Reassembly

There's little doubt that Reassembly is an intriguing bit of gaming. It's somewhat reminiscent of old-school arcade spaceship-based shooters: It focuses on inertia elements, two-dimensional visuals, and spinning fire in a 360-degree arc type of gameplay with colorful but unrealistic graphics. The ship-building aspect is immersive, entertaining, and frustrating (but in a fun and good way, because you're building, testing, learning, and then adjusting your final machine). It's also quite challenging. Because of the depth of the ship-building experience, with the different factions that cater to different styles of gameplay (some lean more toward long-range attacks, while others are based on combat that requires maneuverability and getting in close to do big damage), this game has a lot of replayability.

The downsides are the lack of a true story line explaining what or why things are going on. Plus, though the multiplayer allows you test someone else's ships against your own (by importing other player's designs), the only real multiplayer comes in the form of developer tournaments, which happen at random periods in time. Even looking at the import features within the multiplayer window can be confusing. You can access your own computer, and the game will show other games on your hard drive, even if they lack ship designs. That's a bit odd. Though there are certain goals within the world that help to move players along in terms of unlocking elements, these are not explained well, and the on-screen prompts are minimal. Still, Reassembly will certainly cater to those players who like to construct their own ships and who enjoy the challenge of designing, tinkering, and testing in combat.