Nexus: The Jupiter Incident

List Price: $19.99 Discount Price: $40.00

Features:

• Epic campaign with 6 Episodes and more than 26 thrilling missions
• Powered by Mithis' unique Black Sun 3D engine
• Spectacular real-time battles with breathtaking motion picture quality
• Diverse mission types - espionage, fight, stealth, sabotage, rescue, science, etc.
• NPCs and crew with improving skills

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine	Zonealarm Internet Security Suite [Old Version]

Customer Reviews:

Sweet! [Posted on 2006-04-24]
First off, to REALLY enjoy the game you need a big surrond sound system and a big monitor, but hey, what game dont you have to have thoes things? But anyway, this game is awsome. Pretty much, the game says you have to do X things each mission and then sets you free. You decide which weapons to equip your ships with, and more importanly, WHERE to equip them. This game is played in 3 dimentions, so weapons mounted on the bottom of your ship cant fire at targets above unless the ship rolls over or flips around (it does it automatically). It also has some funny dialogue (like commander Sweetwater calling your AI a "cyber pet" and "anal-retentive ignoramous"). The graphics are spectacular, they really took advantage of the space setting to give wonderfully detailed objects and backgrounds.

There are some cons tho, namely there is NO ending! You complete your final objective, you see a little cutscene that ends with your AI saying that shes going to kill gods, and it ends. You never know what happened to most of your friends or anything...guess they all end up killed.Guess this really cane be called a con, but for a while your under the command of Rear/Vice-Admiral someguy, who puts you down every chance he gets, even after you save his life...TWICE! And he does other things that make life much harder for you for a while, but that just adds an interesting part.

DOnt be intimidated by the commands and everything, once you get used to them its aight, and once you get over the lack of sleep from staying up all night and playing this, its aight too.

Play the demo frist secound and thired  [Posted on 2006-06-15]
This game is intresting, play the demo frist is what i have to say. Not just once but take a week or two off play the demo again and then again if you did not get it the frist time. Problem i ran into was its controles are nothing freeformed like Homeworld i started clicking and nothing would happen. But after a few months i cam back to the demo after seeing the game on amazon again and it made sences more. you don't controle the units freely you have to have a target to send them to. Over all i liked the game just wish i could send my ships anywayre i want. Not just way points and guarding ships. Oh well it will wast a few hours

Good game that has a lot going for it, but it's not without its shortcomings [Posted on 2006-09-15]
First of all, let me say that I'm a big sci-fi and astronomy buff. Between the recent debate and decision about what formally constitutes a planet, and all the hype surrounding the impending arrival of Spore, I've been worked into a frenzy over the last few months. So, I've been looking for good space-themed sci-fi games to tide me over for the coming months. I recently purchased Nexus as a way to tide myself over. For the most part, I have not been disappointed.

The basic story of the game is that you play the role of Marcus Cromwell, a war hero that had gone missing for some ten years before being recovered from hibernation in orbit around Mars. Your family has a proud history of space exploration and combat, and your father disappeared trying to pass through a wormhole with a colonization fleet. You start the game working for one of the handful of megacorporations that basically run space travel in the solar system.

Things progress fairly quickly, and that is one of the strengths of the game. You start out with an unimpressive cruiser, but soon discover alien technology and a much cooler ship with lots of neat abilities, which you control most of the game. You also pick up more support ships as the game progresses, and more and greater powers with your primary vessel.

The gameplay is pretty good, but not great. Often, it feels like you're just along for the ride while things just happen. If you don't have the best assortment of weaponry (and trust me, there are a lot of options), battles can take forever to complete. Of course, you can always restart missions, but this entails reconfiguring your weapon and device load-outs. Luckily, this is a mostly smooth process, although I did find one thing that bothered me. Most ships come with somewhere between a dozen and perhaps thirty hardpoints where all manner of weapons, engines, shields, and miscellaneous devices can be attached. However, each hardpoint slot can only be used for certain types of devices or weapons. The problem stems from the fact that some slots can be used for more than one type of item.

So, let's say you're going on a recon mission. You'll want to take that multi-use light weapon/scanner slot and put a data scanner into it. But if you've already got a light weapon in that slot, you can't move it to another dedicated light weapon slot. You have to get rid of it completely, and you get no credit for having it. It just disappears. This is mildly frustrating, but you generally have enough resource points that you can pretty much get what you'll want or need to complete a mission.

The battles themselves are pretty fun, but like I said, it doesn't always feel like you have that many options. It's pretty much attack an enemy's shields, knock them out, attack their hull, rinse, repeat. There are a variety of situations you'll encounter, however, such that you're not always in a straight-up combat situation. This keeps things from getting too repetitive or dull.

Of course, one of the great things about this game is the fact that even when you're just watching battles unfold, you'll be pleased, because the game looks pretty great. The weapons all have distinctive looks and effects, and when lots of stuff is happening simultaneously, things can get exciting. Also, the sound effects are top notch, with a number of really odd sound effects for the weapons, and also for the other bizarre occurrences you'll encounter while travelling the galaxy.

Speaking of sound, the voice acting is surprisingly good. There is a lot of spoken dialogue between and during missions, and thankfully, the actors are almost universally perfectly cast. I never found myself wishing they would shut up. The variety of characters and their interactions create a pretty good dramatic backdrop for the action. The only voices that seemed a little excessive and over the top were one of the more violent alien races, but only just barely. Otherwise, the sound was generally awesome.

The game probably has limited replay value, since it's primarily one large campaign, and half the fun is watching the plot unfold, although skirmishes could be entertaining, in theory. The only issue is that, without a storyline to carry you along, battles might be a lot less compelling.

Overall, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is a really cool game. I particularly enjoy the fact that it's set just a century in the future, and begins by showing how mankind has make progress with space exploration, but maintains realism, evinced by the fact that you initial journey from Mars to Jupiter takes approximately eight months. As new technologies and more advanced alien races are encountered, however, the technology level jumps significantly. It all feels like a natural progression, of course allowing for the sci-fi elements and the fact that you must suspend disbelief.

Despite its minor flaws, I would recommend this game to anyone who's everenjoyed any of the Wing Commander games, or Freelancer, or even space RTS games like Homeworld or Star Wars: Empire at War. It's somewhere in the middle, with a little for everyone.

Solid game [Posted on 2007-01-04]
On a 10 scale...
Graphics...9
Gameplay...8
Story......8
Replay.....6

This game has no significant flaws. Overall the game is really fun to play but, I would caution anyone who is not a fan of this particular type of game. My affinity for space battles and strategy helped this game score bigger with me than it would for certain others. Rated on just it's strategy alone, it's still a solid game. That stands true even for those not partial to the setting. As for the replay, there isn't much of a reason to revisit the game once complete.

This is the game I've always wanted  [Posted on 2007-02-11]
If you enjoy science fiction, space operas, huge battles in space with massive ships tricked out with outrageous weapons, buy this game. But don't stop there, if you want a game with a great story, wide open options to customize and manage your fleet, and top-notch voice acting, again, buy this piece of software magic. It is a steal. Why this game has not won tons of awards is a mystery. If you have been tempted to buy more expensive space combat games with the words trek in them, you'll have far more fun with Nexus.

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