Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I don’t actually own any radars, but if I did, I’m pretty sure one of them would be going haywire right now in Europa‘s general direction. I mean, it’s sending off so many rapturously joyous signals. Moon signals. First, it billed itself as somewhat akin to Fallout 3, but – much as I exude passionate (and potentially deadly) affection radiation for Bethesda’s re-invention of Black Isle’s opus – I’m actually really happy to see Europa taking on an identity all its own. The setting, especially, seems to really be moving it in new directions – which is something that I suppose tends to happen when gravity’s not in the equation. Case in point: cars. Watch one tumble off mountains in a distinctly Just-Cause-2-like fashion after the break. And then shift gears entirely to take a long, atmosphere-rich gaze at Jupiter.

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I don’t throw around 1800s nautical phrases that have semi-recently been co-opted by pop culture lightly, so understand that I’m coming from a place of the grimmest possible seriousness when I say this: Europa, I like the cut of your jib. Not to be confused with Europa Universalis, this first-person explorer has risen from the charred space-remains of a 7 Day FPS project by a developer named Quick Fingers. The original mixed strikingly sparse visuals with crafting and a bit of shooting, but the full version looks to focus more on exploration – which is a-okay in my book. Oh, and then there’s this bit from the creator, which is bcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-okay in my book: “Think Fallout 3 in space (but dont really think that or you might get disappointed when it’s not 100 hours long).”

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