Salvation Prophecy – Review (PC)

Salvation Prophecy – Review (PC)

Salvation Prophecy is a single player space and ground-based combat game, set in a post-Earth scenario where a war rages between four unique races, battling it out for control of various planets.

It’s difficult to have high expectations of a game like Salvation Prophecy. Not only is it selling on steam at the budget price of £14.99 – a price for which I expect nothing more ambitious than a solid budget title – but it’s also promising the features and scope that many AAA games strive for and ultimately fail to achieve. And then, upon reading into the background of Salvation Prophecy’s creation, I discover that the game’s budget was indeed so small that the team consisted of just a single full time developer. That’s right – one lonely individual coder and designer.

It’s fair to say this chap had his work cut out for him.

So how does one go about judging a game like this then? Am I to compare it to big budget games with huge dev teams and mega-budgets, or do I ‘cut it some slack’ and appreciate the magnitude of what has been achieved here at such tiny cost?

Upon starting a new campaign, the faction selection screen offers four unique choices. The once human, now mutated Salvation are essentially our religious extremists. They believe in an ‘apocalyptic prophecy foretelling the destruction of all earth’s children,’ hence the game’s title. Then there is the Drone Unity – a man-made mechanical army that rebelled against its creators. No sci-fi tale can be complete without this cliché. The Wyr are a race of androids with human infused DNA – another by-product of mankind’s mistakes – and they went and turned on their creators also. And finally, you have the Free Nations, which is basically the human race selection. The game describes this faction as a ‘democracy devoted to the freedom and justice of its people’ and a ‘champion of galactic law’ – so this is the idealised American military in space, if you choose to see it that way.

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Mission briefing overview

The game then starts you off in an optional training mode before moving you to the front lines, shifting you between ground combat and space combat situations. You play from a central ‘hub’ where you can upgrade weapons, ships and abilities with an RPG-style inventory before moving off to whichever battle the commander of your race designates. Dropships land you on alien worlds where you have to gun down masses of enemy troops before taking out their structures and vessels, eventually capturing the planet for your own cause. Ship battles have you jumping through wormholes between different sectors of space, assaulting enemy stations and outposts amid dog-fighting fighter ships. There are plenty of weapons, upgrades and side-missions to unlock for both ground encounters and your space vessel, meaning the variety and depth of the experience increases as you play. As you upgrade through the ranks, you eventually become commander of your own race. This unlocks a strategic element, allowing you to manage resources, build new colonies, ships and stations and select where and when to attack the enemy. And if that wasn’t enough, there is a narrative that emerges more prominently in the later stages of the campaign as you explore alien worlds through exploration missions, gradually revealing the truth behind the titular prophecy.

There are hundreds of games out there today with mega-budgets but very little imagination or ambition. Salvation Prophecy is the polar opposite of this. The game is incredibly ambitious, aiming to provide a fully rounded space combat ‘simulation’ for the player, but the budget just wasn’t there. The depth and scope here is quite astounding, and when you take that budget limitation into account, you begin to realise this game must have been more of a passion project for this one lonely developer than a profit making exercise.

Unfortunately though, this is where I must stop saying nice things about Salvation prophecy, for there is much lacking from the experience. The average gamer won’t stop for a second to consider how this game came to fruition, or how it’s an outstanding accomplishment for this almost one man dev team. The more important point to make is whether we are getting value for money by paying £14.99 for this game.

Salvation Prophecy is a very low budget indie title, and it shows. Visually, it looks like a DirectX 9 game. Graphical purists should steer clear of this entirely, unless you can appreciate that retro visual style that looks almost cell-shaded because of such basic two-dimensional textures. Animations, particularly in the ground-based portions of the game, can be pretty horrendous. Your character runs with his gun hand held aloft even when the weapon is unequipped, and running animations give little illusion of ground traction, more-so sliding around the battlefield.

