There are more games at PAX than you can possibly know about going in.
Everyone is aware of the major AAA titles. We’ve all heard about Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands. However, among these juggernauts are some gems that expo goers might not be as familiar with. For me, one such game that caught my eye was Dreadnought, published by Greybox and developed by Yager Development (Spec Ops: The Line) and 6 Foot.
Space combat isn’t new, but it’s usually either done tactically, where players issue you orders to a fleet of ships, or done so that players control small, nimble, fighters. Dreadnought is an example of a game that goes the other direction. Inspired by the likes of “Battlestar Galactica” and “Firefly” (according to the developers we spoke with) Dreadnought is a game that focuses on controlling massive battleships.
Greybox was demoing the team deathmatch mode, which consisted of a large arena where teams of six would gun each other down for about 10 minutes. I had the choice of five different ships, but in the spirit of things, opted for the large heavy warship. The other four ships consisted of a smaller scouting ship, a “medium destroyer” (which had rapid firing weapons and anti-nuclear missile precautions), a long range artillery / sniper ship, and lastly another vaguely “medium” sized ship that I believe focused on destroying heavily armored enemies (though I never actually tried that one).
I didn’t do very well, but I had a good amount of fun flailing about in my giant titan of a ship. I wasn’t sure exactly how best to approach combat (as you can dedicate extra power to shields / weapons / thrusters, I wasn’t really certain which one I should be using), and when I did encounter enemies, my strategy was little more than “dump everything right now”. Nuking enemies felt very good, though.
I’m not sure if this would be one of those games I’d hours on at a time, but it was definitely a good bit of fun and I could see it being something a group a friends could play together and get some good play out of. Always great to run into games I didn’t expect to see, and walking away satisfied.
