Faster than Light is not really netbook compatible... this is how the game looks like at a non-native 1152x864 resolution.
Here at Netbookist, I take pride in helping my readers. So here’s something from the get-go: Faster than Light will not display properly on netbooks that do not support at least a 1280×720 resolution.
Future patches might change it, but as of now, you’re stuck with either playing it on an external display or a different computer altogether.
This is how full-screen on a standard laptop screen looks like.
The game is still playable if you really, really wanted to play it on a netbook. The game’s native resolution is 1280×720, which means that on a typical netbook, you’ll have a lot of horizontal resolution truncated. The fix to this, to make this game playable, is to familiarize yourself with the way the game works before attempting to play it on a netbook and playing it at the maximum resolution which your graphics card will allow. More crucially, play the game in windowed mode, so you can move the window around to see parts that are truncated.
Finally, for the majority of netbook users with integrated Intel graphics drivers, it can be hacked to 1152×864. If you haven’t already hacked the drivers, follow this link.
Readers, if a future patch solves this problem, please do let me know!
Quick Review
Faster than Light is a unique game. For ten dollars, you get many, many hours of fun.
The game is basically a point-and-click game, where you have to manage the roles of your party. For maximum efficiency, you have to match certain jobs to certain people. Each space race has attributes that make some better at attacking, some immune to fire and some can repair your ship faster. Your job is to make sure you’re getting most out of your (non-)human resources.
With that done, your job is to constantly upgrade your ship so that you can fend off the final ‘boss’, the Rebel Flagship. On you way to meet the Flagship, you will attack lesser enemies who will dispense resources such as Scrap, which is the currency you use to buy upgrades for your ship.
With these two elements – a good ship and a good crew – you will then be tasked to defend yourself against pirates and other aggressors. Combat involves choosing your target and crossing your fingers, much similar to X-Com games. In Faster than Light, you will have to choose discrete faculties of the ship you want to destroy – you can destroy the shield regenerator, the weapons first, if your strategy is max damage to them, and less damage to yourself.
On the other hand, you can pick an alternative strategy of maximum resource gain, by teleporting your best troops to their ship, and killing the crew in it. Leaving the ship in tact will generally give you more resources per battle.
All these minute considerations might seem unnecessary, but the real test of how well your strategy is will come together when you face the Flagship. And fear the Flagship much, because this game has no save game feature that features like a “backup”. Instead, the save game feature is there only to allow you to pause and resume the game once. A deliberate feature that was annoying at first, but I learnt to appreciate it as a means to keep the game challenging, and to make you keep coming back for more.
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