Genre: Action RPG
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Gas Powered Games
Release Date: August 19, 2008

Space Siege is the successor, in spirit, to Gas Powered Games' popular Dungeon Siege titles. These are point-and-click RPG times where your reflexes matter at least a little and your equipment matters a lot, comparable to the Diablo series or your basic MMO. This is a type of RPG occasionally frowned upon by the progressive PC gamer, but Space Siege's four-player co-op online multiplayer features have a lot of even the snootiest PC fans willing to forgive the old-school, simple gameplay style. You'll even be able to play two-player co-op offline, a feature many PC games end up not supporting. If you want any info about the multiplayer version of the game, you won't find it here. The demo session for the game focused solely on the single-player game mode, which does offer enough different potential endings and ways to play to justify a few run-throughs.

Unlike many other action RPGs done in this style, Space Siege is a very active game. It's almost RTS-like in the way it rewards the ability to rapidly click on just the right enemy or immediately use the best hotkey for a situation. There are a few "boss fights" where it's perfectly possible to wipe out even if you have adequate healing packs and a good loadout of skill and equipments. One of these major battles occurs within the first level, after a series of intense cut scenes. The producer at the demo was quick to stress that the density of cut scenes in the early game wasn't representative; most of the story would be told by items that had to be found in the course of the game, like voice recordings, diaries, and particular NPC interactions. As a consequence, this means that Space Siege levels aren't randomized the way levels in these sorts of games frequently are. Instead, the setting of Space Siege — a massive colony ship — is meticulously detailed both to feel extremely large and to feel convincing as a place where people once lived and worked before the hostile aliens moved in. To GPG's credit, the level design is surprisingly successful at this difficult task.

There are quite a few interesting sci-fi touches on the well-worn high-fantasy formula of the Dungeon Siege games here. Instead of amassing gold, you amass parts from defeated enemies. Your protagonist is an engineer, and so he can use these spare parts to level up HR-V, his handy companion robot, or to improve his own weapons. It is feasible to invest so much in HR-V that you spend most of the game letting him do a lot of the fighting for you, while you stand back and take potshots at enemies or spam skills. HR-V and the protagonist have separate HP bars, and it seems easy to make HR-V into something that can easily soak up colossal amounts of damage.

The skill tree in Space Siege is key to the game's plot, and so what you invest in is a little bit more important than usual. Some skills require your engineer to remain mostly human, while others demand your engineer take on certain cybernetic enhancements. You can easily enhance yourself at any point in the game, but can never un-enhance yourself. The skills that call for enhancements will appear to be more powerful in the short-term game, but investing in a more human character can pay off over the long term in a way that's equally useful. If you take on more than a certain total percentage of cybernetic enhancements, then your character's loss of humanity begins to influence the story line. If this sounds a bit like the premise of Silicon Knights' Too Human to you … well, it is, sans Norse mythology. That said, the way the story plays out feels far truer to the basic man/machine conflict as presented in early sci-fi than its competitor. Both the decision to enhance and not enhance are presented as valid, and this is probably going to encourage some replays.

The overall structure of the game appears to be basically mission-based, but each mission takes you to different parts of the ship and can give you particular new plot information. The plot seems a bit more meaty and linear than Dungeon Siege, tasking you with saving the last remaining colonization ship containing human beings from an abrupt and nasty alien invasion. The idea that you're one of the last humans alive in the universe is what drives the importance of the decision to enhance or not enhance your main character. The game itself is of highly variable length, depending on how a player chooses to approach the campaign. A highly aggressive, optimized player may be able to clear it in 10 hours, while a more leisurely player could easily eke more than 20 hours out of a single run. At the event, GPG's producer put playtime at roughly 15 hours for the average player, and exactly how many different endings the game has are unknown. He said there was definitely more than one ending, though.

Controls for Space Siege are about as simple as you'd expect from this game style. You control the camera angle with the right mouse button and movement with the left, and then use a variety of hotkeys to rapidly control use of grenades, special skill powers, or health packs. You could also use hotkeys to consult area maps, which is useful for finding your way to the valuable save rooms scattered through the ship. Save rooms, on top of auto-saving progress, also let you purchase new weapons, install cybernetics, and restore your and HR-V's health to maximum levels. While using hotkeys was much faster, you could also pull up your maps, skill trees, and other important menu screens with a click of the mouse. This is not really an advisable play style, since how rapidly you click onto enemies or use skills can make a life-or-death difference in combat. You need to acclimate yourself to the hotkeys as quickly as possible, and make sure your best items and abilities are mapped to the hotkeys you like the most.

The version of Space Siege shown was quite nearly complete, since it's very close to its ship date. The graphics were sharp, and while the system requirements are steeper than Dungeon Siege 2's, Space Siege shouldn't require a computer significantly better than what your average MMO demands. Don't take this as a sign of lousy graphics, as there are plenty of bright explosions, energy bursts, and thick hordes of aliens to kill on-screen. Space Siege is definitely a game that would let a high-end PC owner give his rig a little workout, just not one you need to be afraid of having to upgrade your rig before playing. What is a little frustrating about the graphics is that they look much better when the camera is zoomed in, but what's optimal for gameplay appears to be zooming way out (and consequently making the world look a bit miniaturized more so than immersive). How quickly you see an enemy makes a big difference in how easy it is to handle them, and how easy it is to make good use of HR-V.

As part of the demo, this writer got to complete Space Siege's first level and take a look at a few levels from later in the game. The level played was enjoyable, and Space Siege seems like it would be pleasing to those who really like their clicky action RPGs. Now, whether it's worth dropping your favorite MMO to play, or even worth picking over another clicky action RPG, is impossible to say at this point. So much of this genre's potential doesn't really come out until extended play sessions are a possibility. For now, Space Siege is one of the few upcoming PC games catering to a classic PC gamer experience, and the available levels were at the very least fun and promising in terms of hinting at more fun to follow. If you want to play an action RPG on your PC that could only ever be a PC game, you are likely to find Space Siege to your liking.