Space Hack Review
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Space Hack is a budget-priced action role-playing game. Now, I'm not sure about anybody else, but when I see the words (budget-priced,) I don't expect a lot from a game. From my experience, the words (action role-playing game) usually don't augur glad tidings, either. And so, suffice it to say, I wasn't expecting a lot from Space Hack, and it didn't fail not to deliver. Space Hack doesn't have any bells or whistles. It doesn't even know what bells and whistles are. The game doesn't include voice acting, an interesting plot, a slick 3D engine, or even a personality. And yet, Space Hack is strangely playable, and that's enough to save it.In Space Hack, you take on the role of a soldier-type guy named... Space Hack. The game isn't big on providing any sort of background information, but apparently you did some soldier-type stuff on Mars, and some people like you or dislike you because of it. At the start of the game, the colony ship that you're on is swallowed by a (black nebula,) and all of the aliens living in the nebula decide to attack the ship so they can scavenge useful parts from it, or perhaps just so they can eat the humans on board. Since you're a soldier-type guy, and since just about everybody else is dead, you're sent out to deal with the threat.
As you might have guessed, Space Hack doesn't have a complicated plot. The colony ship is made up of a big engine and 15 (biospheres,) but you don't have any control over it, and so you have to make your way through the ship to the (mother module) where the escape pods are. This sequence might be the tutorial for a better game (yes, that's a KOTOR reference for those of you playing along at home), but in Space Hack that's the entire campaign. The good news is that there are something like 10,000 nasty aliens inside the ship, and so you have to do some serious space hacking to win free.
Space Hack uses a classless system. You have to play as Hack, meaning you have to play as a male character, but everything else is determined by your four attributes -- strength, dexterity, knowledge, and constitution. If you want to use melee weapons (like swords and axes) you need to build up your strength. If you want to use ranged weapons (like slings and (saw throwers)) you need to build up your dexterity. And if you want to use high tech items (like energy weapons and holograms) you have to build up your knowledge. Constitution simply adds hit points.
However, unlike most other games that have a classless system, Space Hack doesn't allow you to become the master of everything. Each time you gain a level, you receive five points to spend on your attributes, but the equipment in the game has attribute restrictions, and so if you want to use melee weapons, for example, you really have to concentrate on your strength so you can eventually use the good stuff. If you try to cover everything you'll just end up as some alien's lunch.
