Genesis Rising review

Veni, Vidi, Vici - which is to say, let's go kick the universe in the face

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GamesRadar+ Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Sucking genes from dead ships

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    The blood-based economy

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    The space-opera battles

Cons

  • -

    Very

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    very slow sub-light travel

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    Clunky ship control interface

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    Melodramatic voice acting

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We came, we saw, we conquered. Thousands of years in the future, mankind has dominion over all species in the universe, ruled by a militaristic religion founded on the Savior, whose martyrdom 3000 years before saved humanity and established the empire that now spans the known universe.

Genesis Rising is publisher DreamCatcher’s newest, a real time strategy gameset in space. DreamCatcher is known mostly for point-and-click adventures like Syberia, so we expected a lush, beautiful setting utilizing the newest graphics and meticulous designs. What we didn’t expect was sweeping saga, grand space-opera battles and an engrossing, continuously surprising world.

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Real time strategy games tend to be fairly direct in their objectives: find place X, gather resources, make armies, invade, move on, and try not to go broke in the process. Genesis Rising adds to these elements with "organid" ships, living vessels we can create from our mothership and then mutate with a variety of different genetic material. Genetic material comes from sucking the blood from ships we destroy or stumble across. Ships morph in front of our eyes as we fiddle in the mutation lab, adding different weapons and functions in real time to adjust our fleet to the needs of the next encounter.