Starlancer

Pros • Top-notch graphics and explosions • Watching a cap-ship go up is amazing • Game interface is well integrated	Cons • Lackluster opponent AI • Don’t care about the other pilots • Can't save during a multi-part mission
Bottom Line Starlancer’s presentation and user interface are pretty close to perfection, but the AI of your opponents will have you thinking you’re an ace pilot, even when you’re not. Developed at Warthog, under the guidance of Erin Roberts at Digital Anvil, Starlancer pits you and a band of pimply-faced rookies against the Eastern (Russian) Coalition in a fight for freedom at the edge of the solar system. The seamless game interface is one of the best ever and shows what years at the forefront of game development can teach you. Pre-planned missions with multiple branches are a little difficult to complete successfully due to their multi-part organization and lack of in-mission saving, but you’ll have no trouble evading enemy pilots. Most missions fail because you weren’t able to complete your goal, not because you died. A few more weeks on the AI programming and some tweaking to the flight model could have made this a better game, but it’s still plays better than most. At least until Freelancer comes out.

Developed by Erin Roberts at Digital Anvil and Warthog (the team who brought you Privateer 2), Starlancer is the next great thing from the pioneers of space combat sims. The video and cutscene work is truly amazing and tightly integrated with the story elements. When you’re not in your ship, the game is presented through video from a first-person perspective, and the camera bobs up and down while you walk. Back in your barracks, you’ll find a simulator, a locker to store your medals, and an ITAC for reading news and viewing ship and personnel data. The ITAC itself has a user interface that’s cleaner and more visually impressive than most commercially available software. When you finally head to the briefing room, you’ll receive your mission objectives in pre-rendered video by a full-figured female officer in a tight-fitting uniform. After the briefing, an interactive hologram of your ship appears where you can run though the loadout process before heading into the hangar.

The story revolves around you and your rookie squadron as you try to prove yourselves and gain the respect of the fleet. Some of the missions seem a little too important to trust to rookies, but you wouldn’t want to be in charge of long range patrols for the entire game either. There’s lots of interaction with the other pilots, both in your squadron and with other ships in the fleet, but it’s a little difficult to really get to know any of them or identify their ships during combat. Also, since this is a Roberts game, there’s a traitor sub-plot to give the story some depth.

Each mission is typically composed of several sub-parts, accounting for the large number of mission branches the game boasts. Unfortunately, you can’t save the game in-mission which means you’re in for some heavy repetition if you want to complete all of your objectives without failing. Some missions have three or four parts, and it can be a bit tedious blowing up an asteroid for the sixth time (ok, so I’m not a great pilot). If you fail to complete one of your objectives, you’ll be sorry later on as it affects the overall storyline. Failure to destroy the warp gate in one of the early missions means you risk leaving yourself open to warp gate attacks in the future. If you’re not a very good pilot, the missions tend to get harder rather than easier in order to prevent novice pilots from progressing without the skills necessary for some of the later battles.

One of the problems common to a lot of space combat sims is that, due to the freedom of spaceflight, most dogfights degrade into “turning battles” where you end up leaning on your joystick trying to line up your target. Starlancer’s solution is to have your opponent fly pretty much straight at you (or away from you) with a few zig-zags thrown in. Playing on medium difficulty, I never felt threatened by an enemy ship and was certainly never killed by one. The AI was lacking in a few other respects as well, namely navigation and targeting. Your wingmen seem to think they’re flying bumper cars, and on more than one occasion I witnessed an enemy fighter repeatedly ram or fire directly into one of it’s own capital ships as it tried to clear the hull for a shot at me.

The ship colors are little drab, but in keeping with typical military style. Ship design is varied over the choice of fighters you’re given, but there’s not much difference between the ships themselves other than a few performance factors. Explosions are full of debris, yet you’ll often hear an enemy pilot complain his shields are down when what’s left of him is already hitting your windshield. One thing Starlancer does very well is the destruction of its capital ships. Watching one “go up” is an awesome sight as the explosions travel the full length of the hull while it breaks apart, reminiscent of the huge carrier battle in Starship Troopers.

Starlancer’s excellent graphics and well-integrated user interface go a long way to draw you into the game. The interface alone serves as a model for other games to follow, not just space-combat simulators. Hard core pilots may find the game too easy due to the uninspired enemy AI, whereas amateur pilots may find the game too difficult due to the consequences of failing a mission or two. A few minor tweaks, and maybe some fan-based testing would have put this game closer to greatness, but it still manages to come together and deliver a solid game. Judging from the press on Freelancer, Digital Anvil’s next space game, Starlancer can be viewed as a step in the right direction for the future of the space combat genre.

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