Space Opera Fans discussion

Halo series. The Resistance games come in a close second.

Super Metroid

The Elite series, especially the latest entry Elite: Dangerous, is probably my current favorite. I really feel like a space trucker/explorer/dogfighter.

In the vein of though-provoking old school sci-fi novellas, The Swapper is pretty great!

I also liked Dead Space, it really reminds me of Alien, my favorite sci-fi movie. Alien: Isolation is really good too, actually.

Of all time, though, it's gotta be Halo. Space opera AND space marines, what's not to love?

Halo, System Shock series, Dead Space, Destiny even if the story could be better, Alien Isolation.

Lets see, what else, hmmmmm....

Mass Effect 1, 2 could have used some help, 3's star kid can eat a nuke...

Some of the Warhammer 40k strat games are fun.

SW: KOTOR 1 and 2 were fun also.

The new X-Com games and Wasteland 2 Director's Cut.

Basically no plot(or at least nobody plays it for that):
Sword of the Stars: A Murder of Crows (hands down the best SF 4X)
Eve Online
Homeworld Cataclysm and 2
Super Robot Wars franchise
Gundam vs series
Super Metroid/Metroid Fusion/Prime Trilogy
Legend of the Galactic Heroes game

Some plot:
StarCraft Broodwar
Advent Rising
Dead Space 1 and 2 (more horror then sci-fi though)
Zone of the Enders 2(PLAY THIS GAME)
Vanquish
KOTOR 1/2
Portal 2
Starwars: Republic Commando

plot focused:
Zero Escape Trilogy(or will be once the third one comes out)

XCOM UFO Defense was the first one that sucked me in. The follow-up games not so much. The modern tribute to it called Xenonauts has some good points if you don't mind the nostalgia trip, though some of the game fixes actually made the gameplay a bit more flat feeling. And I like the looks of the new XCOM reimaginings (Enemy Unknown, Enemy Within), but the depth of gameplay was really reduced in those: no global strategy mode, extremely limited air combat mode, reduced base strategy (because you only get one base).

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance was a really great flight sim game. Not the single player campaign mode--got bored with that. But they had a multiplayer mode where you could build your own scenarios, and fly just about ALL the ships in the game--and there were a HUGE number of them! I used to meet online with two or three friends. One of them would set up our own campaigns. Pretty freaking cool. Never seen that flexibility in any other games.

MechWarrior2, 3, and 4. Again, used to buddy game with a friend. Hated the single player campaigns. But setting up matches with us vs AI bots was a blast. MW3 especially since it was the only one that included environment deformation. Your missiles hit the ground...now there are big craters in the ground. Awesome.

I know people really into MechWarrior Online, but I don't have the time or a PC set up for that level of gaming right now.

Oh...and Stars! That was one of the very first multiplayer games ever. It was turn based and could be played via server, LAN connection, email, or whatever. The entire game could fit on an old floppy disc. It was originally a shareware game--a 4X space game like Masters of Orion, only it came first and was made by some computer programmers for their own pleasure. They started sharing it around and eventually released a commercial version. Low graphics, but very flexible game set up which included the ability to create your own species. Once you understood the interface and the game mechanics it could be extremely engaging. Suffered like all these games do from micromanagement issues...bigger empires suck up bigger amounts of time fiddling with production and ship waypoints and all that. Still a classic. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!)

I've enjoyed watching some play through videos of the Dead Space and BioShock series. Neither of these would I ever play, but watching someone entertaining play them was fun. DS was really more horror and got a bit repetitive. And the last BioShock game was pretty bad, I thought. I couldn't get through the whole thing even when the person I was watching was entertaining.

Not many others in SF.

Micah wrote: "Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance was a really great flight sim game. Not the single player campaign mode--got bored with that."

I actually got very touched by the Azzameen storyline, and you really got a feeling for the universe because of the hyperspace travels. There were some really exciting episodes where you were struggling survive all the way to the hyperspace jump-point.
The other X-Wing games were amazing too, especially TIE-Fighter. I wish they had released the old campaigns with the new engine (although the extended range of capital ship lasers completely thwarted fighter attacks).

