Space Rangers 2: Rise of the Dominators Review - PC

For the battle of curiously translated Russian game titles, Rise of the Dominators is a clear contender for the most lame. Despite that, in the battle for best open-ended space game, it actually stacks up quite well against the competition. It is a much more simple game than competitors like X3: Reunion, but it can also be a lot more fun.

Spacing Out

Space Rangers 2 is a sequel in that it’s the second game in the series, but since the first game in the series never made it to US shores, don’t worry about having to catch up on the storyline. There isn’t much to here anyway. The game is all about a set of (mostly) friendly races trying to survive against the onslaught of a nasty invader ominously called the Dominators.

These Dominators show up randomly and invade entire planetary systems. After a Dominator incursion nearby systems band together to fight them off. Sometimes they succeed and the Dominators retreat, other times they fail and the system remains under Dominators control. As a Space Ranger (i.e. freelance mercenary) you’re free to do just about whatever you like. But, those Dominators can be an awfully big menace if left un-checked.

The problem is, you’re forced to move from system to system in smaller or larger hops depending on the speed of your engine and the size of your fuel tank. Getting from one end of the galaxy to the other requires multiple stops for fuel along the way. Should the Dominators jump in and take over a popular rest stop, you could find yourself wasting a lot of time trying to avoid them when all you want to do is get from point A to B. This, if nothing else, gives you encouragement to fend off the alien menace instead of just doing your own thing.

Many Many Missions

The game is played from an almost entirely overhead perspective. You click your mouse on some point in space and your ship blasts off to it. Everything happens in turn-based fashion, though the game cycles through multiple turns if you double-click on a point that’s far away, giving things the look of a real-time game. However, should you encounter an attacker, the turn will end and you’re given a chance to ponder the situation before the next turn begins.

You of course begin the game with a small and wimpy ship. After a little training through a brief but effective tutorial you’re thrown into the wilds of space. From here it’s mission after mission, earning or losing reputation on different planets and space stations with your successes or failures. Missions generally entail picking up something then delivering it somewhere else on the other side of the galaxy. The constant delivery quests can get a little boring, but at least the way the game lines up everything along the bottom of the screen, both mission objectives and important bits of information, makes it very easy to keep track of just what you’re supposed to be doing and when you’re supposed to get it done by.

Since the game is played from a top-down perspective and is turn-based, it’s a lot easier to pick up than other, similar games. Compared to a game like X3, which is dizzyingly complex from the start, Space Rangers 2 has a much more gradual transition period. It too gets to be an awfully complex game, but the simple interface and straightforward gameplay makes it one that is much easier to pick up. No, you don’t get to experience the joy of piloting your ship through a 3-D asteroid field, but you can complete five missions in under 10 minutes if you’re good, which is a solid trade-off.

Space Variety

Just when you start to get bored of the extra-solar mercenary life the game starts to throw in a few curveballs to keep things interesting. There are a series of mini-games here that are completely off the wall. There’s an Asteroids-style game in which you face off against Dominators ships, a text-based challenge that sees you wading through paragraphs of text to solve puzzles, and even a half-way decent RTS mode that has you designing and building robots to vanquish your enemies planet-side. Each of these games has its flaws, but each is reasonably playable and surprisingly fun. 

With its overhead perspective, Space Rangers 2 uses a blend of 2-D and 3-D elements to show the galaxy. You’ll see distant 2-D galaxies scrolling by way down below your little spaceship that drifts left and right as it blasts around 3-D planets, space stations, and stars. The game is definitely has a simple look, but it’s not a bad one and it’s a look that doesn’t require hardcore hardware.

On the audio side things are likewise simple. Music is some vague trance sort of stuff that can get a little repetitive but works reasonably well. The voiceover, which is more or less isolated to the intro, sounds as you’d expect it given this game’s Eastern European vintage (campy and heavily accented). Thankfully the important stuff, the volumes of in-game text, is reasonably well translated and mostly grammar-correct.

Simple but Fun

Space Rangers 2 is a relatively simple game with a silly name that manages to be fairly fun. It has its flaws and roaming around the galaxy to deliver medical parts and the like can get a little old, but its blend of “do whatever you want” style gameplay and more objective-based stuff, all wrapped in a clean interface, makes for a great package.

Article by: Tim Stevens
Video produced by: Matt Keil