HomeScienceThe Riftbreaker review: Interplanetary mining with an alien twist

The Riftbreaker review: Interplanetary mining with an alien twist


master mentalism tricks

In The Riftbreaker, you scout an alien world and prepare it for colonisation

EXOR Studios

Game

The Riftbreaker Exor Studios

PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S

Advertisement

WHEN writing this column, I try to remember that many of New Scientist‘s readers don’t play video games. With that in mind, I try to pick titles that have something to say about science or technology but don’t require knowledge of gamer terminology. This month, I have failed, but stick with me while I tell you about one of the most entertaining games I have played this year.

The Riftbreaker casts you as Ashley Nowak, an explorer sent on a one-way trip to the distant planet of Galatea 37. Really, you play as her hulking mech suit, dubbed Mr Riggs. The story is paper-thin – there is a brief mention of Earth being uninhabitable after the “Yellowstone event”, presumably a reference to the potentially apocalyptic supervolcano in Wyoming. Your job is to survey the planet, construct a “rift gate” to enable teleportation back to Earth and to prepare Galatea 37 for colonisation.

It all starts fairly simply, as you set up wind turbines and solar panels to power automated mines and gather resources. But then you come under attack from the local animals – overwhelming hordes of reptilian beasties. Mr Riggs is bristling with weapons to defend yourself. You can also set up walls and turrets to build a defensible base. Then there are the natural disasters, such as earthquakes and meteor strikes, and bad weather that interferes with your power generation.

“Before you know it, you are chasing supply bottlenecks while occasionally pausing to mow down aliens”

This loop – gather resources, improve your weapons and your base and defend yourself – propels the entire game, deftly blending two genres known as real-time strategy (RTS) and twin-stick shooters. The former usually involves building up an army and smashing it into another until one of you is wiped off the map. The latter is about controlling a character and ducking out of the way of enemies as you try to take them down.

Combining these genres is a pretty weird idea, but The Riftbreaker really makes it work, as your base and Mr Riggs work in tandem to hold back the aliens. What I particularly like about The Riftbreaker is that, unlike mission-based RTS games such as genre classics StarCraft or Command & Conquer, your base persists throughout the entire game, meaning it grows into a sprawling behemoth. I occasionally found myself stumbling across sections that I had built hours earlier and had completely forgotten about.

As you grow your base, the game introduces another concept that regular readers will know I am a big fan of: supply chains. While your initial buildings are made of easily available carbon and iron (or “carbonium” and “ironium” as the game strangely calls them), building the rift gate requires rarer materials such as uranium and cobalt that can only be found by visiting other areas of Galatea 37 and setting up outposts, which in turn need supplying. Before you know it, you are chasing the bottlenecks in your system while occasionally pausing to mow down aliens. It is as if Ellen Ripley got a side gig as a logistics manager.

While playing, I did wonder if I should feel bad about strip-mining an entire planet. This point is touched on with a few lines of dialogue, and while you can choose to use only solar, wind, biomass or geothermal power throughout the game and receive a “going green” achievement for doing so, burning your way through the biosphere is too much fun to miss.

Read The Full Article Here


trick photography
Advertisingfutmillion

Popular posts

‘Tetris’ Review: The Pieces of This Story Mostly Fall Into
Liv Tyler Returns to MCU For New ‘Captain America’
Infinity Pool review – Sticky, overcast holiday horror
1976 review – Feminine revolutionary cinema
Watch NCIS: Los Angeles Online: Season 14 Episode 16
Amy Jo Johnson, Power Rangers Star, Denies Skipping Netflix Reunion
ABC Sets Summer 2023 Premiere Dates, Including ‘Jeopardy! Masters’ &
Jonathan Majors Arrested For Alleged Assault, Lovecraft Country Actor Denies
ViennaCC Releases ““Cabriolet”
 Sheer Haimov Drops New Single
Viva Las Vegas! Adele, Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson & Maroon
Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger ‘Went a Little Nuts’ on Guitarist’s Nostalgic
Rihanna Pregnancy Outfits: RiRi’s Second Pregnancy Style Watch Is On
9 Flattering Bikini Bottoms For Every Type of Coverage
Storm Reid Looks Mesmerizing in a Sheer Crystal Minidress With
Red Hair Is All the Rage — Here’s How To
Romance Books to Read for Fans of Ed Sheeran
With No Memory of Their Trip, One Couple Fights to
Intertwined Love Stories Meet Unconventional Decisions in the Face of
BookBeat Review: Better than Scribd but Not Widely Accessible
Music-Making Artificial Intelligence Is Getting Scary Good
Reaping the rewards of good corporate citizenship: Advice on how
Bacteria from meat may cause a half-million UTIs a year
A crystal, but not as we know it
Insect Farming Is Booming
I Love You. I Hate You. Don’t Call Me
Your Nighttime Snores and Coughs May Be Unique
AI Will Make Human Art More Valuable