Jumpdrive

This game was abandoned for a long time, with no updates or progress. Then we got one patch, then months later, it's now "released." However, as I write this, it still not only calls itself an "alpha," but still uses its old title "Paragon" inside the game. It seems as if this has been "released" with no changes or updates in several months, and much is still broken. To test it, I took a simple delivery mission. I took off, jumped, then tried to autopilot to the base, which was planetside. The autopilot would fly toward the planet, then away, repeatedly, for half a dozen times at least. I then used the autopilot to dock at an orbital base, which did work. I then left the orbital base and once again set course for the planet. This time the autopilot properly approached the base, but brought me in and landed me sideways, only righting me once on the ground. Upon landing, the mission would not complete, even though I'd made it to the prescribed location before the deadline. In the con...

There is one thing we have to get out of the way: Jumpdrive was Paragon which is is a mod/fork of the open source space sim Pioneer, a modern reworking of the great space sim Elite by David Braben that we were all raving about since 1984. As it stands this is as close as you are going to get right now to having Elite itself on steam, which is no bad thing ...... Well worth the purchase price for that little convenience alone. So the 80s style comes as no surprise, and the artwork (cockpits etc) are good quality. Music is top notch as well, hinting at radiophonic and kraftwerk, it goes to make a perfect background to this space sim. Runs like a dream and you can max the graphics on a modest PC. It really does have the spirit and feel of Elite. So my recommendation is a thumbs up with crossed fingers, trusting that the development of Paragon will continue along its own lines and not fall down like so many other early access titles have been doing on steam over the last few months.

Unfortunately, this game has become all but unplayable over the past months. Issues ranging from consistent long load times (or the more likely failures requiring hard resets) at start up to freezes at the end of nearly every jump and worse. I gave it a shot because of the cheap price and concept, but as of 12/17/2014 it may as well be a pet rock. I wish the dev team good luck and hope one day to be given a reason to revise this review, but I cannot in good faith recommend this work in progress and suggest others avoid purchasing this alpha title until extensive work has been done to improve the overall game environment.

[i]Paragon[/i] is great, it has different kinds of ships with different purposes, everything is realtime (even while using hyperdrive) so no loading times, and going from space to a planet without a cutscene is true in this game, and because of that the game universe is huge! you get missions, fight, trade, buy new chips and crews and it's good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWDA_yZu7uo

[strike] I love this game's aesthetic themed like an 80's sci-fi movie with retro-futuristic synth music, but unfortunalty this game has become unplayable. It also seems development has crashed into a wall at 100 MPH because there hans't been any updates for a decent amount of time without a word. At anytime before it stopped working I would've recommended this game, but unfortunately I can't. [/strike] So the devs of Meteoric Games reached out to me on my poorly written review I typed on my phone when I was bored to give the game another go, so I did. My points still stand. The game looks A+ for an independently made space sim, and the soundtrack still gets me pumped, but the large problem is just that; it's independently made. I'm not saying indie space sims are bad, but it's still too early in development for this game to be playable. - It's highly unstable and crashes happen in ways that confuse me. The crashes are frequent but never happen doing the same thing i.e. fast travel...

Game had huge potential but the new Dev team just disappeared. The official website is down, along with the foruns. Another Early Access letdown. Dont buy it.

All I can give right now are very early impressions, but so far Paragon seems like a very competent Elite clone. The game has a great look, and even with some clearly WIP UI screens, it presents information neatly and accessibly. Plus, the music is really quite nice. (Though I've silenced it to play Nujaubes, which also happens to complement the game very well...) So far, most complaints are simply symptomatic of the game's alpha status. Early-game balance is very lacking, with early delivery missions (the only ones you'll be able to take) paying anywhere between $400-700, while ships bigger than the miniscule starting ship costing upwards of $50000. This will presumably be changed in future revisions, but in the mean time, all ship info is stored in convenient little .lua files within the game's folders, so manually changing ship prices is a good way to circumvent the early grind. Also, another minor complaint: currently there just aren't enough keyboard shortcuts. Clicking through ...

I gotta say Paragon is not a mod nor a port of Pioneer (which in itself is a remake of Elite II: Frontier) but at this point just a blatant reskinning. Virtually everything is identical to Pioneer expect for slightly higher quality graphics with a bit of post processing. Though I was keenly aware of the similarities before I bought this game the promotional videos and info I had read about the game on their site beforehand made it seem that -even at this early alpha state- they had improved on some of the base features of Pioneer. Sadly that is not the case at all (at least not as of now). In fact they managed to screw up some basic mundane things that were already working well in Pioneer. For instance, simple things like word wrapping in menus and UI. A large part of Pioneer's and subsequently Paragon's gameplay has you pouring through resource lists, menus and just general text. At HD resolution (1920x1080) the font is oversived, janky, somewhat fuzzy and in certain areas words o...

I'm actually running this game on Windows 8.1, and it is running fairly smoothly. No crashes or glitches so far. The only thing I notice is how bad the autopilot is at landing. I've lost five ships today to the autopilot running me into orbitals while trying to get to the parking spot. So, just stick to non-orbital missions until the bugs are worked out. :D

Game has been abandoned by the devs. This was the first early access game I paid good money for, looks like I got burnt.