When Dreadnought first was described to me I tough it was going to be a tactical RPG in which you have to manage your battleship in a strategic way. Now while Dreadnought is a very strategic game it manages to capture the most exciting elements of all-out spaceship battles.
In Dreadnought you take control of a giant battleship and fight other players with their giant battleships. It’s a five VS five game, with a broad selection of ships and equipment. The ships’ designs seem to take visual cues from other games. There are ships that look round and alien in nature and then there are ships that look human made with sharp edges and plates. There is a ship for everyone. Of course, it’s not only visual designs that make the ships different from each other. All of them have their own attributes and abilities. Once you select your ship you get to choose from a plethora of weapons and equipment. This ranges from invisibility to missile barrages to stasis fields and more. Once you and your team’s lengthy set-up is done you can get in action.
While it’s you and your team of four other players against another team of five there are other smaller CPU battleships on the field. The combat of the game is very slow but also very engaging. It’s kind of like the Naval battles in Assassin’s Creed. Shots don’t immediately hit, instead they travel at their own speed so you will have to calculate where the enemy is going to be at. Missing shots and having to turn while reloading is incredibly intense and you really feel like you are at the helm of a battleship. The game has some clever design going on in its combat. Life bars are clear and when you hit a ship you can see the impact of the blast and combined with seeing the life bar tip down it feels incredibly rewarding.
If you want to play with a fairly small and fairly fast ship flying by, dropping bombs and boosting out you can do that. Are you rather this giant fortress destroying everything in its path but have slow maneuvering, Dreadnought has you covered. It’s one of those games where you will pick a ship and start tinkering with equipment and perks and keep fine tuning until you have your own personalized and ultimate ship ready for combat. Dreadnought is a game in I’m more than pleasantly surprised with. Its combat is deep and strategic but is so well-designed that it feels like playing a faster more extreme game. The game is currently in Closed Beta but an open beta is planned at an unannounced date. The game is only for PC with no plans of it coming to consoles. It’s still in early stages of development but it feels like a pretty finished game already. I am really curious for the end project and I will certainly play it once it comes out. It’s again one of those games you will play with your friends until the early hours in the morning.
