Publisher: Meridian4
Developer: Hermitworks Entertainment
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows Vista/XP; 1.0 GHz processor; 512 MB RAM; DirectX 9.0c; 200 MB hard drive space
Genre: Action/Strategy
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

It should come as no surprise to find out that commerce is just as important on a galactic scale as it is here on Earth. Goods and services run the show on terra firma, so why should the expanse of the cosmos be any different? Space Trader: Merchant Marine provides a genre blending answer, taking players to the far reaches of our galaxy and beyond on a quest for economic superiority.

If you take a first-person shooter and a trade simulation and roll them up into an easy-to-use tortilla of a menu system, you have Space Trader. Your mission, as a rookie trafficker, is to use your business savvy to buy low and sell high across the solar system, bring lawbreakers to justice, and hopefully amass a fortune while avoiding being taxed by the bureaucratic jerks at the Ministry of Accounts.

The trade aspect of the game allows you to deal with legitimate businesspersons as well as the seedy underbelly of the black market. Buy stocks of oil and staple foods and sell them to planets in need, or dive into illegality with human organs and “bananabis” if you want. It all makes money for you, but it also expends valuable time while you travel, so plan ahead. Should you want even more coinage, the bounty-hunting missions (which play out like Unreal Tournament matches) drop you into an arena-like setting and task you with taking out a target before they can escape.

It all fills the bank, but ST’s $10 price point won’t break yours, even if the purchase is just for an experiment. The visuals, while not even close to today’s standards, serve the subject matter well and run smoothly on almost any decent system. The user-friendly interface allows you to wander around the trade hubs and interact with locals or business contacts, or just access them immediately through the menu if you want to be quick about it. In summation, it all works as it needs to work.

Yet while Space Trader is undoubtedly a great deal, there’s nothing to keep you coming back, aside from the core element of making money. You buy, you sell, you kill, repeat. If you don’t do this in the allotted time, you fail and have to start the chapter (of which there are five) over again. And don’t think about saving your progress. It’s done automatically after you travel, so do your business and forget about keeping any product you might have if you quit before your trip is completed. Voice work is surprisingly well done in some areas (some of the performances are downright hilarious), but when it fails, it’s really bad.

Space: truly the financial frontier. Space Trader: Merchant Marine is an inexpensive ticket into the realm of galactic commerce and killing. There are no pan-dimensional levels of depth here, but all things considered, you get more than you pay for, plus the heart and soul of an old-school PC game.