Affordable Space Adventures Wii U

The Wii U has struggled since its launch to justify the usefulness of its GamePad. Unlike Nintendo’s prior motion control Wiimote, the GamePad didn’t have the same gimmicky feel. Most games use the GamePad as a way to offload a map or take advantage of its off-TV play, but few ever utilize it for meaningful gameplay opportunities.

But developer KnapNok Games has changed that.Affordable Space Adventures is the smartest use of the Wii U’s GamePad to date. A player’s ability to get through the game is largely dependent on using the GamePad. It is this creative use of the GamePad that makes the game such a compelling adventure. Pristine Track RecordYou’ve always wanted to go into space. It has been a dream to explore the expansive vacuum of space and be among the stars.

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However, you weren’t born rich, and space is an expensive place to visit. Maybe one day something will come along to help you get there, or one day a rich relative will leave you a fortune so you can take that trip into space.What was once a pie-eyed dream for many has become a reality thanks to Uexplore. The company has made space travel possible for those living on a budget. Now, anyone can enjoy affordable jaunts into space with Uexplore’s Small Crafts and its simple Heads Down Display. Space is beautiful and potentially deadly.Finally, you get the chance to be an astronaut for a bit of cash.

You’re going to Spectaculon and will see another planet with your own eyes. The day arrived and everything seemed to be going fine, but then you actually get near Spectaculon. Everything goes FUBAR, as the ship carrying all the Small Craft goes down.You expected it to be the end, but your luck held out. The Small Craft you were in survived the crash, but you’re stuck on a foreign planet.

Looks like your vacation is over, and you will need to explore the hostile surface of Spectaculon to find some way off the planet, or you could die. Spectaculon isn’t all it was made out to be.Affordable Space Adventures’ simple premise allows you to immerse yourself fully into its loose narrative. By keeping details vague on the Small Craft you pilot, you create your own story as you try to find a way off Spectaculon. Book of mages the dark times hacked. Every death, mistake and tense situation has more meaning because you feel like you have been stranded on a different planet.As you make your way through Spectaculon, you learn more about Uexplore.

Something seems off about the company. Despite the cheery tone of its promotional materials and instructional videos, you get the sense that something sinister is going on. Figuring out the truth behind Uexplore and its budget space exploration is a more toothsome bit of narrative to latch onto. Both the personal connection to your journey and uncovering the truth about Uexplore makes the story delivery interesting. Sneak ManagementAfter your turbulent and bumpy landing on Spectaculon, your Small Craft has very limited functionality.

The Small Craft can control its thrusters to move around and shine a light through darkness, but that’s about it. Thankfully, that’s enough to begin looking for a way off the planet. Controlling your thrust allows you to get through some of the earlier obstacles, which are built around getting to different heights.Being able to fly around won’t be enough to get your off this hostile planet though. Spectaculon was a crash site for a giant star cruiser, this led to the planet being full of forbidden artifacts. Interacting with these artifacts will spell doom for your ship. Much of your journey is learning how to avoid detection by these artifacts. To aid in eluding these obstacles, you get more and more access to your ship’s systems.

You will need to use the Wii U’s GamePad to manage your ship’s system in order to find a way off Spectaculon.While you begin with very basic ship functions, that doesn’t remain the case throughout the journey. The further you venture into Spectaculon unlocks more systems to control. Eventually, you will have access to two engines with the ability to control your ship’s mass, gravity and more. You will be able to scan artifacts to see their detection zones and fire flares to interact with buttons.

It will be necessary to use various landing gears and regulate your ship’s heat output.All of these various functions affect how much sound, heat and electricity your ship uses. System management is important because many of the artifacts you encounter will respond to these outputs. For instance, some only react to sound at a certain threshold. To avoid being detected by these artifacts, you need to check what systems you are using that give off sound and turn off whatever isn’t vital to moving forward. Sometimes the sound threshold is so low that you need to figure out a creative solution to get past the artifact.

