Interstellar

I often try to convince people that movie games aren't all inherently bad, and there are indeed a few examples that stand out.

In the case of Interstellar, I didn't actually realise it was a tie-in until after I'd started playing and saw the various movie plugs and links to trailers.

And then I had to revise my opinion of movie games.

Rough launch

Interstellar presents an interesting proposition at first glance. You can play around with planetary orbits, create your own solar system, fly around exploring other peoples' solar systems, upgrade your ship, and so on. It doesn't look half bad, either.

Beyond that first glance though, it's something of a remarkable mess.

Piloting youe ship involves adjusting trajectories (using a sort of handy projected line as a guide), avoiding obstacles like planets and moons, and establishing orbits in order to collect little glowy-things to upgrade your vessel.

You can tap the green button to speed up and the red button to slow down - at the cost of precious fuel, of course - and tap/drag a finger around the outside of the ship to steer.

It sounds fairly simple, but in practice it's most assuredly not. The ship's response to input wildly fluctuates between super-sluggish and obscenely fast, which will lead to many a crash on an alien world.

Also, the only camera settings are "Too Far Away" and "Way Too Far Away." It makes spotting moons that might be circling a planet pretty difficult.

Worse still is the fact that Interstellar is just broken. In the time I've spent with it the game has crashed several times, it couldn't decide if I'd completed the tutorial or not, and - as an added bonus - my progress was wiped.

My ship upgrades, remaining currency, exploration progress, badges, and so on - all gone.

In all honesty I actually like the idea behind Interstellar. It seems like a cool, science exploration game. But it's such a complete wreck that it's almost impossible to enjoy playing.