Posted December 20, 2008
Before I start nitpicking, the game is quite good. Don't let the following discourage you too much, but it's stuff you should know.
The voice acting in this game is quite horrible. The various characters sound like they are completely detached from the events in progress, and don't mesh well with eachother. It's like they never heard what their co-actors were supposed to say, and thus had to just play things by ear. The same goes for the dialogue itself. It seems disjointed and not really relevant to their co-actors' remarks or conversation.
The gameplay itself is good, albeit a little too much of a Freelancer ripoff to me. It's like they decided to mod Freelancer to be a First-Person simulator instead of a third-person simulator. The trading and mission system is almost plagiarized 100%. The only thing that differs is that the menus involved are slightly less intuitive.
We've all seen the storyline before. The main protagonist has suffered some sort of loss, and is now working himself back up to the top. He's got some sort of specialty that no one else does (in this case, his ship) and is pulled into an ever increasing conspiracy and ends up having to save everyone.
The unavoidable female, added entirely to attract the attention of the love-starved gamer, is about as two-dimensional as a cardboard cutout. Fits the main protagonist perfectly, in that respect.
However, all this aside, it's a good game. The fights are fun, the control system isn't bad at all, and there's a certain open feel to the game. It's not really an open game, but it gets close. The storyline, while horribly cliche, still adds a bit of flavor to the game.
If you are capable of overlooking the atrocious voice acting, the robotic feel of every cutscene with a living being in it, the cliche storyline and the overall feel of a Freelancer ripoff... Well, this game isn't bad at all. I bought it and played it, and I can't say I've wasted the money. Still, if you're teetering on the edge between this one and let's say Freespace 1&2 or Tachyon the Fringe and so on, the go for the other games. They are older, but far better made than this one.
Be aware that this game can also bug out on high-res widescreen monitors. Make sure all your video drivers and so on are updated.
The voice acting in this game is quite horrible. The various characters sound like they are completely detached from the events in progress, and don't mesh well with eachother. It's like they never heard what their co-actors were supposed to say, and thus had to just play things by ear. The same goes for the dialogue itself. It seems disjointed and not really relevant to their co-actors' remarks or conversation.
The gameplay itself is good, albeit a little too much of a Freelancer ripoff to me. It's like they decided to mod Freelancer to be a First-Person simulator instead of a third-person simulator. The trading and mission system is almost plagiarized 100%. The only thing that differs is that the menus involved are slightly less intuitive.
We've all seen the storyline before. The main protagonist has suffered some sort of loss, and is now working himself back up to the top. He's got some sort of specialty that no one else does (in this case, his ship) and is pulled into an ever increasing conspiracy and ends up having to save everyone.
The unavoidable female, added entirely to attract the attention of the love-starved gamer, is about as two-dimensional as a cardboard cutout. Fits the main protagonist perfectly, in that respect.
However, all this aside, it's a good game. The fights are fun, the control system isn't bad at all, and there's a certain open feel to the game. It's not really an open game, but it gets close. The storyline, while horribly cliche, still adds a bit of flavor to the game.
If you are capable of overlooking the atrocious voice acting, the robotic feel of every cutscene with a living being in it, the cliche storyline and the overall feel of a Freelancer ripoff... Well, this game isn't bad at all. I bought it and played it, and I can't say I've wasted the money. Still, if you're teetering on the edge between this one and let's say Freespace 1&2 or Tachyon the Fringe and so on, the go for the other games. They are older, but far better made than this one.
Be aware that this game can also bug out on high-res widescreen monitors. Make sure all your video drivers and so on are updated.