Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock
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 This game is amazing. So say we all!
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Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is a turn-based strategy game developed by Black Lab Games and published by Slitherine Software. It first released on August 31, 2017 for PC and would later release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The game was also followed by many DLC packs that added more content to the game.
Good Qualities
- It is a very complicated turn-based strategy game that isn't played on just one axis, but also takes advantage of using the x, y, and z-axis' to maneuver your large capital ships. This allows you to do many maneuvers such as being able to raise your ships higher to get a clear shot at the top side of an enemy vessel or turning hard left while lowering to aim at an enemy vessel's side while getting a little drop to avoid collision. The game also takes movement realistically, like how larger ships are much harder to control than smaller ones.
- A wealth of options to build your strategy for battle.
- The biggest option is the posture system. Using a slider, you can change how offensive or defensive you want your ship to be in a situation. The more you chose to be in a defensive position, the more your defensive systems will increase at the cost of a downgrade in Fire Control. On the other hand, if you decide to put more in an offensive position, you will gain more weapon accuracy and an increase in Fire Control at the cost of a downgrade in defensive systems.
- There is also an option called "Boost Thrusters". When activated, your ship will have the same speed as it normally does on the current turn, but will have a large increase in speed on the next turns until deactivated.
- As mentioned in GQ #1, when attacking enemy, you can move your ship in a different positions to attack at different angles. Each position has their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, if you are directly deep under an enemy vessel, you will have easy shots at the bottom armor without interference from any other positions, but the enemy will also have easy shots at your top armor in the same way.
- To deal damage to a ship's hull, you have to penetrate the armor. Armor is placed on six positions on a ship: the front, rear, starboard, port, top, and bottom. When attacking in one of those positions and destroy the armor, you will be able to deal damage to the hull. However, when attacking from a different side that still has armor, you will need to destroy it on that side. This system requires you to think where you should position yourself to deal as much damage as possible at a right position, further complicated by the limited range of the weaponry of the ships.
- Outside of battles, there is a main section that connects all of the battles together. In this section, players spend the two resources they gain in battles, Tylium and Requisition Points, to build new ships and fleets, buy new ship classes, recruit officers, and battle the Cylons in random encounters, side missions, and story missions. This section is very well designed for many reasons.
- To gain lots of resources to build ships and fleets, you need to keep the Quorum of Twelve happy and secure. If you keep defending the main twelve planets from Cylon attacks and have an officer led fleet over one of those planets, you gain a lot of Tylium. However, if you keep letting planets get attacked, those planets will get unhappy with your work and may even leave the Quorum forever, preventing the gain of some resources.
- During these segments, you may get some optional side missions to do to gain more resources, with the more difficult missions giving you more materials than easier ones.
- The officer system, while a little basic, helps the game a lot. Using your resources, you recruit your officers and assign them to your fleets that give different effects to fleets, with the main effect being how high you can make your defensive and offensive postures.
- The game takes place before the events of the show and gives the player insight into the last days of the Cylon War and how they ended, giving players more insight into the events of the TV show.
- The base game has seven different ship types have their own abilities and skill sets that make them feel different from other ships. For example, the base Manticore fighter is fast and easily maneuverable, but is weak in power and has the lowest health, and the Ranger cruiser, which is a ship that carries a lot of missiles and some guns, but is somewhat slower than the Manticore. Some of the ships are also very different from other classes in the game and almost break some class stereotypes in games such as the Minotaur which consists entirely of powerful guns and no missiles, and the Atlas carrier, which is a heavy and slow ship that acts entirely as a fighter carrier.
- The designs of the ships and bridge location in the game is true to the 2004 series, but other designs in the game are also fun callbacks to the original 1978 series. For example, the Artemis-class battestar looks exactly like the Galactica and the first class of Cylon Raiders look like what they did in the original show. The Cylons themselves also look very similar tot heir designs in the original series.
