Blast Off! Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 Released
Blasting past $100 million
"Scramble interceptors, make it so, call all cars, send in the clowns, and 3 2 1 blast off!" is what I imagine Chris Roberts shouted before smashing a big red button to launch Alpha 2.0 of Star Citizen [official site] on Saturday. "Nyoooommkkrrrrkkk!" he might have added, dashing around, his arms swept back like a sleek space fighter. I know that's what I'd do, though you'll need to give me $100 million to see that. Oh, yes! Its pre-order-o-crowdfunding has now passed $100 million too. "KERBLAMMOBLAM!" A weekend of milestones!
Alpha 2.0 is Cloud Imperium Games starting to pull together strands of their whole 'many games in one shared universe' thing. It brings multi-crew ships so you and your pals can pootle around together, first-person shooty-shooting, new locations, new flyable ships, new missions scattered around its space, new flight modes, and more.
It's pretty impressive that all these bits are coming together in one seamless game world, though of course this is still only an alpha. I'm seeing reports of poor performance and crashes with alpha 2.0 from some.
"Star Citizen Alpha 2.0 will evolve as development continues, based on our plans for expanding game features and mechanics... and of course the testing and feedback provided by players," say developers Cloud Imperium Games. "This release should give you your first taste of Star Citizen's future. We believe this is a very special release, and we can't wait to see what you think!"
They've got a whole lot more to add. Here, look, if I just link you to this thing what Alec wrote about what Star Citizen is and why it's controversial to some, I don't have to get into all that myself.
Alpha 2.0's launch announcement and brief patch notes are over here, and here's a vid:
