Sometimes, you really do just need to play something different. Having just finished with several smaller games, I was ready for something bigger and I hadn't done much with real space flight sims... ever... so what the hell, why not? I am SO glad I took this chance.
Story: Kayron just had one of the most intense hours of his life. He was just congratulated by Robert, one of the co-founders of the security firm he was going to work for as he completed his pilot training. He also watched the DarkStar One, the most advanced fighter ship in the galaxy and secret project his father built for this company fly in only to be told it was his. And while he was certainly excited to hear this, he was also informed of his father's death at the hand of the Thul, one of the alien races inhabiting the galaxy with mankind. And while they are indeed only one of the races they were the only one that chose to close themselves off rather then join the Galactic Union after galactic war had ravaged everyone so as to prevent it from ever happening again.
And while this should be a devastating blow, he was also told that it wasn't simply a battle that took his father's life... it was sabotage. And the heinous deed was done by a man named Jack who both Kayron's father and Rob unfortunately trusted. Filled with justified rage, Kayron swore revenge on the spot and began his search for the traitor.
From this point, you will begin a galaxy hopping story, most of which will be chasing down Jack to get your revenge. To do so, you will need the help of many cast members from the different alien races that make up the galaxy, helping them in return. The result is a main plot that while established quickly, just as quickly becomes a back drop as you discover personal and political issues you will help your allies with, ranging from simply collecting minerals in asteroid fields to blowing up rouge cruisers, all of which will push forward the general picture of what's going on in the galaxy.
But there is a serious pacing issue in how this is done. Most of what you do is simply an ends to a means to find Jack, leaving most of the main story to be little more then superficial and quickly pushed through when the game finally gets to it. The biggest symptom of this is just how trusting literally everyone in the plot is! Anyone who was an enemy 5 minutes ago, could suddenly be friendly with little to no explanation so long as it serves to bring the player to the next plot-point, and vice versa. This becomes exceptionally obvious as you get within the last quarter of the game, cheapening the whole thing and just being a really good example of REALLY bad writing/pacing when a game wants to tell an epic story and just can't quite pull it off.
4/10
Graphics: DarkStar One is an old game, having been released over a decade ago, and the cutscenes certainly show this. Stilted animation, low polygon models, and even being low-resolution and pre-rendered just makes the game look old as hell and from a by-gone era that simply aged very poorly.
And yet there is a real duality here, as once you are in the game, all that melts away quickly. Instead you are treated to absolutely gorgeous deep-space backdrops of nebulous clouds, starry fields, and even more wondrous things. You will find amazing looking planets and moons and asteroids abound, and that's before you get to the ships and stations you will need to interact with on a regular basis.
Each of the races in this game have their own style, making their ships (the classes of which themselves are varied) and bases stand out from each other dramatically, even as they all look absolutely gorgeous. From the classic human technology to the organic O'cto ships and stations that look like animals formed to fit the function they now serve, it all looks the part and amazingly so.
And when you land at a station, these styles continue to stand out as you are given a look within, reflecting the race and population around/staying on the station when you land.
The only issue I can really give about all of this is the lighting. There are times when it "jumps" like when entering a mining asteroid or some of the stations having a blatant line between light and dark areas that doesn't so much show a line of shadow as one between polygons making that station up. This last one is exceptionally rare and only seems to be on one specific type of station, but it definitely stands out in a bad way.
7/10
Sound: Unlike the video side of this game, the audio doesn't have a lot to stand out, good or bad. Due to the nature of the game, almost all the sound effects you will hear are engine whine and thrusters, weapons firing, pings off of shields and much more metallic clangs when shields are simply not an option. All of this sounds pretty damn good, but it's about what you would expect for such sound effects.
The same can be said for both the music and the voice acting. Both sound pretty good, but they don't get a lot of time stand out. The music includes a few sci-fi sounding tracks and metal rifts you will be hearing a lot of between your stays at stations, flying through space and combat with space pirates/hunters/whowever else you choose to fire your guns at. The exception to this is the very last battle which pulls out the final stops and let you duke it out with the final encounter to some really high energy metal.
Voices, I wish I could say got such a chance, but sadly they did not. The actors definitely came through, but the script just didn't give them a shot at showing what they could do. As noted in the story section of the review, this game just isn't well written plot-wise and this is where it shows the most with issues like turning everything going on 180 degrees on literally 2 spoken sentences if that. Again, the voices themselves are believable... what's said in them... yeah, not really so much (unless you live in the most gullible galaxy to ever exist).
6/10
Gameplay: Where many games I've had to shoot down fell apart here, this is where this one shines! You will spend the entire game either in the cockpit of the DarkStar One or resting on one of the many many stations throughout the galaxy (one per solar system). Each of these parts have specific functions for you, all of which combine to make a fun little game with a lot of options to do what you want. Now that is not to say this game is not linear... it most certainly is. But you will be allowed to progress at your own pace and just enjoy it all.
