Lunar Flight

Download Size: 900MB

Time Played: 2 hrs.

Map Reached: 2nd of 3

What I'd Pay: $5

Steam Price (4/15/12): $10

I overshot the landing pad, sending my module careening out of control into the lunar dirt. Again. *BOOM* Another 4 minutes of careful maneuvering and delicate course correction down the drain. I hit the Reset button. The game deducted another $3500 from my account for the crash, putting me $7000 in the hole. I groaned and brought up the next mission: $5000 for a cargo run. If, if I pulled everything off perfectly, I could pull myself out of the hole in 2 missions and actually buy something. If not, I'd just dig it deeper. I grumbled, tried to line up everything perfectly before I launched, and tried again. That's Lunar Flight in a nutshell for me: tedious tweaking, long stretches of flight, the moment of truth when you try to land, the fleeting satisfaction of a completed mission, the rage & despair of yet another crash setting you back.

This is a space flight sim, similar to traditional flight sims, except with double the axes and a quarter of the scenery. You aren't here for the graphics: everything is grey. Grey terrain, grey buildings, grey landing pads. Your lander is the only spark of color here. No, if you're here, it's for the challenge of flying a bucket with rockets attached from Point A to Point B. Thrust, roll, pitch, yaw: if it's a way to spin or move it, you have jets for that. Only 8 are regularly used; the other 4 are mainly used to straighten yourself if you get tilted. As a result, the only time you use them is when something goes wrong, and you don't have enough practice in them to avoid auguring into the ground anyway. Using the thrusters properly is a series of small corrections and steady blasts, boring when done properly. If not done properly, you crash.

And crash you will. I crashed a half-dozen times learning the controls, usually when I was trying to land to complete a mission. Each time, I lost more money; I spent half of that time in the hole, desperately trying to claw out of it so I could gain XP and actually buy something. After I got fed up with that, I finally broke down and not only read the manual, but watched every single instructional video linked in the Pilot School option. It was enlightening. "Oh, wait, if I turn this on, I can set a constrant thrust rate? And match it to a table to slowly ascend, descend, or hover in place?" I tried it out on the next mission; it worked like a charm (aside from knocking my Hull down by 40% from a rough landing). "Hey, I might actually be getting the hang of this!"

Next mission, I crashed. Then one more success. I finally hit Rank 2; now I could finally buy upgrades to make my craft more fuel-efficient and easier to handle. There's 4 different upgrade types, with 3 different stages: simple things like thruster power and fuel efficiency. I wondered why all the upgrades were locked at the initial rank; I could not make it easier to control the craft until I had spent a dozen missions mastering the initial clumsy setup and crashed enough times to send me $15,000 into the hole. It was aggravating before.

The missions in this game, like everything except for the controls & mechanics, are simple: deliver cargo from Point A to Point B (more cargo = more thrust to lift off), scan a certain area, or retrieve lost cargo on the moon's surface. (Presumably from someone else who crashed.) It all involves reaching a certain location and landing/hovering safely. There's no big surprises, no plotlines or anything to spice it up, just Point A to Point B back and forth across the map. Once you rank up, you can move on to another map. The 1st map was a wide-open crater with 4 different docks. The 2nd map was a slightly hilly landscape... with 4 different docks arranged in a similar fashion. The 3rd map is just labeled "Canyons", but I really don't have the patience to get enough XP to unlock it. Or pull myself back out of debt after 2 more crashes.

Even with reading all the instructions and videos, the module is testy, finicky, and hard to control when something goes wrong. The terrain and missions are boring, making it very tough to get much joy out of a successful run. When things get interesting (aka "Crash Imminent"), you have to worry about another set of controls, turning panic into frustration. The money penalty on crashing just rubs salt in the wound. (You can't restore an earlier game, either; it uploads it immediately to the server, so you're stuck with that debt if you have a bad run.) It's an interesting idea, but the game's realistic simulation of a lunar module swings too hard between boredom and frustration for anyone but the staunchest space sim fans.