12 Severely Underrated Sci-Fi Video Games You Need To Love

4. FTL - Faster Than Light

Another one for the overlooked pile, as FTL's pixel-perfect approach to managing your own spacecraft is one for the ages - and a model that would sit right at home if paired with something like XCOM's combat when it came to boarding other ships. Only available on Steam, FTL is a new-age roguelike/endless-runner that lets you name your own ship and first few crew members, before embarking on a cross-galaxy survival mission to join up with more Federation ships, as the evil Rebellion slowly descends on you. You'll die many times in the pursuit of this goal, forever restarting whilst unlocking different ships and crew members, but it's in the micro-managing of your assets - such as drones, droids to send in, turrets to man and engines to cool down - that an overwhelming sense of captaining your ship comes in. Y'know all those scenes in Star Wars or Firefly when Han Solo/Mal is trying in vein to stop some random valve from spewing steam everywhere, whilst also defending the ship from incoming fire on all sides? FTL can go from annihilating enemy forces as you level up, to a series of the aforementioned encounters - all bringing about one of the most immersive and rewarding games of all time when you finally get to the end in one piece.