One of the nicer surprises of 2005's year of big budgeted, long-delayed PC games and the ridiculously expensive upgrading needed to run them is Meridian4's Space Hack, a budget priced single player sci-fi action-RPG that's a challenging and highly addictive experience for players of all skill levels. It's great because of the pick up and play factor that concentrates heavily on classic dungeon hack gameplay in remarkably detailed indoor and outdoor environments. Developer Rebelmind's tightly focused single player campaign means you won't have to worry about multiplayer lag issues, video card conflicts or patching the game out of the box before it'll run properly. Instead, you get forty-five huge levels to explore, while the low system requirements allow it to run perfectly on a wide range of PC configurations with no trouble whatsoever.

You play as Hack, an ex-marine who's the only hope when a group of human colonists is trapped onboard their massive ship after it's sucked into a nebula and beset by hordes of aliens. The ship consists of fifteen biospheres (self-contained worlds), each with their own environment and level layout. Hack's overall goal is to make it to the ship's engine room alive and reactivate the drive engines to blast the survivors out of the nebula and yes, anything non-human that's in his way will be shot, chopped or blown to bits. Of course, our hero gets plenty of side quests on his way to his main goal, and resistance is fierce right from the outset. There's a nicely written intro that explains why humans are so far out in deep space in these massive colony ships and you'll get a lot of the story from the NPCs and communication terminals that you interact with as you progress.

The gameplay is simple Diablo-style combat you know and love; see a monster, click your cursor on it and Hack does his stuff. To make things a bit more challenging yet less difficult on your mouse hand, you can hold the mouse key down when targeting an alien to keep attacking it. The catch is that you need to do this with each creature until you get more powerful ranged weapons that can cut through packs of beasties that are grouped together. The game offers up an additional set of small twists, such as the aliens being insanely fierce from the outset, requiring Hack to rely on melee attacks and run like hell away from aliens with painful ranged attacks. There's also a counter that shows how many aliens are in each area, a welcome touch when you enter a new map and have no idea what to expect. Hack also has a fatigue meter that limits how much he can run, a nice addition that keeps things from being too easy.

You'll come across more than eighty types of aliens across three different breeds, as well as packs of larva that aren't part of the enemy count. You'll definitely want to clear these defenseless hatchlings out, but take care to avoid the poisonous gas that sprays about when you pop them. The alien AI varies depending on the difficulty level, but even on easy you'll be swarmed if you're careless and rush straight into battle without thinning the herd with ranged attacks first. While most aliens do drop items as they're killed, you won't find or need gold here - instead, some aliens drop energy cells, which can be used to recharge Hack's life or suit energy on special platforms located in each area. Alternatively, you can find the well-guarded teleport (or use a teleport item) to warp back to the base map to trade cells for weapons, armor, health, bio-chip and high-tech (the game's version of magic) upgrades. Additionally, Hack's weapons and armor degrade as they're used, so you'll need to head back to the base and get occasional repairs or replacements.

Naturally, killing enough aliens levels Hack up, which gives you five points to distribute among four stats: Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge and Endurance. Sure, it's all familiar stuff to chase & chop fans, but the game has a way of pulling you in for hours at a stretch; there's nothing like spending three or four hours completing a tough quest and being rewarded with a new weapon a few times more powerful than anything you've gained before. What's a Hack to do but pop on over to the next biosphere and try it out, right? There's an interesting mix of forty ancient and futuristic combat weapons, with slings, clubs and bows from one vendor, while another has an assortment of energy pistols and rifles. Some energy weapons are less effective on certain aliens, so you'll need to either switch to a crossbow, bow or the deadly (and slow) blade thrower. Hack's inventory limits you to around four to six weapon types (if you want to pick up stuff in the levels, that is) and he can carry up to five high-tech items and four bio-chips.