Niels wrote: "I actually got very touched by the Azzameen storyline, and you really got a feeling for the universe because of the hyperspace travels. There were some really exciting episodes where you were struggling survive all the way to the hyperspace jump-point..."

Full disclosure: I say bored when what I meant was that I didn't have the patience to get good enough at solo missions to complete the campaigns. I didn't get very far in and just gave up 'cause the multiplayer aspect was more fun.

Eventually I got good enough in the B-Wing that I was able to fight 1:1 against a friend of mine who loved A-Wings (fast little zippy things) and the fight would end in a draw. I could never get a shot off at him, but he was never able to kill me because the B-Wings were really tough brutes. I flew them almost exclusively because I had a tendency to run into my opponents, which only the B-Wing could survive much of!

Hahahaha I was a bit better than that, having played X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing versus Tie Fighter countless times :D

Those games and Homeworld are some of the few games that could actually tempt me back into computer games...

I always have a fondness for that great console game -- Asteroids. I remember a local pizza place had one of those coffee table sized games.

The problem I have with the X-wing games is that Descent Freespace 2 and it's mods was a better game/experience in almost every single way.

The parody campaign mod was probably one of the most memorable video game campaigns I have played though.

First mission opens up with banter and your wingmen deathflagging all over the place and proceeding to die though unbelievable incompetence.(One just flies straight into an unmoving cargo container)
*First mission was a training mission if I remember right with zero actual hostiles

I liked the original Halo so much I had to sell my copy in order to get my life back. That's the closest I've ever come to an actual addiction.

I absolutely loved the sci-fi parts of City of Heroes. That was the most immense MMO I've ever played in terms of sheer variety. Let's see if I can remember all of them:
1) Nemesis, a steampunk villain group led by an immortal genius tinkerer named Lord Nemesis
2) The Freakshow, a cyberpunk group whose creations included crazy guys cyborged to industrial machinery
3) The Sky Raiders and Goldbrickers, two different flavors of Buck Rogers-style tech pirates
4) Crey Industries, an evil corporation that dabbled in everything from mind-controlling soda to creating cloned superheroes
5) The 5th Column, space Nazis who used technology to create vampire and werewolf analogues along with giant robots
6) The Council, who staged a coup from within the 5th Column and created their own forms of awesome evil
7) The Rikti, a massive alien invasion from an alternate Earth... which opened up the ability to visit innumerable alternate Earths via
8) Portal Corp, where you could visit an Earth called "Axis America" taken over by the Space Nazis, one where the werewolves created by the Space Nazis took over the Space Nazis (and by "took over" I mean "ate"), one where there were evil versions of all the superheroes, including yours and, of course, the Rikti home world, plus a dozen more
9) raids on crashed space ships
10) The Malta Group, superspies who used high tech to rid the world of all super powered creatures, good and evil alike. Also lots of giant robots, some of the most dangerous fanatics on the planet. Never a good day when these guys showed up.
11) The Clockwork, which straddled the Fantasy-Science Fiction divide by being magically-motivated robots
12) Praetorians, which came in two flavors, the OG tech bad guys and then the SUPER baddies who saved their version of Earth via a harsh dictatorship which was overseen by attractive and sleek humanoid robots with pleasant-sounding names like "Home Companion", which looked like they were designed by Apple but could kill you in an eyeblink and then return to sweeping up
13) Knives of Artemis, an all-female mercenary group with the highest of high-tech weaponry, so lethal even the wickedly dangerous Malta Group was afraid of them
14) The Vazhilok, named after a Frankenstein-like mad scientist who was able to reanimate the dead, including dead superheroes... which he could cut up and combine in even deadlier ways,
15) and of course the game wouldn't be complete without time travel into a post-apocalyptic future courtesy of the Menders, a group of men and women so advanced they dare not interfere with the timeline lest they erase their own existence... and led by a reformed Lord Nemesis! Or is he? Dun dun dun!

