Euro Gamer DarkStar review Negative to X Universe

[Bishop149]

Agree with much of what has been said here, having played the demo my first impression of DS1 was "Oooooo a freelancer clone", thats not all bad, I liked freelancer! It is missing some of the features I likes from freelancer but then it has a few extra ones.

Generally not as good or as involving as X2 or X3 but it does have one fairly major thing going for it over X3 that people here seem to have forgotten. . . . .

. . . . . It works!!! Straight away, not 4 patches later (and whilst I do love X3 to deathit still isn't quite up to scratch IMO). Also played it for quite a few hours and not a single crash, stutter or blip!

I used to take that sort of thing for granted in games but its becoming increasingly important for me since the ABYSMAL release state of X3 and the fact that (whilst I got a good amount of play out of it) Oblivion had a major crash about once a hour; the least stable game I have ever played!

I just want games to work these days.

And in case anyone blames my specs, they're high enough: Athlon 64 3200+, 6800GT and 1024MB RAM.

[Captain Kremen]

Anybody played it yet How does it compare to the X Series?

Elite 4 (Vapourware) lives up to reputation and moves to March 2007!!

Any more up & coming X competition?

[MushroomHead]

Anywhere cheaper than play.com who are offering it for £25?

It's £17 not £25, I just ordered my copy.

[Vengeful]

DS1 has one thing that I wished X3 had, and thats the ability to grab missions whenever I want, wether its escort, pirates, checking something out or transfering cargo. I dont like to hop from station to station hoping the BS will have something, I like that I can go to the mission terminal, grab something and be on my way, also think its neat that I can contact cargo ships and see about escorting them for credits.

as for the game in general I like it, its simple fun imo, but I wouldnt compare it to X3, its a nice change of pace, but both games are different. DS1 is more of an arcade shooter, while X3 is a sim if know what I mean.

[Koci]

Still waiting for next PRIVATEER, with YES - mission terminals......


Many various missions, secret places, land on planets,
cockpits (interactive of course), not many ships, few only, but with
cockpits, upgradable internal systems (something to repair too,
not only after battles) and ..........I want to walk on my ship,
and bases, why not ?

yes, I miss that in the X series.

But X3 looks more.......... for adults ? (much more than Darkstar)
And I like it very much

Best Regards

Koci

BTW - someone played PARKAN 2 ? Similar title, I don't see many info
about this game, space sim and FPP on the planets surface.....

[BugMeister]

Agree with much of what has been said here, having played the demo my first impression of DS1 was "Oooooo a freelancer clone", thats not all bad, I liked freelancer! It is missing some of the features I likes from freelancer but then it has a few extra ones.

Generally not as good or as involving as X2 or X3 but it does have one fairly major thing going for it over X3 that people here seem to have forgotten. . . . .

. . . . . It works!!! Straight away, not 4 patches later (and whilst I do love X3 to deathit still isn't quite up to scratch IMO). Also played it for quite a few hours and not a single crash, stutter or blip!

I used to take that sort of thing for granted in games but its becoming increasingly important for me since the ABYSMAL release state of X3 and the fact that (whilst I got a good amount of play out of it) Oblivion had a major crash about once a hour; the least stable game I have ever played!

I just want games to work these days.

And in case anyone blames my specs, they're high enough: Athlon 64 3200+, 6800GT and 1024MB RAM.

- it's not just about specs
- it's also about tuning.. once your PC is properly tuned, there's no reason to worry..
- I've played X3 all the way through the patch series without any major problems
- same with Oblivion.. and I've only got a 6600GT

[muppetts]

Oblivion has always been a problem for me!

[ethoward71]

Well, I just got Darkstar One tonight and played it for about 3 hours. It's a lot of fun. I wouldn't compare it all with X3. Well, ok maybe a bit

X3 as a sandbox game is MUCH better, if you want a good story line and easy to play action, Darkstar 1 is for you. It's like taking a break from X3. Awsome missions, good story line (so far). The trading is a bit of a joke though, it's TOO easy. You really can rack up some creds really quick by just trading between two sectors. The sectors don't have enough variety for me, they look ok, but 1 trading station and a research station or two...blah.

The game starts off very easy, the first 2 or 3 systems won't offer much of a challenge, but it does get tough. I was easily able to liberate a sector from pirates (nice reward) but when I came across the second, I got my butt handed to me quickly. So, if it seems a bit too easy at first, hang in there, it'll become more of a challenge.

If you like Freelancer, Privateer, I'd recommend this game. I'm not sure how much longer I'll play it after the story line is finished because the sandbox part seems like it could be beefier, but it's still been worth the purchase anyway.

