Genesis Rising [PC]

Genesis Rising is one of those ideas crazy enough that it just...might...work. You're in charge of a spaceship that's also a gooey biological organism. It sucks blood from, well, blood stations and then hatches new ships from its belly. Before sending these newborns into battle, you install weapons and powers onto them. It's certainly a unique idea, and the developers got the "crazy" right. Unfortunately, they can't quite pull off the "just...might...work" part.

The setting is outer space, but on a 2D plane. There's a restrictive unit limit, so you don't control many ships; this isn't a drag-select RTS where you throw swarms of units into battle. Instead, the fleets are small and every fighter is precious. You keep your ships healed after battle by sucking blood from enemy carcasses. This is also an important way to steal new powers, which are called "genes".

A gene is basically a weapon or special ability that determines a ship's role. Is it a stealth ship with long range weapons? Is it a buff to add armor to local friendlies? Is it shielded from short range projectile weapons, or does it have extra armor to protect it to a lesser degree from all weapons? Does it have extra speed, storage capacity, or maneuverability? It all depends on which genes you install. You can get new genes by sucking them from defeated enemy ships, or by purchasing them from the neutral traders on the map.

One of the best things about Genesis Rising is the clever mix-and-match implications of this gene system. Because enemy genes are always visible, there's a meta-game of trumps and countertrumps. The ships are frankly little more than vessels for the genes. This supposedly gives Genesis Rising the flexibility of a collectible card game.

But it all falls apart because the pacing and interface simply don't hold up. There's a handy fleet management interface along the right side of the screen, but it doesn't help with positioning ships. Neither does the minimap, which consists of a few dim inscrutable dots. The only game speed is a fast clip, and the unit control is very loosey-goosey. Ships loop around and steer ponderously and stray where you don't want them. There's no way to arrange your fleet or set unit facing. Yet, believe it or not, part of the gameplay involves manually controlling ships to avoid incoming missiles.

The gene micromanagement is even more demanding. You have to duck into a separate screen to place genes, which involves futzing around with indistinct pictures of ships and little icon tiles for genes. A ship with installed genes has a higher hit point capacity, but you have to manually heal it to capacity to take advantage of this. And when you swap genes out, you lose this capacity. This presumably discourages on-the-fly gene re-jiggering, but in practice, it just makes taking advantage of new genes a serious hassle. It also makes the gameplay feel like a refueling sim, albeit a grotesque blood-themed refueling sim.