Space Siege Previews

GameSpot and GameSpy have each put together new hands-on previews of Gas Powered Games’ Space Siege. A snip from GameSpot’s article:

Throughout Space Siege, you’ll be given the choice to upgrade to cybernetic implants. Depending on what path you choose, different skills will become available on the skill tree. Some of the more potent combat bonuses will require you to be mostly cyborg, whereas others, such as discipline and inspiration, require that you remain 100 percent human. Certainly it will take a lot of discipline to play though the game without any upgrades, but you’ll be rewarded in the end with multiple endings depending on your style of play.

Thankfully, you’ll have a Hodgson’s Robotics Unit on your side, a customizable robo-dog named HR-V. He will dutifully follow you through the corridors of the colony ship (which look much like a dungeon in space, for you dungeon-crawler fans), automatically firing at the insect-like aliens. Throughout the ship, you’ll find parts that are used as currency to purchase grenades, life packs, weapons, and upgrades for HR-V. Simply find one of the many workbenches scattered around the ships and get to assembling. We bought a few grenades and continued to stalk the ship for Kerak to destroy. You move by clicking the left mouse button and fire with the right mouse button, and most of your skills and HR-V’s skills are set as numbered hotkeys. You can also hit E to perform a rolling evade maneuver, something that adds a bit of twitch gameplay to the traditional action RPG formula.

And a snip from GameSpy’s article:

Where Dungeon Siege had a donkey that carried your unwanted broadswords and breastplates, Space Siege will feature a robot that actually fights things (but who nonetheless serves as a resource sponge — in his case, in regards to how many parts you’ll spend upgrading him). His name is HRV, and apart from his aversion to the janitorbots that inhabit the ship (they’re apparently on his kill-on-site list), he’s remarkably cooperative. He has weapon slots just like you, which fit all manner of upgradable munitions, and you guide him via simple commands mapped right above your action bar. Though he can die if you let him take too damage, you’ll only be alone until you run into a respawn chamber where, for the modest fee of parts, you can rebuild your robot buddy, with all upgrades intact. He also has a self-repair routine that you can activate on the fly when he’s taking too much fire.

On top of the single-player game, there will also be a multiplayer campaign in which four players can tackle an entirely-different ship online, via Gas Powered Games’ matching service. Further, upon finishing the single-player campaign, you’ll get to run through multiplayer ship with your high-end character.