Genesis Rising

A great concept

Frankly, you will be incredibly lucky if you can even get this game to work on a modern computer.

Another THQ cash grab, release cash in, and abandon.

The game is completely broken. When I start the game, I am bombarded by at least 50 different errors about the sharers. After clicking through that and starting the campaign, 50 more errors. Clicking through all those gives me a game with no textures. If I mutate my ship (a core feature) I am hit with 50 more errors. I recommend getting the game and trying the fixes, if they don't work, refund it.

This game is worth a few bucks now just to see the nice art style and checkout living ships and the out there space opera story line. Sadly the game has issues. The latest version on Steam works fine for me on Win 10 with no additinal effort, the missing file directory thing seems to have been fixed.

Playing it for fun however is severly hampered by two things: Having to micro-mouse in order to use the best weapons (no hotkeys for them) and no player initiated saves.

Cool to checkout, but not something I want to actually play.

No hate for the game, you are just going to go thru hell to get it to work. If you willing to get it to work it is not bad but you may as well get the updated Homeworld tbh. So only for the die hard RTS fans out there.

I really like this game and i even have a few older computers to run it. It has some great ideas and the story with the living ships is really new. Great videos scenes and story.

Unfortunately, it seems that the version from steam has a bug as the ships don't appear in the first mission. I have an older version of the game on the same computer and it runs without problems (Windows 7). So i can recommend the game only if you're willing to create some folders (see forums) and take the risk that it might not run on a windows 10 computer.

One of the first strategy games I ever owned back in the day. Still looks decent even now and has features even most modern RTS games still dont have. Story is good even though it gets hard.
Now for the Elephant in the room... This game crashes, A LOT, if you dont follow the directions for getting the stable setup on it. Heck I think it didnt even work for me on Windows 10 until I followed the guide on it; however once I did that it stopped crashing completely. Overall I will keep my recommendation of it as long as you follow the stability steps since its such a unique and fun game.

The game is simply good, it works without showing any error for me of any kind - be it procedure, be it hardware, be it whatever. It is very inovative and interesting. The graphics are beautiful, the soundtrack is good, you have the option to react in briefings when you talk with some characters. The idea and the whole concept is very unique. There is story, there are a lot of movies, very good movies inside the game that follow the story, and they are very well detailed amd very well made. The only thing I have made before I started to play was to create the folders that are said - in the root game folder you make "save", "temp", "replay" and in the data folder "scripts". The saves are working, everything seems fine so far.

I bought this game a long time back and only just recently manage to make it work.
This method might not work for everyone but for those that want to try anyway for a good old game.
Right click on your desktop
Open Nvidia Control Panel
Select Manage 3D settings
Select Program settings
Click Add then to Browse
Find GenesisRising.Exe it should be at the steam library -> steamapps -> common -> Genesis Rising -> bin
Click open and it should be in the 1. Select a program to customise
At 2. Select the preferred graphics processor choose the High-Performance Nvidia Processor. Don't use Global.
Click apply, wait for it to process.
Now you should be able to open up the game without any problems.
All you need to do now is adjust the graphic settings for the window resolution size so it all fits on the screen.
Enjoy.

27/01/2019
THE GAME WORKS - I can confirm the game is playing fine, using a GTX 780M WINDOWS 10.

I bought this game because I remember it from years ago. graphics and the controls are outdated yes ofcourse it is an old game, but it is also a game I have enjoyed playing.
If you like the idea of space with living gentic ships then you might enjoy this game it isn't like any other games out there currently, and to be honest its a shame.
I would say for the price of £5 you cant really go wrong, give it a try you might be surprised.

Well, I completed it!

It's a graphically pleasing game and I enjoyed the genes configuring of the ships and stations to suite whatever mission purpose. Interesting approach to fleet building.

I did experience bugs - Memory low and a few other CTDs - setting graphics to medium may have lessened these crashes alot. I owned this originally on DVD years back and the same errors happened on that one too.

Characters are ok, same with voice acting. Nothing out of the ordinary on the missions. Religious rule backed by military based plot so expected something along what Star Trek V gave us. Even including a high-jacking too!

Its fine if you want a game in the Homeworld style vein don’t expect it to exceed that in any way that as that truly a masterpiece.

As others have said get it on a sale – Its ok. There’s worse things to spend a few quid on here.

I would recommend for those who are able and willing to overcome the bugs of the game ONLY.
If you desire for a working product, please pass--this is not the game you want!

Pros:
Cool mechanics; nice meaty ship models; pompous in-game goals.

Cons:
Pompous but extremely trite plot.

Critical cons:
Bugs and crashes; no support from the developer.

I do recommend this game, as it is very unique, even though the story is lacking any depth. I like the bioships, upgradable, custom builds, multiple endings.

Sadly I can´t give it a thumbs up, because the game crashes within the first few missions. I would gladly change my review if the developers would release a patch/working version.

