Iron Sky Invasion Space Combat Opera German/Finnish Style..

Most sci fi, in fact all sci fi can be considered a parody of itself from Fritz lang to Kubrik and  Lucas and beyond more time has been spent laughing at than taking seriously all the scifi movie greats, I mean that monkey (yes I know) throwing that bone that becomes a space ship after looking at a black obelisk and proceeding to mash the skulls of its fellow monkey kindred with said bone...absolutely hilarious ... or the one where a young Sonny Crockett feeds his girl friend to his telepathic dog... there is divine humour at the heart of all sci fi and usually unintentional .. the same goes for the Space Opera games genre which is usually ripping ..erhh riffing from  the literary and film scifi "greats" ..Can you play Wing Commander with a straight  face?

Alongside the oh so serious sci fi that inevitably ends up being mocked or worshipped on some US sitcom decades after franchise cheques stop coming in for it's moth balled cast there is a very seriously intentionally funny genre of sci fi parodies ..one that intentionally exists to be funny and self depreciating. From the  sublime Ice Pirates, to anything by Mel Brooks ..ok Space Balls to the recent Finnish masterpiece of insane scifi parody and satire that is Iron Sky. 

Iron Sky succeeds in not only parodying the greatest evil mankind has faced but also the state of the worlds great powers back stabbing each other for the honour of fighting over the next greatest finite resource.. You won`t just laugh at the bad guys and the idea of Moon Nazis but also at the good guys too.. 

Should it work ? No ..but it does and somehow Topware have infused all the humour and irreverence of the the film into the game which takes up where the film left off.  And then some  .. 

What you are also getting alongside the humour, is a new take on the space combat or opera genre. 

Let us look at the innovations Iron Sky Invasion brings :

First : Mission structure

Age old Space Combat and Opera Doctrine dictates that missions fold out in a progressive and linear fashion ,each one distinct from the last , never overlapping , so from Wing Commander to Xwing to Freespace veteran space jocks knew they look at a mission briefing screen , watch a cut scene, click on launch, fly a mission that is entirely enclosed in its own time frame , take your time and then click on another menu screen at the end of the mission , watch a cut scene and then repeat . Whilst some games ok Wing Commander gave you mcqs to lead to different branches of story line and combat .. it never actually felt like your decisions flowed ..

In Iron Sky Invasion, the whole game is one big mission in which all the other mission and side quests unfold in real time whilst you are completing other missions , none of which takes you out of the action ever .. no more 2D briefing screens or craft selection.. Now things start off simple where you fly off to one or two locations , then as the game progresses waves of the enemy turn up and you have to decide and manage your resources flitting from space station to space station, choosing which countries space fleet to help blast Moon Nazis out of their space fairing war machine  to halt the blitzkrieg. And  then you start to see missions overlapping , and the front line moves closer and closer to Earth so you feel like you are defending against an enemy whose movements are occurring in real time . At any time even in mid battle you can leave one fight and go and tackle another , change ships , armaments and generally panic if it all gets too much.. 


Second: Navigation : In traditional space combat games you have to come out of the action to a separate map screen to navigate , or worse still you have to scoot around the black screen peppered with stars trying to highlight one pixel which is supposed to be your next destination , or even worse still you have to manoeuvre your space ship through the glowing concentric rings of a star gate ..which has its own Kubrik fixated accompanying sound track (Ego Soft I mean U) and even worse still to get to said jump gate you have to engage a separate engine or drive ...  

In Iron Sky Invasion ..navigation is bliss , to go anywhere of import simply bring up the transparent map , click on the red blob to fight enemies , click on blue blobs to fly to friendly bases and you are transported to the action. No hour long jump gate journeys or fancy warp nonsense or switching to and from impulse power... and this is vital as you will use the fast navigation system to resupply and change ships mid battle or to switch to other ongoing and newly emerging battles on the fly... 

Third :Energy Management.
Every one remembers that gods awful energy bar management system from X Wing , the one that had you taking your eye off the action too often and was nothing like Chewie pulling back on those controls on the Millennium Falcon..  energy management is one of the reasons the X Wing series tanked ...that and 20 or so missions of scanning crates.. 