- The graphics of the game look very good. The 3D models of the ships in the game are full of tiny details. The name you give each ship even shows up on the ship itself. You can zoom in on the ships and still see new details. The lasers and missile flares even reflect off the hull of the ship. The static space backgrounds of the battles also look very detailed, with many different stars, long strands of nebulae, and the occasional planet, moons, and sun.
- The game's HUD is very well organized. It displays where you view the battlefield and move your ships from the center of the screen, and smartly puts the rest of the information surrounding the area. You have the main information and advanced options for your selected ship on the right side and the information of the rest of the ships on the left.
- Well-done presentation. Right from the beginning, we have a well organized main menu that has a flyby around the Daedalus space station. In addition, the non-battle strategy sequences take place on the bridge of the Daedalus station that can be somewhat explored (albeit in a very limited way) and viewed from different angles. The selection options are also show the information in a sci-fi style, but is easy to read and the options have a red and orange color that matches the color of the computers in the show.
- The game includes an option that allows you to record your battles. When you record your battles, the game's camera will focus on the the most important aspects of the battle that is going on at the moment. Once the battle is done recording, it will be saved onto your computer. It even has an option that allows you to directly upload your recordings onto YouTube.
- Outside of the standard campaign, there is also a Skirmish mode where players can chose to play as either the Colonials or the Cylons, build your own and your opponent's fleet or chose a pre-made one, select a scenario, and do battle. You can also chose from a selection of maps to add variety, such as having asteroids to dodge. The modes themselves also have variety, despite how few there are, such as the goal of destroying a station or protecting a ship. Another enat touch is that when plaaying as the Cylons, there are lines of dialogue that you wouldn't hear in the standard campaign, like hearing "By your command" when selecting an action.
- On the subject of game modes, another mode called "Operation Anabasis", which was introduced in the "Anabasis" DLC, is an excellent option that is very fun to play. In the mode, players create their own Colonial fleet using every ship they have and must survive an onslaught of Cylon vessels, with the goal of making it to the end. Along the way, players will encounter random scenarios to shake up the game. The game mode also gives the player a sense of dread that was present with the 2004 TV series, making the game feel a lot more like the show.
- The music for the game is fantastic and sounds like it would fit with the 2004 series. The music itself is orchestral in tone and has many instruments used like violins and there are also voices used in the backgrounds, such as with the title screen music. Besides the main music, there are two different versions of each song: one that when you are planning your strategy in battle and one that plays during the battle itself.
- The cutscenes in the game look very high quality. The graphics in them look better than the in-game ones and ships look a lot more detailed. We even get to see the surfaces of the planets and cities on them in the cutscenes, which we don't see in the game.
- There is a ton of DLC for the game that adds new content in each pack. There are so many DLC packs that buying all of them will cost you almost $150.
- The Reinforcement Pack adds two new ships for both the Colonials and the Cylons, as well as mines being introduced as an obstacle for ships to avoid.
- The Broken Alliance includes 8 new missions that are incorporated to the main campaign, three new ship and fighter types for the Colonials and the Cylons, and also includes new music.
- Anabasis adds new rouge-like mode called "Anabasis", where players have to make a fleet of ships of their choice and survive an onslaught of Cylon forces in hopes of making it to the end. The DLC also includes 4 new types of munitions and 12 new recourse missions. Plus, there are also some new maps for Skirmish mode.
- Sin & Sacrifice adds the first new campaign that consists of 11 missions, as well as a new ship for the Colonials and the Cylons. Plus, radio chatter from Colonial fighter squadrons is added.
- Resurrection adds another campaign to the game, thirteen extra resource missions, a recreation of the Galactica's bridge from the show, and a new battlestar and basestar.
- Ghost Fleet Offensive adds the third new campaign, two ships for the Colonials, and one for the Cylons.
