Hazardous environment

It’s not just enemy forces that you can manipulate – the very environment can become your tool. When shot, magma flows spit out globs of lava that can turn the nearby patch of space into a minefield, and spiked plants try to skewer any incautious enough to pass close by. There are also spined globes that explode on contact like lethal dandelions. And that’s just in the asteroid fields of our hands-on – we’ve seen glimpses of metal bases, too. The only downside to these regularly used tricks is that the game’s procedural spaces can start to feel like reshuffled variations on a theme, and the final version will need a bit more variety in surprises or settings to retain the otherwise strong sense of place.