There must have been more, but that's all I can recall at the moment. Of course, for Fantasy fans there were just as many villain groups to fight, everything under the sun and darkest of eclipses: witches, secret societies, sentient plant life and animated rock creatures (which I'm convinced were inspired by Galaxy Quest: "It's a rock! It doesn't have any vulnerable spots!"), ghosts, zombies, at least two secret sects intending to revive ancient giant gods (which I'm convinced is where Joss Whedon got his idea for Cabin in the Woods), magical Mafia, supernatural Asian gangs, ghouls, and a whole range of mythic Celtic creatures from the Tuatha de Dannan, plus dozens more.

Mass Effect 2, by far one of the best space operas I've encountered. Damn shame they tanked it with ME3, although I do still play the ME3 coop multiplayer from time to time, so not a total loss, I guess.

Back in the mid-70s we played Space War, which was basically a two-player version of Asteroids using the same triangular space ships with the extra fun of a black hole on the board which warped both your shots and flight path.

I'm not sure if Doom and Quake count, as they mixed SF and F elements, but yeah, those, too, as well as the original Unreal Tournament.

Hmmm....I may change my point of view of my favorite sci-fi video games I've ever played in my life.
Anyway, I'd like to name the games I've loved, in no particular order:
Another World, Star Control 2 (The Ur-Quan Masters), Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3.

I'm so content that Fiannawolf and Trike named Mass Effect as your favorite sci-fi video game. 8)

Mentioned twice already here, Halo is mine. This franchise (and Asimov's robot stories) were key in pushing my main novel diet from fantasy into science fiction.

I started with The Flood by William C. Deitz, a novelization of the first game, which is honestly as stereotypical military sci-fi as the franchise gets, in terms of gritty 'boots on the ground' stories, and my second favorite novel in the franchise.

One of the things that fascinates me most about Halo is how it has dealt with aliens. In a lot of military sf, especially military sf games (and games in general back in the day), the aliens are there to provide a variety of obstacles for gameplay. A variety of cannon fodder for the players to mow down.

And for the first few years, that's really what Halo gave us for the Covenant. Even in The Flood, where we have a number of POVs from the aliens, only one is sympathetic, and that's only because he's an oppressed member of the Covenant, not because his sympathies lie with humanity. The rest are portrayed as eager to kill all humans that cross their path. Cannon fodder with personality, but still cannon fodder to be mowed down by humans.

Then Halo 2 happened and everything changed. Suddenly we were given an array of aliens characters with varied motives and morals, and their story was placed at the core of the game with the human story becoming secondary.

How aliens have been handled in future installments in the franchise has varied depending on the author and the story being told, but Halo 2 was such a major shift, especially in the time it was released. The former cannon fodder villains were now among the protagonists.

I've also loved that Halo varies in the style of stories that it tells. We have a trilogy that focuses on the last days of a galactic empire, another that focuses on Cold War-esque subterfuge, a mystery novel, a novella that reads like a ballad (told in prose, but interwoven with themes of an in-universe ballad). First contact stories, adventure stories, horror stories, conspiracy stories... I think the only things missing from the line-up in terms of genre would be historical fiction and romance.

My favorite Halo series is Red vs Blue.

;D

Micah wrote: "My favorite Halo series is Red vs Blue.

;D"

That's a good show! Any favorite seasons or story arcs?

Another Halo fan here. It really is an outstanding space opera universe. You're spot on when you say that Halo spans so many genres. Most people probably assume it's strictly a military sci-fi series full of cliches, but it's so much more.

Tobias wrote: "Another Halo fan here. It really is an outstanding space opera universe. You're spot on when you say that Halo spans so many genres. Most people probably assume it's strictly a military sci-fi series full of cliches, but it's so much more. "

And even the cliches that it does use are often given a twist. Contact Harvest and the Forerunner Saga in particular seems to deconstruct the sub-genre that paints alien religion as more enlightened than our own, or that any species is able to ascend to a form of benevolent deism. The pursuit of deism is violent and malevolent, and the two races that have been revered as gods have been as imperfect as those who worship them.