- The many DLC packs also add a few minor touches and fixes a few problems with the game, with the biggest and most obvious additions being the DLC includes a lot more content in the game than what was there at launch. Another example is that in the vanilla game, there was barely any voice acting that would happen in the battles; there would only be the occasional "(Insert ship class here) is taking damage." or "Fighter squadron is taking fire". Now, there is chatter from the Viper pilots in these segments.
Bad Qualities
- The main problem with the game that holds it back from being truly great is that the gameplay gets very repetitive quickly. Defeating the Cylons every time can be done with the same tactics that you would use every other battle. You can use the same tactics that you use in the beginning of the game usually without any consequences. The gameplay can get old very fast as well on the main map, as you just have to create fleets, remove the Cylons in an area, and do this until you are ready to play the next mission. While repetition can be a good thing, the main gameplay never changes much and this big flaw can make this a deal-breaker for some players.
- The pacing can be almost unbearable at times. It can take a long time to gain enough resources and ships before you are even close to having the ability to successfully complete a story mission. The battles can also be poorly paced, with the most obvious being that it takes almost three turns or more before you are able to engage Cylon ships.
- Your ships will always be under-powered compared to the Cylons, even at the early and late game stages, and they will always seem to have more health than your ships. The fact that they can also hack ships to destroy your subsystems doesn't help either.
- For some reason, when Colonials board a Cylon ship, they can't be able to destroy it. However, this makes no sense as when Cylons board a Colonial ship, they are able to destroy it if they are there long enough.
- When your ships are being hacked by Cylons, they will almost always try to disable Fire Control first. Without fire control, you won't be able to attack enemy vessels. This can be really annoying and it can take a long time to recover from the hack if you don't take care of it quickly.
- There are quite a handful of bugs and glitches in the game, caused by many different things that happen during gameplay.
- The fighter squadron battles create a few graphical bugs. They may occasionally clip into larger ships if they are big enough. The model for a small ship will also not disappear for a second when it is destroyed.
- The original version of the game had a severe lack of content at launch, only having a main campaign, skirmish mode, and online multiplayer. This made the game feel like it lacked too much to justify the $40 price tag. Thankfully, DLC for the game released later that added more content to game to make players coming back for more.
- The camera mode, while a good feature, has a few flaws that hold it back. When the camera zooms in on a ship, it also zooms in the background, making it a lot bigger than it should be and blurring details. Another example is with the Viper-cam (which is when the camera is placed on a small fighter craft like a Colonial Viper), which can sometimes show up close fighters clipping other ships and a fighter getting destroyed and the model disappearing a second later. In addition, on some PCs, if you have to many videos saved, than if you try to record, the game will freeze.
- There is a lack of variety in the resource missions. There are only about three different ones and they can begin to feel stale really quick, especially if you need to play many of them to build more fleets.
- While it is somewhat decent, barely any emotion is shown in the voice acting at times, sounding lifeless and monotonous.
Reception
Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock received mostly positive reviews upon its release. Most critics agreed that the game had many good ideas and was a faithful love letter to fans of the show, but criticized to how the gameplay could become repetitive and the lack of content at launch. Gamereactor also gave the game a positive review, stating the game was a "highly enjoyable space strategy game" and gave it an 8/10[1]. However, one negative review came from Wccftech.com, where the reviewer gave the game a 5/10, criticizing the pacing of the game and the repetitiveness of the battles[2].On GOG.com and Steam, the game has user scores of 3.5/5 and 9/10 respectively[3][4]. The PC version of the game has a score of 77/100 on Metacritic[5].
Videos
References
- ↑ https://www.gamereactor.eu/battlestar-galactica-deadlock-review/
- ↑ https://wccftech.com/review/battlestar-galactica-deadlock/
- ↑ https://www.gog.com/game/battlestar_galactica_deadlock
- ↑ https://store.steampowered.com/app/544610/Battlestar_Galactica_Deadlock/
- ↑ https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/battlestar-galactica-deadlock
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