Galactic Command: Echo Squad Episode 2 - The Insurgent Incursion Demo

Space simulators enjoy the luxury of being free to include basically any kind of technology to explain the events unfolding on the screen, not all of which are required to make sense if you think about it for too long. Thus, warpdrive, antimatter propulsion and plenty of other such inventions may not be entirely accurate from a scientific point of view, but they get the point across and they do a good job at keeping the story going.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad Episode 2 - The Insurgent Incursion is an expansion pack that builds on the story of the previous episodes, while also adding a variety of gameplay improvements and plenty of new gimmicks to sparkle the curiosity of old fans. There are also multiplayer and co-op modes to talk about, which should lengthen the game’s life by quite a bit.

Story-wise, the Gammulans are still at the center of the conflict, even if their invasion has ended quite a while ago. The aftermath, on the other hand, left the galaxy in shambles and pretty much unable to fight back with conviction, given the fact that the human forces were pretty much devastated. However, thanks to a technological breakthrough that allows people to build lighter and faster spaceships, hope is reborn and insurgents start to voice their disagreements with the Galactic Command forces.

Things stop being too jolly or interesting after you join the first mission, given the fact that you must fly a spaceship around and engage in a few fights along with your team. The controls are the first thing that stick out, since the ships are not very easy to coordinate in dogfights when you have to use the keyboard to move. A joystick might solve the problem, but there really isn’t a warning about it anywhere, so you can only find out after you begin playing.

However, even with a joystick, you still have to fumble around and see what’s what, because nothing is really explained and the interface is extremely confusing, regardless of whether you are experience with the genre or not. Nothing is too intuitive and the graphics do not help too much either, since the dark cockpits make things very difficult to distinguish and you can even have a hard time trying to leave the game when you are done.

Galactic Command: Echo Squad Episode 2 - The Insurgent Incursion has a few good ideas about it, but it really needs to make itself more accessible to the public if it wants to gather a decent fan base. The plot is way too simple and conventional, not to mention predictable and even childish from time to time.