If you've had enough of text today, then feel free to watch our video review. It's injected with 100% videological goodness, courtesy of Joystiq (patent pending).
As one might expect, the vast majority of my time in Evasive Space was spent evading things. The goal of the game is to pilot a very delicate ship through a series of environments, without getting touched by anything, save for the plethora of power-ups. Handling the ship, I found, was a bit more of a hassle than the straightforward controls diagram suggested.
The game is mainly played with three buttons. The B button handles accelerating the ship and the A button turns on the shield, if enough upgrades were snagged. Occasionally, the game demands objects to be moved, so there's a handy tether that can be employed by pressing down on the d-pad. The most important function of control doesn't even fall under the responsibility of a button, however. It's the cursor.
It sounds simple enough: I point the cursor in a direction, hit the throttle, and that's where my ship goes. In theory, yes, but in execution it's far more cumbersome. Because I'm navigating such tiny corridors most of the time, and have a clock beating down my neck, Evasive Space easily turned from a unique diversion to a fairly frustrating time because it lacks the precision that comes from other control methods. The game wants me to rush through these segments, which demand accuracy and speed, but does not give me an adequate enough tool to accomplish that end. Using the cursor is just too sloppy, and I made many more mistakes than necessary.
Other segments in the game are a bit more free-form and benefit from the cursor-based controls. These areas had me retrieving lost space men throughout a large, open map, for example. These segments are highly reminiscent of the classic Asteroids, as the ship moves much like that game's iconic ship did. Also, gigantic space boulders were trying to kill me. Thankfully, these segments are often less frustrating than the corridor-crawling bits.
Evasive Space is a game that really stumbled over itself. The gameplay has all of the right ingredients for fun, and the idea is unique enough, but the controls just get in the way too much. The game would've been better served with an alternative scheme. At least give me option to play it in a different manner, because, as it stands now, the only thing Evasive Space is avoiding is a good time.
