1.1 hours played
Written 10 years ago
From the screenshots, I was expecting some nice arcadey space-shooter goodness. My hope was basically for a Star Fox knockoff with better graphics.
Unfortunately, what I got was a janky, poorly voice acted mess that runs far worse than a game of this grapical fidelity should.
The entire game is played on a flat plane. There is no 3-d movement or action. Ships turn very quickly. So quickly it's difficult to do fine maneuvers. Generally, this means that a dogfight consists of either a series of head-on passess, or flying behind a wiggling enemy fighter. It's incredibly hard to see where your shots are going. There's no sort of lead indicator, and your "Crosshairs" are basically useless. Your bullets are your best indicator, and even then, it's mostly "This is the general flightpath of the enemy ship, maybe he'll run into enough of them to die." I found one of the most effictive dogfighting techniques to be to sit still, and just point your gun at the incoming enemy fighters, as that's the only time they really flight striaght.
The campaign missions are frequently interrupted with poorly written cutscenes which basically consist of your ship hovering near other guy's ship. Then you skip them, and you're thrown against a timed wave of infinite enemy fighters. The voice acting comes in here, as the only things more repetitive than the sound of your guns constantly firing (there's barely any reason not to), and the music, are the death cries of enemy pilots. The frequent "Arghs!" and "Oh No!"s are delivered with the drama and gravitas of realizing you put slightly too much creamer in your coffee.
I was hoping the arrival of capital ships on the playing field would make things more interesting. Unfortunately, rather than doing things like take out individual guns, or subsystems like engines, they're just another life & shield bar. Actually, the ones I fought were easier than the fighters, because they're so much larger and easier to hit.
Finally, the options menus are limited. If you're in a mission they're limited to "Quit" or "Don't quit". Anything you change results in the game restarting. You can use a controller, but you get even less fine control. Sometimes the turn keys just plain didn't work, or your acceleration will get stuck on.
I didn't have high hopes for this game, yet it still managed to dash them. For that, bravo.
