HighFleet kicked the absolute crap out of me. If aerial physics is involved, I seem to have an almost pathological need to crash and explode. And there's a lot of dizzying sky brawls in HighFleet. It demands some fast fingers when you're controlling your ships in its brisk arcade battles, but before that comes tonnes of preparation, strategy, and even a spot of diplomacy. It's an unusual cocktail of systems and genres that collide to create something quite surprising.
Its closest relative is probably FTL. HighFleet puts you in command of a ship on a dangerous mission, undertaken across a large map dotted with cities that can be traded with, refueled at, or contain new people that you can chat to and maybe recruit. There's even an analogue of FTL's invincible rebel fleet nipping at your heels, which constantly forced you to keep moving forwards; this time, though, it's a whole bunch of roaming strike teams packing nukes, and avoiding them is even trickier.
The real eye candy comes from the diegetic UI. Aside from the main menu, nearly every UI element is part of your command station, so when you want to drop your ships into a city, for instance, you have to yank a lever, and you can use your compass, ruler, pencil and eraser to chart your course on the map display. It's a bit imposing, but it also begs to be played with, and this is one place where the tactile nature of the game really works to its advantage. It simply feels great. The sound effects then elevate the fantasy of being in command of this fleet of steel titans. There's just something deeply satisfying about hearing gears grinding and mechanical components clicking away as you watch ammo being reloaded.
GurtTractor wrote:Release date has been confirmed for the 27th, same day as the Xbox and performance update launch for Flight Simulator, so it'll be a few days before I get round to this. Came across this old game which looks rather good and seems to have similarities to Highfleet -
• Fixed acceleration of the mouse in the game. Added a slider for mouse movement and wheel scroll sensitivity in the options.
• Added three reticle settings on a slider in the options
• Simple - The current crosshair
• Adaptive - A crosshair that changes based on distance to target
• Long Crosshair - A long crosshair
• Added support for different resolutions while maintaining aspect ratio.
• Added borderless window mode.
• Added a slider for adjusting the amount of flashes and glitch effects.
• Added selection of opponents for testing the ship in the editor.
• Difficulty: Set the difficulty of the encounter from 1 - 10.
• Enemy Type toggles: Small, Mid, Large, Carriers
• Added a slider that turns off visual effects in order to increase performance
• Fixed aircraft behavior in battle and on the global map.
• Fixed several crashes on the global map.
• Fixed an issue which would cause infinite money in the editor.
• Added bonus points for passing the campaign.
• Fixed an issue with the delete button in the ship roster.
• Fixed a crash in the editor when installing guns.
• Fixed issues when using the Esc key in different situations.
• Fixed an issue at the end of the prologue.
• Added the ability to twist radio dials by holding the left mouse button and dragging.
Though apparently there's still some issues with ultra-wide monitors. I think a big part of it is that all the artwork and UI has been designed for 1080p, and so needs to be scaled for other resolutions.• Added support for different resolutions while maintaining aspect ratio.
• Added borderless window mode.
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