Starfarer and SPAZ

Look similar, eh? As a warning, THIS IS NOT STARFARER VS. SPAZ. LEAVE YOUR HATE IN YOUR BASEMENT. I just want to COMPARE these games, which are very similar but do everything differently (for a lack of a better description). Most of you probably already know what Space Pirates and Zombies (and Bounty Hunters, as of the free expansion) is because it has been on Steam for a while, and was also on the Youtubes a bit. Less of you probably know about Starfarer, mostly because it's not finished. It's an game in alpha which you can pre-order for 10 bucks on their website and get to test and play it while it's in development (a la Minecraft and KAG). Both of them are open-world topdown space shooters that are focused on managing a handful of ships in colorful space battles (they also both have full-blown mod support). They both look very similar and are very similar in spirit, but play fairly differently. This is why:
First of, SPAZ is a finished game with free updates here and there, and Starfarer is under heavy development and is in alpha. So we only know what Starfarer wants to be, but not what it will be, like SPAZ. SPAZ, as you can tell from its forcibly silly name, is a forcibly silly game. It's charming and funny, and it's all about terran-like mercenaries in space. Although the game may seem complex if you read about it, it's actually not, it's actually extremely simple and repetitive. The game doesn't feel like a tactical spaceship captaining game, it feels extremely fast and arcady. There is never a moment in that games combat when you are not blowing shit up (or trying at least). The entire game is composed of breaking or bribing your way through gates on one side of a star system to get to the next star system thats closer to the next plot star system, all randomly generated. Thats it. Thats the game. The hurdle is, sometimes you can't beat/bribe the gate because you don't have enough Rez (cash) or you're under leveled and it's too hard. So you grind. Then you go back and beat/bribe the gate. This is SPAZ. Frankly while playing it, the game felt incomplete. Sure, the grind was relatively entertaining, the combat is fun, but it's SO FUCKING SLOW. What worse is that the game has MMO side-quests. All you do is kill X number of ships/platforms/crates, protect X number of ships/platforms/crates, escort something, and occasionally kill a boss. Sometimes you have a time limit. You hit SO many walls in this game, it's absurd. Still, you do have a constant feel of progression, and you use a handful of different ships (a bunch you'll never use though, since the biggest is always the best). At heart the game is fun, if you can put up with the horrid grind.
Starfarer is much different. SPAZ seems complex, but isn't. Starfarer seems complex, and is much more complex then it seems. It's one of those "easy to play, hard to master" games. It's simple to get your head around, but learning exactly what counters what and which ships should be prioritizing and what ammo should you be saving takes much more thought and practice. Again, Starfarer is not finished. Currently it holds a dozen or so missions where you use certain ships to blow up other ships (many more with a bunch of mods you can easily install), a randomized mission where it gives you and the AI roughly fair (VERY roughly) fleets of ships to duke it out with, and a very, VERY early version of what the devs want to campaign mode to be. The combat in Starfarer is a blast. You use a bunch of pre-built ships (you pimp out your own ships in the campaign with stuff you salvage our buy) that all have their very own strengths and weaknesses, and no two ships play or feel the same. The combat in Starfarer is much more complex and demanding then in SPAZ. There are no levels in Starfarer, you can't out-level an enemy, it's all about whether your ship out-techs or is bigger than the AI or if you're better at piloting your ship then the AI. You have to manage controlling a plethora of different lasers, cannons, missiles, and machine guns (or just let the dumbass AI waste all your ammo on hitting shields), you have to watch your "flux" (energy) when using said weapons and absorbing damage with your shield, you have to watch your position with maximum weapon fire-age, you have to watch your ammo on said weapons (SPAZ you just need to watch your energy, you could spam your missiles all day), for a lot of ships you have to aim your shields (some don't even have shields), and most importantly watch the fuck out for incoming missiles and bombs. In short, there's a lot less straight up button-pressing skill in Starfarer then there is in SPAZ, but a lot more fast-thinking and adapting to situations. Your ships are much slower then in SPAZ, you hold down the left mouse button a lot less, and you visit your tactics screen to give orders a lot more. It's much more meaty. Less frantically buzzing around firing a million tiny missiles and lasers and more getting into position, slowly waiting to max out an enemy's flux, and unload a giant missile and ordering a bombing squad to absolutely destroy that giant battlecruiser in an absolutely beautiful explosion filling the entire screen.
Now, it should be obvious which game I currently like better, but Starfarer is far from perfect, and the campaign, much like SPAZ, is by far it's biggest weakness. But as I keep on saying, it's not finished. The campaign basically starts by giving you a shitty ship which you use to blow up other shitty ships (or capture them if you're lucky), take their money and ship parts in order to make or buy a slightly less shitty ship. Just like SPAZ, it's currently incredibly grindy. It's also currently flat-out broken, since you quickly get to a point where your fleet is to large and slow to catch up to smaller ships, but it's not big enough to take on larger fleets, so you're basically stuck. Also, the campaign, because it's so early, is very bare-bones in the way of content. There is nothing to do but to chase down ships and blow them, and then spend money on one of the 3 factions bases for new ships, weapons, fuel, or crew. My worry is that Starfarer's campaign will turn out to be as monotonous and as grindy as SPAZ's campaign turned out to be, which will make the only thing to do is to play randomized missions over and over and over. I hope they learn something from their elder before them.
And thats my rant. If you made it through that, you honestly deserve a cookie, who you technically are, where you live, or if you even like cookies, so you will have to purchase one yourself, or the equivalent of a cookie if you do not like them (I pity you, non-cookie-lover). And if you did manage to pull yourself through all that (or if you did the reasonable thing and skimmed through the important parts and got the gist of it) and you have something to say, by all means, express how much you hate me and the fact that I spent way too much time writing this for no other reason then to please that OCD part of me that demand I explain in depth the differences between these two games. I'm so terribly fucking sorry if I made any of you butthurt assholes upset over some stupid fucking games I'm sorry if I upset you. Either way, I overall enjoyed both games, and I suggest you pick up both if you're interested and can afford it (SPAZ is currently 50% off on Steam, so it's only 5 bucks). I need to stop typing now. No. Stop. STOP. I SAID STOP!
Jesus, it's already fucking 9:00pm.

I just realized that I didn't look at the preview and the post looks a tad weird and the pictures are messed up. Sorry.

 

I DON'T KNOW!
I was frankly drunk off fatigue, I was playing SPAZ after recently buying it (Steam sale and port to Mac), I hit a one of the many grinding patches in the game, and I wrote about it. I don't think of SPAZ as a rip-off of Starfarer, it has been released first, but I just bitching about a serious problem in SPAZ that I hope I won't see in Starfarer. Honestly, it was just an essay of bitching I wrote to myself in 2:00am (again, drunk off fatigue, I don't know why I wrote that it was 9:00pm, it really wasn't). It's here because I frankly felt like it, and at the time I made it I gave zero shits. I'll leave it here, I don't think it's offensive to anyone, and wait for it's eventual lock-down.