I'm especially partial to how the Forerunner Saga takes the tired (in my opinion) trope of ancient, vanished race that left powerful technology and really gives it life. I really had no interest in them at first; they were just a catalyst for the conflicts and stories that I cared about. But giving them names, giving them a solid story made them so fascinating. Heck, Halo even doubled up on the ancient, vanished race trope with the Precursors and made it good!

That's interesting about the aliens in Halo. There was a similar thread in City of Heroes running through the Rikti (pronounced like "Rick T.") where they sorted out into two major factions, one which wanted to cooperate with humans and another which wanted to conquer us.

It was complicated by the fact that there was a small segment of humans who saw the overwhelming power of the Rikti and wanted to become like them, so they mutated themselves into human-Rikti hybrids. I forget the specific details of how they did that, but it essentially inserted a third POV into that whole situation.

Since both City of Heroes and Halo 2 came out around the same time, I wonder if there was something which inspired both groups of writers.

I remember when we first encountered the Rikti on a massive scale for the end-of-beta event, one of the things players joked about was the fact that the shock troops included "Rikti monkeys." These were very reminiscent of the little aliens in Halo (which had already been out for a couple years at that point). What we didn't know at the time was that this wasn't a case of the writers being lazy but -- and I guess I can't spoil a game no one can ever play again -- the Rikti were actually human beings who had mutated themselves in order to survive the terrible conditions of the alternate-universe Earth they came from. Naturally this same process worked on other simians, so they mutated monkeys to be their attack dogs. So what was originally seen as cutesy and silly actually turned out to be kind of sad, that their desperation drove them to that.

Trike, it sounds like I need to do some research into City of Heroes. I'm a sucker for diplomatic stories between humans and aliens (even if said aliens are mutated human beings).

Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.

Anyway, when it comes to games, I'm an oldy I guess, somehow never really got too much into modern consoles and ever since I retired my PS2, I've been mostly out of it.
SO, my favourite scifi games would have to be:

- Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri (STILL one of the most engaging, sprawling and fun games ever made by man!)
- StarCraft (I LOVE THE MYTHOLOGY AND STORY!!!)
- StarCraft: Brood War
- Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (it is kind of a scifi concept if you see the stuff like Tesla tanks/towers and mind-control and Prism towers and chrononauts and weaponised Dolphins and such... I like the 1st C&C game and the 2 Red Alerts and the Yuri expansion but not the rest)

Akshay wrote: "Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.
Trike said it wasn't but I'm sure there are wikis or other places where the lore is gathered.

"StarCraft (I LOVE THE MYTHOLOGY AND STORY!!!)"
My computer is way to slow (or maybe it's my internet connection up here in the middle of nowhere) to have those games run on it, but do you know of any good walkthroughs on youtube? This is a series I've been wanting to get into for a while.

Time to age myself. The reason I got into gaming was because of a certain Sci-Fi game that every time an expansion (DLC today) or the next in the series came out it required either an upgrade to your computer, or a replacement. And this would be Origin's Wing Commander series. They were the early adopters of CGI and live acting with the release of Wing Commander 3.
Descent and the later Freespace series. Loved the opening scene to Descent Freespace.
As mentioned the C&C universe when Westwood owned the franchise.
Since I don't do consoles the only Halo has been the first one.
Loved Homeworld 1 and 2, and as far as modern releases on the PC, just for the dark humor and innuendoes it has to be Borderlands. Then going to the dark side is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I would consider this either a near future or alternate universe game.
Tachyon is a really good space game that never got the support it should have had. And to be truthful I'm looking forward to Star Citizen, a persistent MMO being created by the person responsible for Wing Commander.
I'm sure I've left a few out but I am old and the memory does have a tendency to get fuzzy after a while.

Akshay wrote: "Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.."

