Wasting time, on the moon, for free

Geek alert!  I occasionally do geeky things, normally when I'm bored.  This was one of those moments.

So, I recently re-installed Windows 7 on my PC - don't ask why, which then involved going through the motions of installing all my favourite apps on it again.  An app that I simply can't live without is the Steam games client - it fills a void in my life and so it was one of the first to get chucked back on - how sad.  When I logged into Steam for the first time since the reinstall I noticed a video trailer on the store front for a game called Moonbase Alpha - a game published by NASA.  When I saw this I thought I'd better take a look - I mean it's not everyday you see a game endorsed by NASA is it?  Besides, I was bored and was waiting on something else installing.

After sitting through three minutes of video showing a few animated US astronauts witness an asteroid hit and then bounce about on a virtual representation of the moon doing, erm, asronauty things, I decided to download it and see what all the fuss was about.  The fact the game is free (yes, that's right, something for nothing) had no bearing on my decision. In fact, no, that's a lie, it did.

The download was quick, unusually quick actually.  To put this into context, I pay a telecommunictions company (the one with the big red V) for what they claim to be 20 Mb download speeds but, to be honest, they royally shaft me most days and give me speeds that resemble nothing more than a good day on a 56k dial up connection.  Anyway, I digress.  After downloading and installing the "game" - I'm not happy about calling it a game as, for reasons I'll explain in a moment, it resembles more of dummed down simulation - I fired it up and was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked.  The reason I say I was surprised about this is that my experience of PC games in recent times has been mostly about installing them and then spending the next two hours configuring their settings (graphics, controls etc) or patching them up, just to get the damn things actually running properly on my hardware - I love that word, it makes PC building sound all macho.

OK, so what's it all about then?  Well, without boring you to tears, it involves bouncing around as a virtual astronaut on a small piece of the moon trying to fix all the hardware (there's that word again) that was broken during the asteroid hit.  The reason for this is that the oxygen supply to the living quarters on the base has been cut and you have a limited amount of time to get it all up and running again before the virtual people that are inside it - the same one's that, annoyingly, keep asking you how it's coming along through a headset in your helmet - erm, die.  I must admit, after about the tenth time of them bugging me about the fact they were running out of oxygen and that I should hurry up, I began to wonder why they couldn't just come outside and help me?  In fact, it did cross my mind to just jump in the virtual moon rover and go for a spin, leaving them to suffocate, but no, being the kind of guy I am I continued bouncing around from one repair to another just getting shit done.  They survived, but never even had the decency to let me in for a cuppa once they had all the oxygen on the moon back in their living room.

Health and Safey at work.  Never leave cables lying around.

To be fair to the "game", the graphics aren't too bad and the animation acceptable, which kind of adds a bit of atmosphere to what is essentially a bland idea in an isolated setting.  I've witnessed worse graphics in games I've paid for, so I suppose you'd have to be happy with anything half decent in a free title.  It has multiplayer apparently, which would speed up the fixing of stuff I presume and would be good for a laugh as you all bounce about a bit  - I'll never know, however, as I'll probably never load it up again.  Moonbase Alpha is one of those titles that once its completed and you've pissed about on the moon rover for a while, trying to reach those places in the environment that you just can't and are not allowed to, you'll get bored and switch it off.  The moon really is a lonely place.

I'm bored.

So that's it.  Moonbase Alpha - good for mucking about on the moon (well an incy wincy part of it at least) for half an hour when you are bored, but that's about it.