple of waves my consumables were out, and I just wasn’t equipped to survive the onslaught anymore. I feel like it’s almost impossible to complete a run before unlocking a lot of perks or possibly getting lucky with the ultimate build through pickups. This felt like a bit of a letdown after such a successful run so far. It really felt like I should have been able to complete that run.
• Boosting by keeping the stick depressed. Xbox controllers are great, but the thumbsticks don’t take kindly to games that keep you pressing down on the sticks. The game doesn’t let you remap the controls, except for switching the left and right stick functionality. Of course, you can remap outside of the game with an elite controller, but this feature should have been in the game.

Score: 87% | Honestly, I did not expect to like it this much. Everspace can be an addicting space shooter, giving you that “one more run” feeling. The way the player has to make risk/reward decisions in subtle and not so subtle ways really adds to the overall experience. If you enjoy space shooters and are up for the challenge, you should definitely consider picking this one up.