I bought this and Space Rangers 2 the same day, I don't think I'm going to be seeing much of the great outdoors this weekend.

[Nyax]

I too have been playing Darkstar. So far-

The good-

-The cutscenes while not a patch on Freelancer are still a marked improvment over Xs
- I've already played more plot then X3 and judging by the size of the universe and the rate i've unlocked it, i'd say i'm barely a quarter of the way through the story.
-It's a refreshing change to be able to sit down and play for half an hour, and when you've finished to feel like you've actually acomplished something. Unlike X.
-The Economy does have a degree of dynamicness to it. It's not like Freelancer where commodities are the same price at a given station forever. The prices vary based on available supply and the relative wealth of the colony.
-It's nice to be able to find and take on missions whenever you feel like it.
-The Secret system, that can only be unlocked by taking on a special one off mission is a nice touch, as is the system liberation aspect.
-The ground missions are vastly superior to X3s similar attempt.
-You get to leave your ship when you dock (albeit only freelancer style, but it's still vastly better then X)

The Bad-
-System design. Yet another X style box with a planet in it. Why is noone doing full solar systems anymore? (Frontier, FFE, Privateer, Freelancer etc.)
-Combat is OK but a bit too simplistic.
-The voice acting. It's a bit bland.
-The plot so far is a little awkward.
-There's a seemingly random unlocking of visitable systems in some sectors.

The Ugly-
-Pretty much all of the games colour schemes-
-Especially some Mortok pirate ships
-And our 'heros' jacket.

[ethoward71]

Space Rangers 2 uses solar system sectors. Star in the middle with a number of inhabited and uninhabited planets orbiting the star. You can put scanning sattalites into orbit on the vacant planets to scan for items. It's a bit like Star Control 2.

[Nyax]

ooo.... Tell me more. i loved Star control 2

[Gnavpot]

Why is noone doing full solar systems anymore? (Frontier, FFE, Privateer, Freelancer etc.)

IW-2 has certainly earned to be included in that list.

[ethoward71]

ooo.... Tell me more. i loved Star control 2

It's very similar, even the music is similar, except that you don't use landers to explore vacant planets, you put satalites into orbit and they'll scan for items and relics and what-not.

LOTS of detail. The combat and travel is weird, it's turn based, sounds awful but it works well. The combat turns out to be more strategic than arcade based.

Got a lot of RPG aspects, you get to choose race and career path. You have to go up in reputation in order to command more ships and satalites. The satalites you buy scan either plains, ocean, or mountains. So it's nice once you can use 3 sats at once to fully explore the planet.

The trading is fairly dynamic as well. You have to keep an eye on the news releases to see what planets are doing what and if one is in desperate need of a certain product (like food or medical supplies). If you want to get in on the action, you have to act fast because the other ships will be racing to get in on the excelent profits.

[Golden_Gonads]

And here be my little review:

I'd like to point out I didn't play the demo, so everything I say is from a first time play.

First off the bad points... Excessive CD accessing, every time you change sectors, it access the CD, which means the game paises for a few seconds before groaning back into life, very irritating. For me, I had an extremely low FPS in the fights in asteroid belts (Hmmm... Sounds familiar) though I haven't tried it again since I turned shadows off... Speaking of shadows, didn't notice any. In fact if I cared about such things, I'd say the graphics in general aren't that good, oh they're good enough for me, but then again, as long as it looks at least as good as Wing Commander 4, I'm happy. Oh - and the manual is pretty much useless, except for the character bio's.

The plot is straight-forward but interesting, though I've not yet gotten all that far, no major betrayals or twists yet... Though I'm sure there will be.

The keyboard controls are somewhat hard to get used to. W and S are the turbo and brake/reverse respectively, whilst Z and C are used to roll. K for some bizarre reason is used for the Communicator. And Q is used for an external view of yourself - Which I seem to be doing a lot of in combat whilst trying to boost, getting myself shot up in the process....

Difficulty wise, the game starts off easy, and as long as you stay vaguely up to date with your equipment, it stays about right (thus far). Theres been a couple of scraps where I've got through by the skin of my teeth, and I couple of times I croaked, but nothing I didn't deserve.

Not done much trading yet, its not exactly straightforward to get into, though simple enough when you figure it out. Also in a nice touch, you don't carry cargo in your hold, you drag it along behind you in containers caught in a tractor beam. The more you upgrade the cargo computer, the more you carry. When your dragging cargo, your extremely sluggish, the helms unresponsive, and your acceleration is lousy. You can drop the cargo with no problems though and pick it up again after the fight - I've not yet had anyone destroy or pinch it - and no idea if that does happen.