Although it's their first game, Rebelmind is off to a really sweet start; Space Hack uses a superb proprietary isometric engine that's lightning fast and scalable to a number of resolutions from 640x480x16 to 1280x1084x32, with tons of detail that can be switched on or off to your tastes. Hack's animations are great throughout and the assorted aliens you face off against are suitably well done. You'll watch Hack reload crossbow bolts, arrows or saw blades between shots and he has a different way of holding the assorted weapons you acquire. As for the environments, there is all sorts of machinery operating everywhere, with lovely trees and other plant life that lend a nice sense of scale to the outdoor maps. Sticklers will say there should be a lot more variety, but you're dealing with a massive space colony, so the uniformity is welcome and makes sense within the context of the setting.

NPCs in the base area keep busy tinkering with generators or having silent conversations with each other and you can see huge radar dishes or generators whirring away, while overhead cables sway gently. All of the levels use green as the primary color, which might initially be off-putting to some of you more accustomed to games that use every graphics shader and lighting trick in the book, but the maps here are no slouch when you see them in motion. Smoke drifts and sparks fly from damaged equipment, there's subtle use of dynamic lighting, and once you're a few levels in, different colors are added as the biospheres grow more complex.

If you read the back-story and assorted dialogues in Hack's quest log, you'll understand why each level has all those trees and rolling hills; I actually liked the dank, humid look to the underground levels infested with alien life - that sickly hue in these areas works well in conveying a simultaneously gloomy and deadly feeling. While it's all really pretty to look at, you'll generally not be stopping to smell the roses with the hundreds of aliens packing every map; from oversized insects to slightly humanoid blade-wielding baddies, you're kept on your toes from the very first moment you step out of the teleporter.

The sound production is great too, with an eerie, modular score lending different atmospheres to each area. Positional sound is also used, so the machinery humming or water dripping off in the distance gets louder as you approach it and fades after you've passed by. Weapons fire rings out and bugs scream as they're blasted into chunky bits; the only minor gripe is the total lack of voice acting for all the human characters, save for the ending cinematic and Hack's mighty "oofs" and grunts when he's hit. Then again, this is a budget game where all the money went into the visuals, so the trade off is completely understandable. Note to parents: there's a mild amount of swearing in the text if you're concerned about such things, but you won't find anything salacious or over the top violent here... unless you count the thousands of aliens being slaughtered for good reason.

I did have a slightly bigger issue with the non-configurable controls, lack of a zoom feature and using the mouse wheel to rotate the game camera. Actually, zooming in would make things a lot more difficult, as shooting aliens from as far away as possible becomes a necessary tactic that you come to rely on. The mouse wheel camera turning becomes an issue for clumsy idiots like me because it alters the pacing of the more hectic moments; while trying to turn the camera it is too easy to hit the right mouse button by accident, which activates whatever's in the high-tech item slot. I actually teleported myself back to base in the middle of one boss fight and right at the end of another, which actually helped, but definitely wasn't intended! You can use the period and comma keys to rotate the camera, but this isn't an easy thing to pull off when you have half a dozen aliens on your tail. Additionally, it would have been cool to be able to adjust the size of the level maps and status bars; both take up too much space and the stat bar can't be toggled off or rescaled, and this is a game where the more screen area you have available, the longer you'll survive. I'm not sure Rebelmind will patch a budget game, but these suggestions are something to consider if they make a follow up or second game that happens to be in the same genre.

If you're a fan of any sort of dungeon crawler, Space Hack is still an absolute godsend in this year of overblown commercially driven sequels and too many MMO games. The old-school gameplay aesthetics combine with the rich visual style, making for a winning combination in my book and, despite minor issues, it's ridiculously addictive. Once you're dialed in, you'll be thinking of getting back to Hack's adventure every chance you get - I'd love to see this show up on either a console or handheld with a few tweaks (and possibly some sort of co-op for those folks that crave them). [That's me! I crave co-op! Isolate-Ed]. However, that decision is up to Meridian4, Rebelmind... and you. Therefore, if you're looking for a good eighty or more hours of action that won't kill your wallet, the twenty bucks you spend on this game will get you much more than your money's worth.

Reviewed by Greg Wilcox for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).