➤ Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, review 🎮

The space race was certainly one of the hottest and most interesting aspects of the Cold War. To demonstrate their power against each other, the United States and Russia went on for almost twenty years challenging each other with space missions, launching rockets and satellites into the air, as well as carrying out other collateral activities, up to the ultimate goal: to be the first to reach the moon, as happened on July 20, 1969, with which the race between the two superpowers is marked. Apart from conspiracy theories, astronauts Neil Armstrong ed Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, with the latter who after many years also linked his name to the videogame industry. In fact, Aldrin offered his consultancy for the realization of Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space, for his friends BARIS, a video game developed in 1993 by Strategic Visions: inside the space race was reproduced, putting the player at the helm of NASA or the Soviet space program to be able to get to the moon first. Twenty-one years after the release of BARIS, Slitherine Strategies has decided to return to the office with Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, BASPM for friends: foundations similar to the original title accompanied of course by some news, to the delight of all those who they did not miss a moment of the Rosetta mission.

Have you followed Rosetta from 2004 to today? Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager is the one for you!

The race begins

As described in the preamble of this review, BASPM takes the player in the middle of the space race, starting from the mid-50s of the last century to follow the whole series of primary and secondary missions that led man to touch the lunar soil.

Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, review

To do this, we can choose to side with the forces of the United States or Russia, competing against the opponent to be the first to succeed in the final objective: depending on the role chosen, there will be research programs that actually existed and implemented. , such as the launch of Sputnik into space or the Apollo missions, flanked by a series of projects that have remained only on paper, or implemented to end in failure. In reality there is also a third fictional faction: it is the GSA (Global Space Agency), controlling which the gameplay changes radically. In fact, it is possible to access all the technologies developed by NASA and the Russian program, but having to respond to the objectives that the political forces at the head of the agency impose from time to time. In case you do not want to have the limitations of the competition, BASPM also offers a sandbox mode, within which you can indulge yourself in the exploration of space without having to submit to particular obligations. We also point out the presence of a play-by-email multiplayer mode, where therefore it is not necessary to be online at the same time as your opponent is: once the turn is over you pass the ball to the other player, who he is free to make his move as he pleases before giving us the turn again. A solution that for a title that offers a shift system like that of BASPM works above all from a technical point of view, but which, in our opinion, excessively breaks the rhythm of the game, which is already not very high on its own.

We have Liftoff!

Those who loved BARIS at the time will probably also know the board game Liftoff !, of which the 1993 title represents the videogame transposition. A similar fate therefore falls to BASPM, which however expands what is seen in the game developed by Strategic Visions, without altering the basic concepts. Regardless of the chosen faction, the player's task is to create all the conditions to allow his nation to arrive first on the Moon: success in the various approach steps is what goes to feed the total prestige level, based on to which the additional budget made available to us is then defined from time to time.

The choices are numerous, and offer the possibility of ranging from a "classic" sequence that provides in a nutshell the launch of probes alternating with that of human beings, to the use of more particular missions which, however, can provide a high level in case of success. of prestige, to be reinvested naturally in the race towards the moon landing. In addition to the choice of programs, in BASPM a fundamental role is played by the various types of personnel that must be employed within the agency: each individual offers particular skills in specific fields, such as the scientist skilled in the design of rockets rather than of probes. Each hired person can undergo additional training to improve their skills, thus offering interesting alternatives from a strategic perspective: is it better to focus immediately on the development and launch of missions, or to rely on highly qualified personnel? A nice dilemma, especially when you see the opposing faction forfeiting its first successes. Speaking of missions, at the end of each turn the probability of success is displayed in the summary screen of each open program, then choosing in the next quarter whether to start one or not: if so, it is possible to jump immediately to the final result or follow the step I go through all the steps, which of course we strongly advise you to do. Through the mission mode it is in fact possible to experience that characteristic pathos of space launches, and indeed we must say that in the role of Slitherine we would have extended the various procedures even more, thus adding further tension until the moment of completion. The single mission is composed of several phases, for which BASPM adopts the dice system of its predecessor: reduced in a nutshell, the value of each throw is compared with the one that identifies the possibility of success of the single step, to establish whether it is successful or not. In the latter case, it may be a minor problem, solvable by the staff, up to errors capable of leading to tragic consequences for human lives, and consequently also for the prestige of our agency.

Like twenty-one years ago

The essence of BASPM has remained that of 1993 also from the graphic point of view, since the new title offers few updates in what remains the style of the old game overall.

Thanks to the absence of a tutorial, the player is therefore immediately catapulted between menus and options, risking in some cases to get lost among the numerous information offered by BASPM: in this regard we open a small parenthesis concerning the so-called Buzz-opedia, a mine of historical information for those interested in studying the real space race while continuing to play. However, after a couple of games of running in, the interface appears clearer, while the feeling that something is missing in the monitoring screen of the single mission remains, even if the development team has put in place a series of new animations with which follow the developments. As for the audio, each of the factions present offers a different soundtrack: nothing that is worth getting excited about, but that certainly does the task assigned to it.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

The editorial team uses the ASUS CG8250 Personal Computer
Intel Core i7 2600 processor
8 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card
Windows 7 operating system

Minimum requirements

Operating System: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Windows Server 2008/2003
CPU: Intel Core Duo 1.33GHz
RAM: 2 GB
Hard Drive: 3 GB
Video Card: 256MB Video RAM, minimum resolution 1366 x 768

Comment

Digital Delivery Steam, Official Site Price 27,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

7.5

Readers (2)

4.8

Your vote

Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager is a new starting point for those who loved Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space at the same time, and at the same time a valid alternative for those who don't want to live with the technicalities of titles like Kerbal Space Program, to which in this case exclusively managerial aspects are preferred. In addition to a multiplayer mode that will probably involve a few people, the real flaw of this game is that it does not invent anything: from this point of view, the planning already carried out for two expansions dedicated to the International Space Station and the planet Mars will probably bring with it also new gameplay elements, thus further expanding the mechanics of the title released in 1993. Although dated, the latter with Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager still do their duty.