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Repetitive destruction

Controls are similarly clunky and unrefined. I was baffled by the lack of a crouch or sprint function on the ground based missions, and cover is relatively useless when you can’t even crouch behind it. I was killed numerous times while behind objects, even though the game tutorial advises you to use cover as a means of breaking enemy line-of-sight. Expect to be killed a lot, and end up blaming it on the clunky control mechanics.

There is a notably impressive sense of scale in the ground battles, and action can feel quite frenetic. But it is essentially just a mad skirmish with the sole objective being to blast hit points away from enemy structures as quickly as possible. In every combat game-mode, you’ll be blasting away at dozens of smaller enemy units until you can get close enough to blast a larger vessel, control centre or central hub into debris. If this sounds like a repetitive grind, it’s because it is. Weapons have an irritatingly limited range also, but that seems to have been implemented to ensure skirmishes take place in close vicinity of these target structures.

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Ground combat often degenerates to ‘hacking’ at things

My most enjoyable moment with the ground-based combat came when I first realised I was the only remaining friendly player left on the battlefield, and I saw numerous enemy troops converging on my position via the mini-map. A spark of excitement as I realised I could face off against them from cover as that last man standing. This could be the defining moment where I would admit to enjoying the game. Then came a wave of disappointment as I realised there was no way I could defend myself with the clumsy controls, lack of crouch or sprint, and most notably the inability to reload while running. Cover is utterly useless, and as far as I’m aware there is no headshot mechanic in place. AI is not fantastic either, with the majority of battles involving enemies rushing at you en-masse until they take sufficient damage to cause them to retreat for a quick healing session.

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Scoring kills in flight mode is the most gratifying combat experience the game has to offer

The space combat fares much better, as it feels like a serviceable space combat sim. Ships handle well and weapons feel satisfyingly powerful. Once you get to grips with what’s going on, battles flow quite nicely and this is where I got most enjoyment from the game. A nice touch is the inclusion of faster than light travel and wormhole navigation as a sort of mini-game. Activate your FTL drive and you’re propelled toward your destination in a tunnel of electrical disturbance where you have to navigate your ship around forks of lightning-like energy.

There were admittedly a few odd moments witnessed from within the space combat though; enemy space stations being immune to attack from within for example. Perhaps our lone developer isn’t a big Star Wars fan?

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Having to manually traverse each wormhole is a neat idea

I found that an Xbox controller can be supported in place of a mouse and keyboard, yet you end up controlling the mouse cursor with the analog sticks, so it’s more ‘controller emulation’ than full support.

All in all, it feels a lot like Star Wars Battlefront to play across all modes, perhaps without quite so much vehicular variety. Though this isn’t nearly so fluid to play, and there are a few crucial control functions missing here that even that dated title managed to include. The space flight missions are definitely the strongest, with the clunky ground combat mode feeling like somewhat of an afterthought.

Salvation Prophecy is ambitious far beyond the means of its modest budget. This ambition is so admirable, that I almost want to forgive it for all of its failings. When judged in relation to its budget, the game is an achievement for its developer and for indie games in general – an example of how a little can go a very long way. There is an awful lot of content here across mixed game types, but unfortunately none of what is here has been implemented very well. Or atleast, not as well as it has been in other games. It’s definitely worth pointing out that the problems with SP are nothing to do with the concept or game structure – that element is solid and actually quite inspired. What holds it back from greatness is the poor execution of the ground combat in particular, and as you’ll spend an awful lot of the game fighting things, that cannot be overlooked.

Is it worth £14.99? I’m not so sure. But if you can overlook simplistic, sometimes infuriating mechanics, and can put bold ideas before production value, there is a lot to admire here. There is plenty to grind through for completionists, and the science fiction universe the game inhabits is intriguing to say the least. Some may well play it for that exact reason – its depth of ambition and scope. But for me, the lacking and repetitive combat mode overwhelmed any desire to seek the story conclusion.

Pros

  • Extremely ambitious original sc-fi
  • Broad scope and range of gameplay types
  • Lots of unlockables and upgrades

Cons

  • Dated visual presentation
  • Clunky, frustrating ground battle controls
  • Repetitive battles

Rating: 3 out of 5.
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