Choice of the Star Captain

Choice of the Star Captain is short in that it can be completed in just a few hours, depending on how fast you read. In terms of replayability, it mainly divulges into two distinct paths, pacifistic or bloodthirsty. The main theme that the story revolves over is contact with a spacefaring species and the ending practically allows you to decide what happens: humanity wins, the aliens win, or an uneasy but prolonged peace is found. Uniquely, CotSC actually has no romantic aspect of its relationships. The most important character interaction you'll make, however, is with your ships AI, Lloyd. So, the breakdown, considering the price, length of the story, it's quality and characters, all based on my opinions: Grammar and Vocabulary: 5/5 - mostly due to having no noticeable errors Story: 4/5 - considering the price, I think it's modestly long enough and it does explore human nature mixed with the concept of contact with another intelligent species though the length restricts it from going to deep our exploring other ideas like Human-AI interaction. Characters: 3/5 - characters remain static due to the length of the plot but interactions with Salazar, Nagoop and Lloyd remain probably the most central of the interactions while Lloyd's interaction with you serve to be the only thing to grow (or shrink) in terms of how you react to his less than polite banter. Replayability 3/5 - not too bad, not too good; for its length, you can probably squeeze three-fourths of a day from the choices and endings. Overall Score: Meh

Before writing anything else I think that it's important to say that I enjoy these games from the "Choice of" game company. Choice of Robots was the first, and so far, the best of these games that I've played. Most of these games run from quite good to merely okay, but this was truly a bad experience where the fact that it's also the shortest of any of these games I've played is actually a point in its favor. If you're familiar with any of the titles from this publisher you know it's they joy of the old "choose your own adventure" books but with more elements, like choices only being available if you're skilled enough in a certain area or have enough available funds, etc. They've generally been pretty good light reading and a very few, like the aforementioned Choice of Robots, actually explore interesting ideas and tell good stories with deeper themes. A couple excellent multi-part books have even come out. I would not want to encourage someone to skip the entire genre, but I can only imagine that starting with this game would do just that. To start with, whatever you may have been thinking from the store page, you are basically a fighter pilot. At the very beginning you are forcibly recruited into the military in a one-man multipurpose craft that seems to be, to borrow from Star Wars, somewhere between an X-Wing and the Millenium Falcon. The game calling you a "captain" is an overstatement, you're a pilot, no one would call Biggs "captain" of his fighter craft. As a member of the military you go through your recruitment and then a couple of missions where you learn about and can affect the outcome of the war between humanity and the uncreatively named "Blobs." Along the way you meet throughly uninteresting characters that are all one-dimensional and stick to a single trope. Your AI companion is the most boring kind of sarcastic and wears his disdain for humanity on his sleeve. His dialogue comes off as if someone played "Knights of the Old Republic" and tried to duplicate HK-47 but lacked any sense of comedic wit. Salizar, the high-ranking member of the special forces group that recruits you is completley unbelievable as a character, especially given his role towards the end of the story that I will not spoil, though any keen reader will see coming well in advance. He is bumbling and his wonky speech pattern is downright distracting and there is never anything in the narrative that explains why he holds his rank and position as everyone from fellow pilots to the local general alike badmouth him. Finally the overall poor writing quality causes some sections and choices in the game to break any sense of immersion. There is literally a choice where you can take the aforementioned Salizar at his word where the choice literally says, "I'll just accept what he's saying and miss out on the exposition that makes all this make sense." Later another option cautions you against a choice where the options are "Oh, I thought some Deus Ex Machina would save me, nevermind" or "Okay, game over then." References to other science fiction shows are completley hamfisted and no more clever than saying "hey, that other better product exists." For example, one mission has you tasked with delivering a diplomatic parcel and as you leave someone says, "Ah, delivering something, Phillip J. Fry would be proud." None of them are any more clever. Swearing is also entire replaced by the word "Space" no matter what the context. So in summary, as this product itself would phrase it, Great Space this game is awful, you would do well to avoid this Space-damned game.

Game's not good! And I love choose-your-own-adventure stories. I love interactive fiction. I grew up slowly digesting dog-eared Fighting Fantasies and wishing I had a D&D group. I read through Choice of Robots and Choice of the Deathless, gobsmacked and spoiled by how great they were. And this crap phones it in. I think half the reason why I'm literally angry at how not-good this game is stems from just how much potential star-captaining has in a structured and stat-based interactive fiction environment. You can fully embrace and love what makes Space Opera a worthwhile and effective genre... or you can do what this game does, and tack half-thought-out sci-fi tropes on top of a stupefyingly standard war story. This game takes all the majesty, the potential, the infinite wonder of the universe and makes something disgusting out of it. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't care about the universe. Nothing mattered and this game was bad. Buy better games.

This has honestly been my favorite space related story from Choice of Games thusfar. The characters were interesting, and easy to attach to. The story seemed to have the perfect length as well. Also, if you're a Fallout player, I recommend reading Lloyd's parts in the Mr. Handy voice, the snarky British accent works well. Overall, I'm giving this a 8/10.

After playing through, I'd say the game was better than I expected! I've played other text based games but I think this one is definitely one of my favorites now. Probably because I really enjoyed the humor and overall personality of the story and characters. Though, the story is short but not too short, and there aren't any deep relationships you can get into with the characters or anything, but honestly I just wish there were more of it (in a good way). Especially loved the AI named Lloyd, hands down one of the best characters and had me laughing the whole time. I did another run where I was entirely mean to him for the sake of discovering more text but ended up relenting at some point because I'm such a softie and felt bad aha. The story isn't too serious, but more playful and fun overall especially with the subject of war. I've had times I've lost interest with war stories but this one kept my interest fairly well throughout (though again probably due to the abundance of humor). Overall I really enjoyed this one and definitely recommend it if you like sci-fi with a humorous AI and a fun little adventure.

The story starts off really... meh. But in the later parts your more eager to find out what's really going on. The story is intriguing, but there's not alot of growth between the characters. They stay the same thoughout the story regardless of choices. As a result the dialogue can get abit boring and you just skip ahead to see the secrets. Pros: -Clear choices that influence the story. -The story reminded me alot of the great sci-fi series Space Above and Beyond. -Lots of interesting twists, intrigue, and 2nd guessing yourself. -Story was a good length. -Fair character design. My character felt like the one I wanted to play, had realistic flaws. -Lloyd, the ship's A.I. I would love to see another story with Lloyd. -Don't have to remember what's going on, clearly reminds you what the mission is. Cons: -Most of the characters are pretty static, don't get opportunity to change their POV. -Didn't like how you earn credits, but can't spend them in game. It's an end game score. -Didn't feel very invested in the story. There's high stakes, but not at the personal level. Final Verdict: -I'd only get it on sale.

Well written science fiction choose-your-own-adventure novel. This game isn't all about fighting, which is a good thing. There are different ways you can achieve your objectives, or get sidetracked. There are only nine chapters, which is kind of short. I just played Fatehaven and there were 15 chapters in that one! Anyways, diplomacy plays a big role in this game, which is a plus, so the speech skill is not totally useless like it is in many games. Like I said, there are many ways to achieve your objectives, but be careful in the path that you choose, lest you doom humanity, or save it!

Finished the story in 1 minute screw you Lloyd But seriously, its a good story, I recommend it, but its not my cup of tea in particular.

good