Buy Nexus - The Jupiter Incident

I'm still waiting for a game of this calibur to come out again! If you haven't played it, your missing out on a great piece of video game history. This game is unbelievably awesome. If you like space games along the vein of homeworld, the X series (any of them, it doesn't have to be the crappy ones), wing commander, battlestar galactica, imperium galactica 2, hegemony....you know what if you just like ANY space game get this mother#*@&@ game and kiss your wife and kids because you won't see them again until your done playing this game.

If someone would ask me "Is this a good game?", my answer would be: "Well, ... its how the big boys do battle!"

You dont know what im talking about? If you should play this game, you will. :)

Imagine this:

You are the Captain of a Heavy Cruiser. You are in a space fight. Its your ship against two others.
The difference: Your ship is not very manoeuvrable. Its a large vessel. The term "Heavy" is no coincidence.
The two enemies are smaller, Less powerfull, but more manoeuvrable.

So, Captain! Give some orders! What are we going to do?

You decide to go straight in. Shields up, Weapons up! Give them everything we got!

After a short time, you will realise, that this may not be very effective.

Well, Captain. We need a new plan. Decide!
"Plan B:
First, we are using our lasers! Target for their shield device. Without shields, they are helpless."

Here we go. We are firing. First hit. Second hit. Minor damage to their shield device. Looks good.
Then, our lasers stop firing.

Why?
Because, as mentioned, the enemies are more manoeuvrable than we are. They got behind your ship. And they keep firing.

(Note: The good thing is, you dont have to press any buttons to turn your ship around. Your ship will do this for you. Tell the ship where to go, and it will do so. Because if you would also have to navigate while fighting, this would turn into a mess ..... unless you are George Takei)

But here we go. Your Ship-AI activates your thrusters (Yes, you can see them doing so and it looks great). Your ship turns around. Target in front of us. First hit. Second hit. Third hit. Your lasers keep firing! HAHAHA! TAKE THIS YOU B*******! What?
...... no damage?

Why?
Well, the enemy ship did just turn around. The shield device is located at the top. Your lasers DID hit the target, but the wrong side. The lasers have no effect on the Hull and there is no shield device at the rear of that vessel.
The enemies keep firing.

"To Hell with them! Launch the Fighter Squadron!"
"But Sir, they ....."
"ATTACK!"

(Note: Fighters and Bombers are very effective in destroying devices. And they are fast. Rotation of enemy ships does not bother them)

Your fighters are going in.
"They wont know what hit them!"

Well .... your Officer tried to warn you. They have a laser flak system. Perfect for ........

AI Voice: "Fighter Squadron lost!"

Did i mention, that the enemies kept firing?

Now you may say: "What kind of idiot would do that?" I would say: "Vice-Admiral Norbank!" :)

You will see.


There are a lot of things that can go wrong. Most of the time, it is your fault. But you will learn from your mistakes.
After reloading, you will take down their flak and launch your fighters, or you will focus on their engines so that they wont be able to outmanoeuvre you.
Shields of the first ship are down? Let your laser aim for the devices of the second ship and activate your hull damaging weapons to finish the first one. There are a lot of possibilities.

There are situations, when you need a lot of patience. Even when flying trough space. Your ships wont charge in an instant after you gave the "Move" command! They are Heavy Cruisers with Fusion Engines! What do you expect?
It will take two seconds to heat up, then your ship will start moving.
Simple rule: The bigger they are, the slower they move.

Last words:
The Mission "The Fight for Earth" was one of the most entertaining missions i have ever played in a Space-Sim. And it was one of the hardest missions in this game. (Dont worry, you WILL restart the mission if you play it for the first time)
Advice: Dont start with the highest difficulty level. You wont stand a chance.

My opinion: Yes! It is a good game. I had a lot of fun playing it.
It is not a perfect game but it many good moments, it is entertaining (very important for a game) and it has an awesome "Final" Battle.
Therefore: 6.5 out of 10.

