barely fatal

Well ok, not quite a review, more like a summary of my thoughts on it after completing the game…

 
Graphically the game looks pretty good, assuming you got the required hardware to run it on full. The geometry on the models and stations can be weird, and largely impractical on quite a few cases. Tends to happen quite a bit in these games when you get artists designing the actual geometry… lots of pretty bends and contours but very little looks realistic or even practical. Get past that and it looks pretty good.

 
The ship itself, the DarkStar, is by far the distinguishing feature of this game. Its ability to grow and change as the game progresses keeps you going since you want to see just how powerful a ship you can make.

 
Spoiler: If you try the game don’t upgrade your hull past the point when you get 4 turrets. Keep in mind you only get 20 upgrades. The extra hull strength may seem nice but don’t kid yourself, if you cant keep your shields up the hull isn’t gona save you in a heavy fire fight.

 
The game has a linear storyline, if you can call it a storyline, but the way in which you make money is rather open. It doesn’t have a real economy but it does a nice job of misleading the average player into thinking it has. From pure observation, nothing outside of whatever system you happen to be in is active. So no galactic wide economy ala X-Series, considerably more fun and compelling to play compared to the last instalment of that game though.

 
Combat is arcade style, reminds me of Freespace in a way. Not saying its bad, not saying its good either… it just is

 
At the end of gameplay the universe keeps running, so it can be classed as open ended… more or less. There isn’t anything to do unless you want to hunt pirates (the AI is no real challenge, unless you crank up the difficulty and even then its only a challenge against very large numbers), escort ships or mine (very basic implementation of mining). So, all in all, it’s rather pointless after the storyline is done.

 
Personally I quite enjoyed playing it,  for what it is it’s a pretty good game. The only fault I can see in it is that the storyline (or what passes for one in the English translation) is very poor. I don’t know if the original storyline was any good but the English translation is rather crapy. The entire storyline could be laid out in less words then it took to write this post

 
Overall I think a 6/10

Good concept, good implementation, weak story telling.

 
 
 
 
 

… to kill an orc in Dark Messiah Demo (almost).

Did you ever have this feeling that something was going on you just can’t quite describe or put your finger on? You can almost smell it in the air. You can see change coming up the horizon, but you can’t yet see if it’s a leisure liner or a tanker rushing to crush and sink your boat. You just know there’s gonna be change. For me, always when I had this kind of feeling in the past, it turned out for the good. Still it leaves me nervous and restless – sorta like children on Christmas eve.

Last weekend was demo-weekend. I re-played the Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic demo, which is short, but fun nonetheless. I have that game marked down for pre-ordering.

I also tried Flight Simulator X – the graphics are pretty, the controls work, but the game still is kinda buggy. I wonder what will be possible in multiplayer mode.

A colleague promised to lend me his copies of the first Sopranos season. I’ve heard so many good things and now I really got to see for myself. The show was canceled in Germany as far as I know, I never noticed it was on.

The summer is over. I stare at the horizon but I … just … can’t … tell …

I did it! I win! I prevail!

I’m head of the mages’ guild, the thieves’ guild and, of course, the assassin’s guild. And now I helped Martin close all those nasty Oblivion gates which made my framerate drop. Everybody loves me now. Depite my, err, colourful reputation.

Now I’m level 28, uh, I have no idea how many there actually are, I think 50 or so – but I need a break now. I’m the hero, I kick ass, what else do you need.

 

To see the real Me … click the link.

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