In Iron Sky .. energy management does not require you ever looking away from the screen to find which of the 101 keys are mapped to it . No you use , simple to learn taps of W , E  to switch energy from shields , to weapons to engines and each has a real impact on real time space combat.  What this creates is almost a rock paper scissors aspect to some of the combat and you immediately start to develop strategies to take down different enemies.  Best of all the centre screen HUD shows you all the changes happening right where your focus is on the action, so I am tackling a particularly tough bad guy , I shift power to the weapons by double tapping W immediately I see the weapon bar power up and without taking my eye off the enemy i vaporise him ... no looking down at keyboards for page up or down keys or F12 keys or hunting the energy bars on a cockpit view a la X Wing... Sorry Larry Holland! 

Fourth : In Iron Sky , your allies actually do stuff ... in many PC games you have allies running around or flying around often having no impact at all , but in Iron Sky the AI ships are actually taking part in your war, you even get a nice announcement that the George Dubbya Bush is engaging in a battle , or the MIR fleet is entering a fight ..and at this point all the above comes together with you exploiting the open mission structure , choosing which of the two you want to fly to within seconds with ease using the innovative navigation system , using the the energy system to exploit weaknesses in the enemy and fighting alongside your allies . 

Fifth : Humour   hilarious in battle comment , narrative or further mission requests from World leaders or your evil foe ,makes for  a very unique intentional space combat satire...  , some of the mission requests alone will have you reeling about on the floor with laughter. Humour is not only present in the game but also a pre requisite of the Iron Sky Invasion gamer..if you need to look up what satire means you will be lost here..

Sixth : 3D .. Iron Sky Invasion supports many 3D formats from the get go, no need for fancy gpus either , I played in 3D using just an Intel HD 3000 using the smd ST1080 hmd .. And the 3D really does enhance the game. I need to try it with Tridef to see if i get a better frame rate than using the in game 3D option but I will save that for later:

I started off sceptical, read a few reviews( mostly from sites who missed the satire and don't have a Heart of the Tiger between them) , played the demo  to test the game in 3D with the ST1080 as you can see above and check out the speed on my laptop as you can see below.




 The mission to save Bollywood alone sold me on the game, but it is likely for you the game proper will only really take off when you attack your first Zeppelin like so ...but you won`t see that in the demo , so here is footage from the retail game I purchased thanks to Mr Sharma.... Like all air or space combat games you can play with skill or just scoot through .. there are old pilots and there are bold pilots as the saying goes...

The Zeppelin battle reminds me of that old PC Zipper interactive classic Crimson Skies and if you hanker for some Zeppelin take down action you won`t be playing a sequel to that game any time soon. But thanks to Iron Sky Invasion .. you can and in space and against everyone's favourite gaming bad guys ( no not zombies) ...

You also get to see some of the sfx the engine has going , with self shadowing , spinning and rotating ship sections ,lens flares ..all the staple decolage that comes with the finest Space Combat games ... 

So this is for you Space Combat fans, yes it is great to support Roberts Space Industries Star Citizen ,currently 3 to 5 years way ( that is Roberts time)  , it is great to go back to old classics like Freespace and even X Wing ... you may even find humour with Bruce Campbell in Tachyon .. but none of them is this game .. Iron Sky Invasion is a gift for space combat fans and quite the only game in which you can be taking out Moon Nazi Space Zeppelins one moment and in another rescuing a kidnapped Bollywood director at that behest of the Indian PM Mr Sharma .. or being laughed at by a Palin clone Madam President .. every nation is ridiculed to perfection in this game .. I mean the Ausie ship is named after Mick Crocodile Dundee! 

All In all I am having great time with Iron Sky Invasion, if you want to lose your life go play EVE or go catatonic thanks to the pace of Egosofts X series .. this is pure unadulterated silliness that is going to confuse a lot of people who miss the point that it is intended to be satirical towards all mankind evil and good as well as managing to move the stale space combat genre past the mission screen ,cut scene , mission , mission summary screen , cut scene... 101 key + joystick control and 3K costing rig demands of it`s forebears. 

It even manages to get mouse control right, without turning the experience into point and click  farce a la Freelancer!

Will your hardware run it ?  I played at up to 1080p with an Intel HD3000 GPU and a Lenovo X220T . At 720p it flies (which figures as this is a staple console resolution), using the in game 3D hits the frame rate ,but when you are playing wearing a ghost free 100 inch 3D display powered by a USB cable ..who cares? The videos here should be able to see the difference in 720p , 1080p and 3D game play . On dedicated GPU hardware this will push over 100 FPS . Which reminds me I must fix my rig this week..

Buy Iron Sky Invasion in the UK now and eventually   IRON SKY INVASION IN THE USA  . Try out the demo on Steam now ..

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