I came across Nexus - The Jupiter Incident while searching for a game that would give me the feeling of commanding a capital ship in space battles that I used to enjoy in Star Trek Online before that game became the treadmill grinder it is today. I can honestly say that this game nails capital ship combat, far better than any game I have played before.

Ship maneuvering feels solid. It feels like you are actually commanding a ship with mass, and not something like a fighter. Don't expect to be moving fast or nimbly. A great touch is the fact the game designers put a lot of though in the design of the ships, putting breaking engines in front as well as smaller engines around the ships that fire when the ship is adjusting course or holding position. It's nice to see a game where ships actually follow the laws of physics and don't just stop like someone pressed on the brake.

Because of the pace of the ships, this game is a lot more focused on tactics than other strategy games. You have to really pay attention to your mission onjectives and thus ship loadouts, as picking the wrong setup can lead to mission failure easily. There is a learning curve due to the level of complexity in targeting and ship management, but it is not intimidating.

A bonus with this game is that is moddable, so if you wish you can command a Battlestar or even one of the destroyers from Babylon 5. I would recommend playing the vanilla game through first before trying out the mods.

If you are really into tactical strategy games involving capital ships, you can't go wrong picking this title up. Casual fans of RTS games may want to wait until it is on sale though because the learning curve may frustrate some.

A rollicking good 25 hour space opera. The tactical battles are difficult but fun and upgrading your ships with new goodies is gratifying. It's even fun to hate Admiral Norbank, who has got to be one of the biggest asses ever put into a video game. The gameplay is unique in that you have a relatively small fleet of large, powerful capital ships that do not maneuver quickly and have multiple weapon systems. They have a weight to them that feels awesome.

There are a lot of tools available for modding the game but precious little has been done with them... not sure why. I got the game for $2.49, figuring for that price I could hardly go wrong. I was completely stunned at what I got and I can't figure out how I managed to miss this gem. Even if it isn't on sale it's worth every penny. If you like Sins of a Solar Empire or Homeworld then I can't imagine how you wouldn't like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Oh... and the Angelwing is simply an awesome craft that you can hardly help getting attached to.

I've seen a lot of bad reviews that complained that the game wouldn't run or that it crashed a lot. I'm not sure what their issue is but I can say that Nexus ran fine on my system (Windows 7, Intel CPU, Nvidia GPU) and I never crashed once while playing. On my original playthrough, the game lost some key bindings when I alt-tabbed out and it didn't have any Steam Integration, so I couldn't use shift-tab to access messages and whatnot. I also had to create my own desktop shortcut, as the game wouldn't run via the Steam generated desktop shortcut. The in-game videos also ran choppy from time to time, which was odd. ALL of this has been fixed with a recent update. Current generation resolutions are supported, it has Steam Integration, and the videos now run smooth as silk, though they are somewhat low res when compared to gameplay resolutions of 1920x1080 or higher. The game always looked good but now it looks better than ever! I'm finding myself just as captivated with the story, visuals, and gameplay on my second playthrough as when I first played it. Simply astonishing! If you have been on the fence about getting Nexus, don't wait another moment.

Hint: Read the manual. It won't take long, as the information is very concise, but there are some nuances to successful navigation (how to create your own navigation points), using all your weapons (how to attack multiple targets at once), and managing systems that you won't get from the in-game advice popups. :)

Great and intense space battles with cruisers, destroyers, fighter carriers and other heavy class battleships. Real time with pause -gameplay works ok and reminds me of old Interplay classic game "Star Trek: Starfleet Command".

During a battle, various weapons and resources play differing roles. Lasers and other beam weapons are used mainly for disabling enemy devices. Large missiles are slow and can be shot down with small fighters or FLAK-systems but have massive blast radius. Gatling guns, rail guns, plasma weapons and torpedoes are for hull destruction. Energy bombs are used for anti-shield purposes. Weapon power generators. Sensor arrays for detecting enemy equipment, ECM systems, ECCM systems!! And your battleship can hold few squadrons of small fighters, bombers, gunboats (or shuttles packed with space marine commando teams).