No, it's dead. The South Korean company NCSoft pulled the plug on it a few years ago. CoH was the Firefly of MMOs: people who got it loved it, while being inexplicably ignored by most people.

A couple of the writers on The Big Bang Theory were CoH players, and you can see references to the game throughout the first few seasons of the show. The character Captain Sweatpants wore a Statesman t-shirt. In that link you can see him and Raj standing in front of a City of Heroes logo.

Stuart's comic book store also had a lot CoH merch on display, including a "Freem!" T-shirt, which was based on an April Fool's Day joke that went viral within the community.

Abby wrote: "Trike, it sounds like I need to do some research into City of Heroes. I'm a sucker for diplomatic stories between humans and aliens (even if said aliens are mutated human beings)."

The reveal of the Rikti origin was a huge one. It's a testament to the community at large that it wasn't spoiled by anyone. The CoH players were, for the most part, mature and respectful of heir fellow players. I've never encountered another online community like it.

The general wiki is a good place to start: http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Ci...

I also recommend Virtueverse. "Virtue" was the name of server which was the unofficial home of the vast majority of role-players.
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Main_...

Abby wrote: "Akshay wrote: "Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.
Trike said it wasn't but I'm sure there are wikis or other places where the lore is gathered.

"StarCraft (I LOVE THE..."

Wait, your computers too slow for the old Starcraft games? You know I'm talking about the old ones and not the recent super-graphic ones right?
Anyway, yes, you can read most of the mythology online I think.
To get all that, here's the field manual/book that came with the first game - you can skip all the technical how-to-play stuff and just get to the mythology (post page 24) of it all which even now is amongst my favourites of all time:
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/misc/Star...

But seeing the game mechanics and how innovative they were for their time and how it all plays out as both a regular-old-school strategy game and yet made all the mundane more interesting is worth a scan through.

This is a walkthrough of the Terran campaign (1 of the 3 sides in the conflict and 1st in in-game chronology) and there's a part 2 of it from the same dude:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p07bQ...

Starcraft 2 has much more cinematics to move the story forward and all the backstory is established so that and what follows there are full movies online, worth a watch once you've got all the info from the first game.

Sure, there's a chance that I look at this through rose-tinted lenses but that applies to most things that we see when younger and that leave an impression.
Personally I loved it and hope it at least gives you some amusement if nothing else.

Would LOVE to hear your thoughts on it all when you read through the manual/handbook - feel free to message me if you don't want to do it here in the thread. Enjoy. :)

Cheers!

F.D. wrote: "Time to age myself. The reason I got into gaming was because of a certain Sci-Fi game that every time an expansion (DLC today) or the next in the series came out it required either an upgrade to yo..."

I never got into Wing Commander all that much but was fascinated by it when my friend used to play it - we played at each others's homes but were not big on loaning out. It was a good system actually :D
Also, yes, C&C was fantastic up until RA2 and then it kind of started to go a little south for me and I've not gotten back into it since.
I also remember Descent! More than anything, it tripped me the hell out and flying through the tunnels and all... just the feel and look was enough to engage me, all else I didn't care.

Trike wrote: "Akshay wrote: "Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.."

No, it's dead. The South Korean company NCSoft pulled the plug on it a few years ago. CoH was the Firefly of MMOs:..."

That's sad and as a Browncoat myself (the only one I know of in India that I've seen :'( ) I feel your pain there.
I was actually someone who did buy it and did play it, but sadly as awesome as it was, I played for too short a time - due to mainly the fact that net connection was not always the greatest at the time and when it got better and reliable, I was in a cash-strapped phase and had to discontinue my membership. I'd contacted them and asked them to keep my account alive just in case, but I gues that's moot now.

I'm biased, because I spent most of a year translating this game from Chinese to English, but Bounty Hounds Online is really cool. It was trying to be like WoW in a lot of ways, but what makes it unique is that it's solidly based in science fiction. Pretty nice combat and role play potential. The original parent gaming company that bought BHO dropped it, but it has since been picked up by Suba Games, and is apparently in an open beta phase. I actually got paid to play the game while I was translating it, which was absolutely awesome. I'm gonna have to download the game again so see what it's like now; it's been years since I translated it from the original Chinese.

