Genesis Rising: The Universal Crusade is situated a couple of thousand years into the future of our world. The humans of planet Earth have united under a spiritual warforce: the Church. Okay, it isn't about the church we know, but the terms do get slapped around our ears.

Many years ago, the Savior, a messiah, inspired humanity to go explore and colonize space. Now there's only one part left that hasn't been taken: the place where apparently all life started and where legends tell that the Universal Heart is hidden. Finding this holy grail is against the will of the Church, however, as this supposedly can make humans "true" gods.

In its own overconfidence, humanity has created its own organic ships by means of genetic manipulation and with a couple of extra genes these can be added with several weapons and functionality. Mother ships can even breathe life into new ships that on their turn can be added with new genes. Where there's life there's also food and here that's blood. No space mines with ore to earn money but sucking out dead ships and reservoirs give the life force to manage your fleet.

The game has its own unique style but admit it: living, blood sucking and child bearing space ships aren't common good in games. They're not new in sci-fi land (see the TV series Farscape), but they're not used a lot. The Organids - which is the name of these creatures - are well modeled and animated, but in my opinion are quite difficult to tell apart. Nice is the fact that they grow along dynamically depending on the genes plugged in.

The biggest limitation of the game is that the game world is built up completely planar. Those that know space RTS games like Homeworld will certainly have to adjust to this lack of freedom. There's also no fog-of-war to be found and the full playing field is immediately visible. Quite irritating when the enemy in single player mission suddenly pops up out of nowhere.