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WiiU

NWR Staff's 10 Favorite Games of 2015

Affordable Space Adventures

by James Jones - January 14, 2016, 6:11 pm EST

In space, no one can hear you scream - except the sound-sensitive monsters.

One day in the future we’re all going to be signing up to take intergalactic cruises, piercing the choking miasma we left on our defiled, once pristine home, in order to be the first (and likely last) to view the virginal beauty of sparkling new worlds. Affordable Space Adventures sells us on this magical future, presenting space tourism with all the enthusiasm and self-professed value of a 5-day tour of the Caribbean. Space travel, it turns out, has greater risks than an outbreak of Norovirus. You, captaining your crippled Small Craft across the marketing-named planet Spectaculon, need to escape the fires of a crash-landing and find your way to rescue.

Affordable Space Adventures is tailored to the Wii U in a way few games manage. The Small Craft’s various systems (engines, anti-gravity, landing gear, thrust, etc) are all controlled via the GamePad. Spectaculon is divided into small areas, each featuring a number of environmental puzzles for you to solve in order to move to the next area. As an example, Spectaculon is littered with hostile robots left behind by an unknown presence. Each has a “vision sphere,” and can be triggered by different systems on the Small Craft. One robot might react to sound, meaning your noisy fuel engine cannot be used, or electricity, prohibiting the use of your electric engine. The answer is to use your engine to get speed, and the kill the engine before entering the vision sphere, letting momentum coast you to safety. The game is full of clever challenges that require you to explore each labyrinth and to wisely utilize the Small Craft’s capabilities in order to skirt Spectaculon’s many hazards. However, the cost of failure is so low, with a forgiving checkpoint system, that experimentation is rewarding making it a major component of what makes the game fun.

As a single player game, Affordable Space Adventures is a great puzzle/exploration game. However, it completely changes with the addition of multiplayer. Rather than giving the extra player an extra Small Craft, Affordable Space Adventures divides responsibility for the Small Craft’s systems. Adding a player with a Wii U Pro Controller takes responsibilities for driving from the GamePad player, and adding a player with a Wii Remote gives them control of the Small Craft’s lights and scanner. A game that was once a task-management puzzle game now becomes a communication experience. Talking out plans, coordinating action, and attacking each challenge becomes as much about cooperation as it does understanding the solution. Solving the game’s rooms feel vastly more rewarding with a co-pilot, in no small part because of the added challenge from coordination. Pick your crew carefully, this game constantly tempts your more devilish side, daring you to cause calamity with both the ease it can be done and the incredibly low costs of failure. The Small Craft’s horn exists solely for this purpose; pray your pilot does not find it.

Affordable Space Adventures is a fantastic puzzle/adventure game that uses the GamePad in ways that put it beyond almost all games released on Wii U. As a solo experience it’s tense, but not stressful; it’s challenging, but not unfair; it encourages experimentation without being obtuse. As a multiplayer title it does all of those things, but it also reaches another level, shifting responsibilities in a way that makes each player integral to success, but unable to succeed on their own. In so doing, even failure becomes enjoyable but a communal victory is all the sweeter. Wait on space tourism, and instead explore Affordable Space Adventures with your crew. I promise you far less death and fires await.

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