Akshay wrote: "Trike wrote: "Akshay wrote: "Is City Of Heroes still active? I thought it was ancient by now.."

No, it's dead. The South Korean company NCSoft pulled the plug on it a few years ago. CoH was the Firefly of MMOs:..."

That's sad and as a Browncoat myself (the only one I know of in India that I've seen :'( ) I feel your pain there. "

One of my side Supergroups was called "Big Damn Heroes." :D

Trike wrote: One of my side Supergroups was called "Big Damn Heroes." :D
"

Nice! :D

Do you peeps all realize you can embed an image or .gif of the game into your discussion thread? Grab the link to the image, and then click 'some html ok' to learn how to encode it properly to show. You'll have to tweak the height and width to get it to display properly. I find, with video games and comics and manga, that it's helpful to post the image as well since it's a visual medium of space opera.

Just remember, has to stay PG-13 ... some of the MMORPG's have pretty racy or violent graphics. Keep it tasteful.

Thanks for the tip. I've had trouble with gifs in the past.

In other groups people have mentioned that images break the Goodreads app, so you can put the pics behind the spoiler tag to prevent that.

Here's an example, hit Reply to see the HTML tags:

(view spoiler)[

(hide spoiler)]

My character Blastronaut from City of Heroes. He was intended to be an old school Space Opera/Planetary Romance character, a la Flash Gordon or Captain Video. Here's the DA link: http://dashmccool.deviantart.com/art/...

Hmm, HTML tags don't show up on iPad. I might be leading you astray.

Cool trick. Thanks Trike. And it might be certain smart phones that have that trouble, as opposed to ipads or other larger tablets. *shrug*

Mass Effect Andromeda is one I've been playing on and off, even though it's basically not going anywhere because EA has no immediate plans to dish out a DLC regarding the cliffhanger. Apparently, they're going to address the rest of the game's story with a book.

Which is a shame, as the game shows promise and it's quite fun to play. It's the same with films: (e.g. Justice League) they rush to meet deadlines and don't just take their time doing things right.

The Wing Commander games of course.
Freespace 2
Crysis
Xcom - the originals and X-Com Enemy Unknown but not the second one.
Mechwarrior 2
System Shock
X2

No online games.

V.W. wrote: "The Wing Commander games of course.
Freespace 2
Crysis
Xcom - the originals and X-Com Enemy Unknown but not the second one.
Mechwarrior 2
System Shock
X2

No online games."

I was just going to bring up Wing Commander. I put away countless hours as a teen. The Mass Effect series is close to the top of my list of greatest games ever. When nostalgia is just right, it is the top.

I love XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and expansion Enemy Within). My computer’s video card fritzed out so I haven’t picked up the new one yet, but as soon as I build a new PC I’ll be getting that first thing.

I didn’t think I’d like the turn-based aspect of it, but I love that game. I especially like the “ant farm” aspect of the base, with the ability to zoom in and out at will.

Wing Commander 2, I bought a new PC to play that :) I also loved the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games, some of the advanced TIE fighters that turned up in that have featured in the Star Wars Rebels Cartoon series.

Mike wrote: "Wing Commander 2, I bought a new PC to play that :) I also loved the X-Wing/Tie Fighter games, some of the advanced TIE fighters that turned up in that have featured in the Star Wars Rebels Cartoon..."

It was nice seeing Tie Defenders become canon.

Yeah it was, would love to see it in a live action movie, or even better a modern version of Tie Fighter

I like Science Adventure type visual novel games.

Ever17
Remember 11
Virtue's Last Reward
Steins;Gate

Metroid is great in terms of action games (I like all the major Metroid games besides Other M). Xenoblade X was a lot of fun to play in (more fun mechanically than Xenoblade 2) but the story was meh.