Visually game still looks very good after all of these years! The game difficulty can be pretty frustrating.. Even beginner difficulty level is really hard. Players who don’t manage their fleets very carefully are going to find themselves in pretty terrible situations, fast and brutal!


Some useful keyboard shortcuts (not explained in tutorial mode during first missions):
[ N ] - Yes! You actually can create custom NAV points!
[ S ] - Select all fighters and other smaller craft.
[ A ] - Select all large ships.
[ CTRL ] + [ S ] - Select all fighters from selected large ship.
[ M ] - Manual control panel on or off. [ R ] - Repair panel on or off.


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=323846025

This is one of the games you can refer to as a hidden gem, largely ignored but actually quite incredible, which is a terrible shame. Metacritics and the score is mainly bashed down due to the learning curve and massive technical aspects.

Mission briefings give you fully explorable solar systems, with impressive lighting looking akin to something from KSP.
Ship explosions look really good, there's no magically disappearing models, and they even launch escape pods.
The ships can be disabled as well and proceed to drift in space (but can still be destroyed)
Ship systems are fully modular, which is a crucial aspect of the game campaign, these systems can be targeted and disabled as well. (shoot all engines and the ship stops).
Ship movement looks far more real and is far, far less arcade like than the vast majority of mass produced space RTS you find today, they even have small directional engines on board that are fired when the ships turn.
The learning curve is indeed very steep, but if you can overcome the vast technical aspects the game offers you'll find yourself a space combat RTS which is Homeworld tier good, it really is worth a try, and this is a game from 2004.

Despite any bugs that this game has and that any sequel is effectively dead thanks to the failure of the Kickstarter campaign, this wonderous game is a surefire treat for those in love of the space opera and sci-fi setting. This game is, despite it's faults, pure distilled awesomeness.

Wow. Well, I don't even know where to start with this game. I first played it when I was 13 years old and I fell in love with it right away. The game is difficult, so at that time with hardly any experience in the field I got stuck pretty early in the game, specifically the scout ship mission.

Boy was I in for a ride 7 years later. Everything is just the way I remembered it. Controls are a bit rough around the edges, but it is what would be expected of battleships. Aside from that and a slightly flawed AI, there is nothing I can't recommend in this game to those who love sci-fi. The story is well laid out, no particular flaws. Battles are sometimes easy, sometimes difficult, harsh and unfair, and I can't even start explaining the frustration in the last battle mission (Not to be confounded with the last mission).

Yet here I am, 14.5 hours into the game, finishing it for the first time. There are no words to describe my satisfaction, along with my sadness of it ending and the dismay of not ever being able to see a sequel to this magnificent masterwork.

As a note to the developers, who might never read this review, thank you for such a great game. It's an element which shaped my imagination beyond most books. Definitely placed along my all time top 5.

Everything i wanted from a space combat game. THe story is surprisingly enthralling and the combat can be, while difficult to master, quite precise. I enjoy the pause feature allowing for a far more tactical approach to combat. I havent played the MP but if the quality of the single player is anything to go off of i would highly reccomend this to anyone who wants to scratch the space combat/sim itch. Think Empire at War's space combat meets the strategic free space movement of EVE...

it is a classic one, a real classic. I first stumbled on it was few months after its release.
i bought the original CD pack & played for some time but due to having a low performance pc, it soon get abandoned.
then only few months ago destiny has brought me to it again in Steam.

i was really surprised that after such long years it's still available. so without any further thinking i bought & installed into my new pc. It was a superb game back in 2005 when i still have the CD pack & it still is a great game now in 2015.

i spent hours & days on it, offline mode. It's awesome, the gameplay, the story, the designs of the ships etc etc.

it's simply the best game i've played in its category.