Something else to point out, the subtitles & onscreen mission descriptions are sometimes completely differently worded from the voice acting, which varies in quality from crappy to pretty decent. Also, it has one of the best taunts I've heard 'I bring greetings from the Netherworld!'... Sounds like your half crazed as well. Brilliant. Oh - and theres a wide variety of random taunts as well. Sadly though, every station has just one voice on the docking control - Though each races voice is different... Ahhh you know what I mean. Oh - Theres space-fairing hissing lizards as well, but they sound more like Sylvester the Cat than Teladi.

Reasonable selection of missions, though nothing that special. Better than the X-series or Freelancer though. You can also contact ships in space and ask if they want an escort... Only time I did that though, I got jumped by a half dozen pirates and he died. Poor fella. Which leads on to the next point....

... The game thinks nothing of pitting you against half a dozen pirates as a regular thing, now the majority of those encounters are easy enough, but when your protecting someone, or flying with another fighter, they get chewed up and spat out in no time. When its you on your own, once you take out a couple of fighters, its easy as eating pancakes. Oh, and as someone mentioned you can choose to retake sectors from pirates. On these, your ALWAYS up against 12 ships, all of which seem to be slightly better than regular pirates.

Weaponry all seems to have a maximum range of 1 unit, which isn't bad, as most combat takes place at 0.0 to 0.5 units. But still, would have been nice to have a bit more variety. No idea what missiles are like as I don't use them. Too stingy.

What other points... Ahh yes, WHAT IS IT with Germans and their weird names for alien species? First the Khaak, now the Thul. Doesn't look like that bad a name, does it? But when its pronounced Fool, its just getting rediculous... And foolish.

I've had 2 CTD's in about 8 hours of play, and annoyingly, the help/error message is all in german. Even the buttons...

Oh - and this is without all patching, theres a beta of a 1.2 patch available, but I'll wait for the proper version.


Overall a fun game, not as engrossing as the X-series, but definitely more fun - At least in the short term. Whereas X is a long-term marriage, DS1 is more of a summer fling.


Hmmph... So much for a 'little' review..... Sorry for it being disjointed but frankly, I don't give a damn.

[ORIOLE]

I wanted to buy this game but after visiting their forum I think I have changed my mind:

Originally Posted by mulder
Hi

Darkstar one french version patched (1.1.1361)
Joystick: Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 USB

Joystick works perfectly with the french retail version 0.9.1260

After the patch 1.1:

1)Z-axis inverted (slider), but with the Z-axis box checked it works
2)Roll axis (Rudder ) inverted and nothing works to reverse this thing (very annoying)
3)The game don't save the joystick control configuration, so after each game restart I must check uncheck the X and Y axis checkbox otherwise the X and Y axis are inverted
4) The Hat POV view disappear immediately (not a big problem for me)
5) There is à checkbox for force feedback but it doesn't work (not a big problem too)

In addition, you can't buy ships You end the loooong story line with the ship you have started with. You can only improve it by finding artifacts. Wow, is this mean teen stuff! So not really challenging, would by it for a 12 year old to keep him out of trouble

Pitty really

[Golden_Gonads]

I wanted to buy this game but after visiting their forum I think I have changed my mind:


In addition, you can't buy ships You end the loooong story line with the ship you have started with. You can only improve it by finding artifacts. Wow, is this mean teen stuff! So not really challenging, would by it for a 12 year old to keep him out of trouble

Pitty really

Actually, you find artifacts which do some minor upgrades, as well as allow you to equip more powerful components. Works reasonably well, but getting most the artifacts is more of a chore than a challenge. Also, your ship at the end only has a passing resemblance to the one you start with.

Either way, theres no point slating a game off as 'one for the kiddies' without even playing the demo... Unless its advertised as such anyway....

[ORIOLE]

Keep in mind the fact that what you read here are different people's opinions and it should be interpreted that way.

Just keep on reading and don't come here and attack people because you are bored.

[soleseacher]

Looked at a thread which mentioned a game "Dark star" so I thought cool lets have a look at that. WHAT A PILE OF rubbish".
How anyone can compare that to the X series is beyond me, X2 is streets ahead of it let alone X3.

[silentWitness]

The plot is straight-forward but interesting, though I've not yet gotten all that far, no major betrayals or twists yet... Though I'm sure there will be.

Speaking of plot... who didn't see the plot twist from the start???

[avicenna]

The drones in it looked suspiciously like khaak scouts.

Anyone, considering buying it might want to consider looking at my critique of the game on the darkstar forum. Curiously, this was moved from the main forum to the tips and tricks forum. At least it faired better, than some other critiques that disappeared altogether.

http://213.198.65.214/forum_DS/showthread.php?t=3115