Game Review: SOL: Exodus

Hello readers!

So I'm a gamer, but before I purchase a game I like to read the reviews, watch gameplay videos, listen to my friends praise or hate it, and gather all the information I can before making a purchase, including downloading and playing the demo.

Which brings me to a game called SOL: Exodus, the demo version.  I've always been a fan of Sims and especially Space Sims.  Whatever happened to the good old days of Wingcommander I - V, Descent, X-wing, X-Wing vs. Tie, X-Wing Alliance, Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2?

*Note* I loved Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2.  The story was compelling, the action was awesome and the graphics looked amazing.

I was shopping on STEAM, the only shopping I really do unless it's on Amazon, and I found the game SOL: Exodus.  It's a Space Sim set in some future where the Earth is overpopulated, polluted, or something that's obvious.  Anyway, I looked it over, watched their little demo video and checked out some of the images, pretty hot graphics, gameplay reminded me of Wingcommander and Freespace only with updated graphics and a more space frenzy combat environment, so what the heck, why not?

I downloaded the 1.5GB taking 15 - 20 minutes, I don't know I was watching YouTube videos, more on that next time, maybe.

Before I knew it, my demo was ready and my heart began to race.  It's always exciting to try out a new game.

I clicked on the main menu, setup my graphics, remapped some of my controllers and jumped right into the game.  The graphics were beautiful, well detailed and smooth.  The space was huge and there were a couple of sizable destroyers or battleships… starships, let's call them starships…

The planet below, very nice.

So I was going through the intro training where the pilot in front of you says, "Hey, follow me."  "Hey shoot at this drone."  "Hey, stop running into me."

Well, anyone who's played flight/space sims knows that you never map your controls perfectly the first time around.  So I paused the game, went back into the main menu, and began remapping some of my controls.

Well, one thing I wanted to change around was my joystick movement, the pitch and yaw and rolling left and right.  Yes, joystick is the way to go when playing a flight/space sim, especially space sim so take that Freelancer!  Although Microsoft did do a good job /w Freelancer me thinks, kind of rushed, but that's for a blog later.

Back to remapping controls.  Well I decided to change around the way my joystick would control my little starfighter, except the remapping wouldn't take.  Before I knew it, I had apparently unbound my joystick from rolling or yawing.  I see the option to choose: Joystick X Axis for Yaw, but it won't take!

WTF game?  It's some kind of glitch or something.  I've tried multiple times and everyway of fixing this, all except uninstalling and reinstalling the game, which I'm sure will fix the issue.

So in conclusion, I've decided I cannot go further with this game.  Mainly because it has taken my joystick controls away and I don't want to Freelancer it.  I tried for about a minute and twenty seconds, and the mouse doesn't work as well as it did in Freelancer.  Just trying to do a little simple remapping and boom, I cannot select my joystick anymore.  Sadness, the game looked so hopeful too.

I guess I won't be buying this game anytime soon... Maybe if it went free or for $1.99 I'd purchase to download it, but only because the full version may have that little remapping glitch fixed.  I guess I'll never know.

SOL: Exodus = FAIL