Moonbase Alpha

Moonbase Alpha is part of a NASA effort to make people (notably, young people) more excited about space exploration and development. If you ask me, it's an utter failure. You've never seen the moon as boring as it is here.

Being Unreal-based, it looks and controls a little better than you might expect from a game developed under government contract; still not as good as a real video game, but, hey, better than Rogue Warrior. The gameplay, though, is about as uninteresting as you can get. Per Wikipedia:

As a meteor strike damages an outpost near the moon's South Pole, the player must take control of a member of the outpost's research team and repair the outpost in order to save the 12 years of research accomplished there.

So the entire game consists of moon-jogging very slowly to different parts of a map, picking up equipment (one piece at a time), repairing parts, and fiddling with other doodads. I admit that I don't have a full impression of the gameplay flow in my head, because as I was trying to explore the map, I "deactivated" my equipment case and it disappeared, leaving my only equipment resupply several minutes of slow-jogging away.

I have to give Moonbase Alpha a little respect for its awkward movement and tedious mechanics -- being an astronaut isn't all ice cream and blowjobs, and much of what the game simulates is probably well-researched and realistic (with the exception of some solder-bypass puzzles ala Mass Effect 2). But this is exactly why it doesn't work as a NASA recruitment tool. Who would want to do this in real life?

If NASA wants to get kids excited about space travel, they should focus on the awesome results - like exploring distant worlds, and incredible photographs - instead of on the hard, boring work it takes getting there.

Better than: losing a $300-million probe
Not as good as: making real progress
Instead, watch: Moon, When We Left Earth, Apollo 13, Planetes

Progress: Gave Up -- Accidentally despawned my equipment after ~10 minutes