Galactic Force (PC) Review

Galactic Force looks and plays like a Sci-Fi Shooter from the early 2000s. There is nothing wrong with that and I am actually quite fond of games from this period. Galactic Force however is just a small scale game from the developers of games like Pixel Battle Royale, Rebel Forces, the Masked Forces games and some other asset flips. The Sci-Fi scenario may sound cool, but the game doesn't really utilize it. All guns in the game for example have a laser lightening effect to signal that they are 'futuristic'. This lightening effect however is not only weird and rather hideous, but also looks identical for all the weapons (including shotguns, which is just absurd). There are only 6 weapons in Galactic Force (Knife, Pistol, Shotgun, Sniper, Laser AR and Rocket Launcher), which is noticeably less than in the Masked Forces games and except for the lightening/laser effect of the weapons, none of them are new in GF.  

The presentation is generally pretty simplistic and you could put the gameplay in any kind of scenario (which the devs did in some of their other games). You can give Galactic Force credit for not screwing up as much as a couple of other BR games did, which really held those back, but Galactic Force on the other hand feels like a very bland experience.

There are a variety of different game modes aside of BR, like DM, TDM, Doom or Coop Survival against Bot players or Monsters (DM, TDM and Doom also have Arcade versions, where players can use all weapons). This is once again very similar to the other Freeze Nova games. The Doom mode is in Galactic Force probably the best mode as well, because it can compensate the bad hit detection and gunplay (which generally feel pretty identical to the Masked Forces games). It however also feels worse than in Rebel Forces, because it lacks the speed and jump modifications and because the maps fit less to the style of the Doom mode.

There are 4 smaller maps in total and all modes can be played with Bots instead of real players as well. The Bot players however aren't the smartest and barely move around. Alternatively Aliens can also be added to every game mode (including BR), they move around faster than the Bot players, but can only attack in close combat and are also not particularly skilled. Battle Royale can only be played in Solos and allows up to 20 players (like all the other modes except for Survival).

From the maps, I probably had the most fun for the Doom mode in Erus, which is the smallest map, but it offered the best use of verticality and allowed through its smaller size fast paced combat duels (Erus is a smaller Scifi outpost, that connects multiple smaller towers through a large bridge). Best for BR was probably Bunker, because it was the largest map. The middle part of the map however did feel a bit too empty (Bunker is a more extensive crater station, which looked like it could have been from Tatooine). Krao on the other hand felt like something in the middle. A dense space station, but still a significantly larger map than Erus. Krao probably suits DM and TDM modes the best. Zion is large cave map, but it looks pretty boring and there isn't really anything in this cave. I therefore definitely liked Zion the least.

 

Result:

At least Galactic Force is one of the cheaper Freeze Nova games on Steam (79 cents), but there is on the other hand no real point of investing that either, if you consider the growing amount of well done free Sci-Fi Shooters. There is also a free Browser version of the game, but its performance is rather hit or miss and I often experienced similar problems to the Masked Forces 3 Browser version. Galactic Force is probably better than some of the most flawed games in the BR genre, but it also doesn't have much to attract players or keep their attention for more than a few minutes. I did however enjoy the Doom mode and BR in Galactic Force more than in Masked Forces 3 (probably because of the Sci-Fi scenario), but less than in Rebel Forces. I would therefore rate it somewhere in between.

 

4/10