NOT WORKING, DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION.

Update:

for anyone that is looking to get this game be warned it is missing a few folders for the game. you need to add them in order to play the campaign properly otherwise you be stuck with just the tutrial to play with. i recomend going he here to solve this problem. forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2592425

ootherwise the game looks neat but glitchy

Here's a game that on the surface is quite interesting; first it's an rts in spaaaaaaace. Points right there.

Ships are customizable, and the take on how the ships work (read - organic ships, with your main resource being 'blood') is certainly different.

But it all still falls flat; Its buggy - but not unforgivingly so, The cut scenes where juvenile to just plain boring. The ship combat was middling at best and restricted to a 2D plane.

Even the missions as a whole are nothing to write home about.

In the end the game has many problems that are easily forgivable on their own but this entire game is just one misstep after another. Get on special or not at all.

Bought it at 75% off and i can't say i'm disappointed at that price. At first i couldn't get it to run, then i disabled Steam community In-Game and the game runs properly now. That was the only problem i had with the game. Voice acting is kinda wooden and lame at times, but the gameplay is solid and challenging with some nice and hard space battles. The idea of organic ships is original and the graphics are quite nice while exploring and battling other factions. Overall a nice little space strategy game. (If you manage to get it to work, which is the most common complaint about this game)

After I recieved a message from my supposed best friend of six years to buy this game, I was a little dismayed to find out it was in fact complete and utter rubbish and I would have been better placed to bet my money on the Queen's Head sunday league team winning the champions league.

First of all to make the game even playable you have to edit folders and such sorcery in the game's root directory. I do not want to be doing this. I'm one of those people that still believe computers are run by magic. I just want to play. Fortunatly for me, my 'friend' talked me through the set-up and his timeless advice of 'press ok until it works' when faced with error messages only four seconds into the game really displayed his numerous IT qualifications.

We both bought it with the intention of playing co-op, however I discovered after three minutes of sheer laughter down my microphone that online support had been withdrawn. Luckily for me the only option that I could access from the main menu was the credits.

I discovered during watching the credits that the game had four advisors. I Would have thought that the first advice would be to make sure it works. At the time of writing my ex-friend is showing on steam as playing this game, I am sad to say he is silent. Dumbstruck.

I'd like to end on a positive however as i know a lot of hard work goes into developing titles, The credits are lovely.
Well Done Advised Advisors. Well Done

The game is broken. Millions of error messages when I load it up, then it dies. None of the fixes available worked for me. Don't bother buying it.

I say stay away from this item. I like this item, but, it has many faults in the Steam version. Just make a Google on it. Its a shame they still sell it WITHOUT addressing the problems. But I guess with
their 0% return policy it is easy money. Also they are not ACCREDITED with BBB and they to NOT reply to BBB inquerys. Sorta says a bit.

Let me start by saying that while I do recommend this game, the Steam version has given people some problems; some say they have had errors on trying to launch, which I have not had, and others have said they have had some in-game oddities such as ships not loading, which I did encounter and initially kept me from advancing past the 2nd map.

The steam version is missing a couple of folders. It is silly but adding these empty folders resolves some of the problems such as the ships not loading. Click Read More if needed to see the fix.

--
Go to your Steam directory.

In Steam\steamapps\common\Genesis Rising
Create three new folders called 'replay','temp', and 'save' (without quotes)

Then in Steam\steamapps\common\Genesis Rising\data
Create a new folder called 'scripts' (without quotes)
--
[Many thanks to Future2012 who originally posted this fix.]

Other than that I didn't get any errors on Win7 64-bit when launching it so I don't know if compatibility mode would help or if it is an OS or driver issue. When I did the above fix I have been able to play through several missions without incident.

All that said, the game itself is really good and has everything from voice acting to cutscenes and a story with some deep religious undertones if you care for that, and if not then you still get to blow lots of stuff up and capture enemy ships and bases. In fact there are countless decisions you get to make about how you want to set up your ships and even which ships you want to take. Moreover I pose that you have likely never played a space game quite like it, as it has elements of RTS thrown in and on top of that your ships are ALIVE and can be genetically modified to suit your desires, and changed on the fly to boot. Plus the music and visuals are quite appealing, so if you can get it to work then it is easily worth $5 or more. Good luck!

After much looking at Youtube about this game, I broke down and bought it for the $2.50 on the Winter Holiday Sale. Unfortunately, on the very first mission my ship won't load which prevents me from finishing or even starting. I also have errors when I click the start button in my library. You can click through the 8+ errors and still launch but that never instills faith when starting a game. I would love to recommend Genesis Rising because of the concept, the music, and being able to enjoy the dying genre of space RTS but, when there isn't a feasible work-around to the bugs or errors you have to call it what it is. As of right now, the game is not playable.