Osiris: New Dawn
Fenix Fire Entertainment/Reverb Triple XP
I can remember the last time that I played Osiris: New Dawn, nearly a year ago. Although the game had only been out for just a few months, it showed some serious promise. One thing that stands out is that it throws you to the wolves right away, with hardly any hand-holding or codling. You begin each game of Osiris on a deeply red-tinted planet with your space suit depressurizing.
If you don’t suffocate, after you’ll figure out how to patch it up (literally with some tape). Then you have to build a small habitat in order to replenish your oxygen supplies. From there, you start to learn the basics of the game’s crafting system, as well as the alien planet’s various threats that you’ll encounter as you scavenge for crafting and building resources.
For those not in the know, Osiris: New Dawn is what I’d consider to be one of the two space and planet exploration games that have come out of the ashes of the No Man’s Sky catastrophe. Along with the other one, Empyrion – Galactic Survival, these two title have really found their niche within this rarely explored (pun intended) gaming genre. There are a couple of other notable space games out there, but Elite: Dangerous doesn’t have real planetary exploration, and Space Engineers doesn’t look like it’ll ever be completed.
Osiris’s closest competitor, Empyrion, is presented with a much broader scale since you can warp to distant solar systems. However, Osiris has much more attention to detail because of its much tighter parameters. So while Empyrion gives you more of everything, you’re probably not going to feel as immersed in it as you will with Osiris. That’s not to say that Osiris doesn’t have its share of problems, but after firing it up after almost a year it seems that many of its most major issues have been fixed, or are being worked on. Its developer, Fenix Fire, definitely listens to its player base and responds quickly to bug reports.
You can quickly tell that much of Osiris was obviously inspired by the Matt Damon film, The Martian. Looking at the environs of Proteus 2 (the planet that all new players begin on), you’ll recognize the sprawling red hills and valleys from the Red Planet. What is different about this one, however, is that it’s chock full and just crawling with lots of alien critters, both big and small.
For instance, during my play throughs, I’d frequently spy a number of smaller alien denizens scurrying around in the undergrowth. Once I spotted them, they were relatively easy to take out with my blaster. However, once I was walking through a large valley and a gigantic space worm must have heard me. It launched itself out of the ground and came right at me, which not only scared the bejesus out of me but also let me know that there were things on Proteus 2 that you should probably just run from, instead of foolishly try and fight.
After ending up as worm food several times, I decided that vertical base-building was the closest thing to safety that I was going to see. Osiris allows you to construct some pretty impressive habitats, with artificial atmospheres within them, and even sprawling gardens. Although, as it stands at this point in the game’s development, elevators only go up and down a maximum of seven levels. You can, however, still build stairways to access levels higher than that.
Encountering other players can be hit or miss. Sometimes, I’d come across a random individual while doing my whole exploration thing, and we’d begin some cordial communication. Other times, I’d come across players and they’d start shooting at me right away. The latter experiences were on PvP servers however. I’ve also tried playing on multiplayer PvE servers, but for some reason they didn’t seem to have as much alien fauna to contend with.
Osiris can be played in one of four ways—Singlerplayer, which is always PvE, Multiplayer – PvP (Dedicated server), Multiplayer – PvE (Dedicated server), and on your very own private server where you can invite up to five of your friends. By the way, private servers are the only types of games in which you can scale the universe exactly to how you want it. You can even increase the game’s difficulty later on, once you get a firmer handle on how things work.
Graphically, I’d certainly consider Osiris to be one of the best looking, if not the best, space exploration game on the market right now. The visuals are so good that when I first some video clips of it I thought that it was a game created by a triple A developer. Everything looks super-sharp and highly detailed, and its environments and roving dust storms are beautiful to behold, granted some alien varmint doesn’t use them as concealment in order to sneak up and pounce on your back.
Osiris: New Dawn has really come a long way since its debut back in September 2016, and if Fenix Fire keeps constantly improving it as they are now, it could be one of the best first-person science fiction games in another year or so. Its combination of stunning graphics, fun crafting and base building, sandbox-style exploration, and improved netcode makes it hard to pass up for any fan of space exploration and survival.
SCORE: 82%
Osiris: New Dawn features great graphics that make its space exploration gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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