Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager

 PC
Metascore
62

Mixed or average reviews - based on 8 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 8
  3. Negative: 1 out of 8
  1. Riot Pixels
    Dec 22, 2014
    40
    Encyclopedia is the only decent thing about Space Program Manager, but the truly best part is not even in the game. The manual appendices have detailed descriptions of both US and USSR space programs, and even an interview with Buzz Aldrin himself. They should have published a book instead of a game, really.

User Reviews

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User Score
6.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 15 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 15
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 15
  3. Negative: 4 out of 15
  1. Riptides99
    Nov 3, 2014
    5
    This game is an updated version of the 1993 turn-based strategy/management PC game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space which players generally referThis game is an updated version of the 1993 turn-based strategy/management PC game Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space which players generally refer to BARIS. The original of which was based on an older board game from times past. BARIS now falls under abandonware status, with Buzz Aldrin's name removed, and can still be found on the internet and is free to play if you can get it working through DosBox or similar. For it's time BARIS was one of those games you either painstakingly took the time to learn and loved, or you got frustrated with it and hated it for the unforgiving game mechanics. The one thing everyone can agree on is after 21 years it hasn't aged well. So enter in a small indie developer with aspirations of bringing this game to the present, it went Early Access on Steam last year, and looking at the final release results it seems the only feedback they got were from die-hard fans of the original which didn't improve much of anything.

    Having played a fair bit of BARiS back in the day I was able to jump into this game and obtain moon landing wins on my first play through of both the USA and RUSSIA. As there is no real deadline, you play until you win or the game tells you the AI won, but let's be honest, there's no real AI player here just random events moving the AI goals forward via headline blurbs at each turn screen. The biggest part of the difficulty is going to come from understanding the mechanics of the game which nothing in the game lends to help you with, there's no tutorial for instance. But once you figure out the mechanics hidden behind an obtuse and unintuitive UI, that's lacking even basic mouseover tooltips, the rest of the game becomes just optimizing a path from the start to the win goal. And once you discover the optimal path then that's pretty much the game.

    And the game itself just consists of people management and training, choosing tech to research that you increase the reliability of, then choosing and launching missions. I mean that's it in your choices, it's pretty cut and dry. Once a mission is launched the game is totally hands off and you await a resounding success or an epic fail while watching cut-scenes. The original game included NASA footage for this, the new version uses crisper graphics which are static animated and are a bit of a letdown and quickly become repetitive after the second viewing. But let's go back to the fails which you'll have plenty of and be penalized severely for. The only panacea will be in discovering that you can reload the last autosave before a mission, and you'll quickly find out why there's an auto-resolve on the mission attempt screen.

    Personally I'm torn over whether I consider this a good game or just money grabbing garbage at the $30 price point, especially when I factor in the lack of features in this game that are considered pretty standard. For those who may have wanted BARiS updated with better graphics and OS support for 2014, this is it and it's extremely well done for what it is. But I feel that there was a huge missed opportunity where they could have used BARiS as their starting inspiration and made a completely new game with better than the 21 year old game mechanics that are presented in this game currently with it's fairly obtuse UI that one has to muddle through. Just saying that it may have been better to have this game pay homage to the original game than to have cloned it outright with few additions. Even the play by Email multiplayer, through a proxy login account no less, is a throwback to games in the 90's when direct host turn based play is considered standard on strategy games these days.

    Both the game and UI require you to have a working knowledge of all the things in the game but it's tedious to be expected to leave the game to pursue a PDF manual when the info could have been included in the game itself. And if they're really attempting a mobile port of this it's highly unrealistic to expect players to "look up things in a manual" when playing. I'm just sorta dumbfounded at this point with the released game and I really really want to like it, because nostalgia, but when I compare it to so many other games and especially "tycoon" style game that have come in gone in the interim 21 years, this just seems really dated and missing the most basic things gamers have become accustomed in the year 2014. It's just a shame they couldn't bring much more than the game's graphics into the future as well, as the rest of the game is still stuck in 1993.    … Full Review »
  2. jjknap
    Dec 28, 2014
    10
    I have been playing this game for a year now, and I have to say it is a fantastic upgrade for Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. This developerI have been playing this game for a year now, and I have to say it is a fantastic upgrade for Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. This developer listens to the fans and has made hundreds of changes based on our feedback. Some highlights:

    * Specific artwork for each mission launch/orbit/etc.
    * Sounds and chatter that match the mission.
    * Ability to combine different rocket stages that never flew.
    * Historically accurate missions available.
    * 3 different organizations to play: Russia, U.S., GSA.
    * Play the race to the Moon or sandbox mode.
    * Multiplayer

    This is a fantastic game about the space program! I recommend it without hesitation!    … Full Review »
  3. Kalesin
    Feb 24, 2015
    10
    Spiritual successor of the legendary BARIS, we put ourselves as stewards of the US space agency or Soviet during the Cold War.
    Although still    Spiritual successor of the legendary BARIS, we put ourselves as stewards of the US space agency or Soviet during the Cold War.
    Although still not reach the level of its predecessor, each patch, each upgrade is a big improvement over the previous one.
    If you love the space race, you have to try.    … Full Review »
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