Knowledge of how the various functions on your ship work with one another and in relation to various situations is necessary to crack some of the tough puzzles in the game.There are some instances where you can only use electrical systems, but the threshold is still low. Using too much thrust puts you over the limit and will get you detected immediately and eliminated. The path seems impossible to get past until you realize using your anti-gravity can get you to where you need. The game is full of many puzzles to solve and obstacles to overcome.It isn’t only by good management of your ship’s systems that you will get through the game.

You will also need to be good at using stealth movements to get past certain obstacles. While using too much thrust can tip your systems over the limit, a bit of thrust won’t immediately tip off an enemy. Making smart, strategic movements in conjunction with your various system functions can help you sneak past tricky enemies.Your journey across Spectaculon is full of clever puzzles to solve, many requiring effective stealth maneuvers and deep knowledge of your ship’s systems to avoid certain doom and flexible thinking.

OverallAffordable Space Adventures is easily the most exciting game on the Wii U so far this year. It smartly combines stealth and puzzle elements to create a unique gaming experience. The game takes full advantage of the Wii U’s GamePad to give players’ control over their ship’s systems. It is the most effective and creative use of the GamePad ever.Note: Affordable Space Adventures was reviewed on Wii U using a code for the game provided by the publisher.

The best Wii U game this year didn’t come from Nintendo.More than any other recent Wii U release — and maybe any since Nintendo Land at launch — Affordable Space Adventures uses the GamePad right. While Nintendo relegated the touch-screen, wireless behemoth to the role of a horn (OK, and a second screen/mini-map) in Mario Kart 8, Danish developer, along with Sweden’s, went much deeper. Working together, they managed to turn the GamePad into the living, breathing heart of a hunk-of-junk spaceship, and it’s an absolute joy to behold.

That engine noiseAffordable Space Adventures had me hooked the moment my engineer (my 12-year-old son) cranked up the fuel engine on our tiny, beat-up spaceship for the first time. It sounded more like a recently reclaimed than something suited to space travel, and it made me grin like an idiot.As we prepared to set off into the unknown, my son took charge of the engine room — armed with the Wii U GamePad, which was slowly blinking back to life while the ship’s computer rebooted — while I was in the cockpit, beeping the horn impatiently. I could picture myself rooting through the glove box for something to eat while I waited for our bumbling space adventure to begin. It set the tone perfectly for what proved a brilliantly quirky little action-puzzler.Think, don’t shootSet in the aftermath of an ill-fated interplanetary tourist trip, Affordable Space Adventures pits your crew — of one, two, or three members — against an increasingly hostile planet, armed with well, not a lot.

The more players on the crew, the more the jobs are shared out. We played with just the two of us, so I was in charge of moving around and aiming while my son dealt with the technical side of things, including controlling the engines, the anti-gravity generator, and the heat shutters. He loved it because he had complete control of whether we could actually move or not, and he got the chance to (repeatedly) cut the engines at really inopportune moments. Oh, how I laughed as our ship blew up for the hundredth time.Over the course of the game, many of your spaceship’s core functions reboot, adding flares, an electric engine, landing gear, and a scanner to your non-lethal arsenal and keeping gameplay fresh. The scanner is particularly vital to your survival as it lets you discover what the planet’s other inhabitants (the mechanical ones, at least) are most sensitive to. If a sentry bot can sense sound, you’ll need to figure out a way to cut the engines and sneak past.

If they can sense heat, you might need to close the heat shutters and hope you don’t combust. Having no weapons forces you to use the ship’s other, more mundane capabilities in smart ways. Image Credit: KnapNok Games The best $20 you’ll spend on the eShopAffordable Space Adventures starts off really gently, carefully introducing new concepts and new challenges, but by the end, the puzzle difficulty ramps up a lot. You can actually switch the difficulty level on the fly, which is a thoughtful inclusion in a game where players of differing skill levels might be working together.Splitting up the ship’s tasks — into engineer, pilot, and navigator — forces you to really collaborate, and that’s where the game shines most. Carefully talking things through invariably leads to heated debate, then much hollering and despair before you can finally celebrate — with high-fives all round — nailing a particularly tough section.Affordable Space Adventures is worth the $20 eShop purchase just to experience how well the GamePad can actually work when it’s used thoughtfully. The fact that the game will make you think, scream, and laugh alongside your friends and family only sweetens the deal.