Jump Space pits you and your crew against high stakes missions as you venture deeper and deeper into the depths of a massive galaxy. It lets you customise your ship with all manner of upgrades as you fight off the robots that have taken over most of the worlds you visit.
Jump Space offers large scale exploration with a map that looks eerily similar to that of Helldivers but with a node-based map akin to Slay The Spire or FTL; Giving you a choice of how to progress and a nice chance to sample what is on offer in each locale.
The areas that you visit in Jump Space vary vastly. One of these locations is the asteroid fields, which are mostly barren but can have some, frankly insane, effects like active asteroids colliding into you as you try to take cover under space debris. You can also explore various planets which each feature different weather or lighting, as well as the interior of massive space dreadnoughts all at a colossal scale.
There are three types of material to gather in Jump Space. First one is Materia, a currency made from grinded up bits and bobs that allows you to create items to upkeep your ship or replace its missing components. There’s also scrap which is collected at the end of your mission and is effectively your take home currency. Finally there are ingots which allow you to permanently upgrade components on a ship but normally won’t be awarded until you’ve made it back to base.
The ship combat in Jump Space is deceptively simple, especially if you’re venturing out on your own, as your robot companion, Buddy, will generally end up doing most of the jobs for you — from stocking ammunition to shooting down targets with the side turrets as you weave between enemy ships.
When venturing out with a full crew, however, it is all entirely in your hands; Everything from restocking, repairing ship pieces and shields, getting rid of enemy mines that are stuck to the ship and purging radiation all needs to be done manually otherwise you ruin the risk of having your ship and its crucial components destroyed.
Combine all of this with the amazing fights and the large variation of enemy fleets ready to stop you in your tracks it can lead to some gritty dogfights especially at the higher difficulties but is a non-stop thrill from planet to planet.
The fighting in Jump Space doesn’t just end in space as you and your crew can get boots on the ground at any point, with you being able to freely disembark your vessel at nearly any point. You can also try and wrangle an enemy ship yourself, as you grapple to take it down, or explore the world beneath on foot — wiping out robots every step of the way.
As you venture deeper into Jump Space you find and unlock more and more of the galaxy map as well as a wider choice of missions through the various areas, letting you unlock new ship parts, hulls (basically new ships), currencies and much much more as you level up together and fight for the rebellion and space riches.
There are lots of opportunities to loot and improve your ship as you head further into your chosen mission, with lots of optional side objectives and loot that you can pick up on the ships scanners. Sometimes you can spot large corvettes entering into the area where you’re exploring, which generally feature rarer ship upgrades but offer a tough fight in return and still require you to jump aboard and pry the upgrade from the ship’s bowels… which is awesome.
If you, much like me, yearn to get a bit more nitty gritty with your space combat and instead choose to tear apart the foes that have less wires and more squishy bits then check out our review of Warhammer: Space Marine 2 which has significantly less ship combat but instead doubles down on the intense close quarters combat.
When you’re not plundering riches from robots, helping allies from being annihilated or just heading over to a space fort you can chill out in the hub world with a large variation of other human characters available that seems to grow as you progress through certain missions and side objectives giving you a sense of purpose through the large variety of missions available.
One part of the Hub world that is a bit odd at the minute is the shops that are available or rather not available. There are quests at the beginning that allow you to get some of the vendor’s stores up and running but the stock cannot be purchased yet, I’m sure this will be coming in the near future so for now I can just look at those Materia packages that I would love to bring with me.
Jump Space has been an amazing experience which is highlighted with friends but with the addition of Buddy doesn’t restrict solo players to forcibly finding people just to experience it. I think with what is currently on offer and the attention of the devs being hyper focused on this project, Jump Space is definitely a game to either experience now or keep an eye on for the future.
Jump Space is available now for PC.