The majority of your time will be flying your ship and the game will show you the basics of how to do this with your first "tutorial" mission. It is obvious that this is what it is, but it is your first hint of just how intuitive the ship is to control. In fact, the entire ship can be controlled with 6 keyboard buttons and your mouse if you so desire. You will steer and aim your front weapons with the mouse, using your cursor's position on the screen to control the direction and how wide/sharp you turn your ship as well as the exact spot you will fire your guns. Those guns themselves are fired by the left-mouse-button while you will select your engine power (speed) by spinning your mouse wheel. Add to this maneuvering thrusters on the WASD keys and you have a total maneuverability package that makes you quite the agile fighter. The last absolutely essencial button is the Space bar, which will allow you bring up a mouse cursor on your screen while you hold it down to access any controls you dont feel like remembering the hotkey for by clicking the icons around the edges. You may want a few more buttons, but this will get you by for a large amount of the game.
In addition to this, you will have three additional weapon types available: missiles, turrets, and a plasma cannon. You will not have missiles right away but have to buy a launcher and the missiles to go with it, but when you do, clicking that mouse wheel will allow you to fire those. Turrets, on the other hand, do not need to be fired. Assuming you have the energy/missiles in stock, your targeting computer will do the work for you.
But the unique weapon here is the plasma cannon. This really isn't so much a weapon, however, as system of weapons and upgrade boosts that recharges over time. There are several possible options you will be able to choose from and upgrade over the game with many different uses. And that upgrade system is part of one of the main features of this game.
Throughout the game, you will find things called "artifacts" by either rescuing a planet being controlled by space pirates or finding them inside mining asteroids. When you collect enough of them, the DarkStar One itself will level up, giving you a point to upgrade one of the three key parts of your ship (hull, wings, or engine) as well as a point to put into one of the modes of your plasma cannon.
The parts upgrade independently, and while every upgrade will increase your hull's hitpoints and class of parts it will support, each part also adds different effects to the ship. Your hull will increase how much damage you can take in addition to the regular increase and (occasionally) add slots for additional turrets you can put on your ship, while your wings will improve your ships agility and (occasionally) add slots for more front weapons you fire directly, and your engine makes it easier to maneuver when carrying cargo, increase how much power your various systems can keep as well as increasing the rate all of them recharge.
Your plasma cannon, on the other hand, upgrades more like a skill tree. You will have a single point to add to one of the options available at the time, but once you reach the criteria showed in the chart, choice of what you want to do with it begin to open up. In my case by the end of the game I was choosing between boosting the recharge rate and damage done by my energy weapons, doing similar for my shields, or the ultimate weapon, an impervious plasma shield that turns your ship into a battering ram that can ruin cruisers in seconds.
But in addition to being in space, you will be spending time on space stations as well, which is a lot more menu controlled. On these stations, you will be able to buy and sell parts for your ship, make money to fuel this need, and even take on side-missions which can unlock new solar systems. The parts include front guns, turrets, and various things like upgrades for your generator or capacitors or even quality of life devices like a landing computer. However, in addition to credits, these systems also require your ship to be updated to a required class before they can be used, making that leveling system all the more essential to take advantage of. In addition, your ship will also have limited slots to equip anything you buy. You can swap things in and out at will and with ease, but you can only have so many running at once.
To make money for these upgrades, you have three basic choices. First and most expected, you can look at the terminal to see what missions are being offered by people on the station. These can be anything from defending a cargo carrier to taking pictures for a calendar, to the bounty on a known wanted criminal. If you want something with less risk to your life, you can also become a trader, with a descent list of cargo you can buy and sell at every station. You will not make as much as you will on some missions, but it is also a lot more of a sure thing and I recommend doing this as you cruise across the galaxy in general, if not when you need to raise cash quick. Finally if you stumble on a side mission, handling these correctly will reward you with a lot of credits.
8/10
Bugs: This game ran almost flawlessly, buy I definately have to say almost.
- Crashes: yes, this game did crash for me. In my almost 50 hours of play, I had it crash to the desktop 5 times. In each case, it was clean and even launched a window that back in the day would have sent the information about the crash to the developer so they could work on the bugs. The game would start up fine the next time and due to fairly frequent auto-saves, I might lose a couple minutes of game time, so this was hardly a deal-breaker. The only interesting point is that these crashes seemed to only happen on stations, so there might be a bug in there I was just running into. This would also explain the save issue as the game auto-saves when you land in one of these places, and it never crashed before the save was finished.
- Weird lighting: A much less serious but more common bug, there are times when the lighting just didn't seem to work right. Be it completely changing tones dramatically when entering ANY mining asteroid, the noted shadowing issue in the graphics with some stations by the O'cto, or just a flicker for a second or two on your HUD, it seems like there were some monor glitches in the lighting system behind the look of this game.
Score:
8/10
System Requirements:
- 1.6 Ghz Intel or AMD processor
- 512 MB RAM
- Geforce 3 or later with at least 128 MB VRAM
- Windows XP
- 6 GB Hard drive sapce
System Specs:
- AMD FX 8350 running at 4.0 GHz
- 16 GB RAM
- Nvidia Geforce 960 with 4 GB VRAM
- Windows 10
Source: Steam
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