Tachyon: The Fringe

Pros • Bruce Campbell’s voice acting • Maintains pace and freshness throughout • High degree of interaction	Cons • Mission events can get out of order • Can’t skip landing cut-scenes • Wingmen not all that helpful
Bottom Line Tachyon: The Fringe is one of those rare games that combine high-adrenaline action and movie-like suspense to deliver an experience as close to being Bruce Campbell as you’d want to get. Lots of interaction and an intriguing story told through the off-handed comments of ace pilot Jake Logan (brilliantly voiced by Bruce Campbell), Tachyon: The Fringe is Novalogic’s first non-voxel based game. Immense space stations floating near multi-coloured galactic clouds and asteroid belts provide the perfect setting for Tachyon’s action sequences. Missions and optional sub-missions move the story along and offer the opportunity for more money, which you’ll need to buy the rather large amount of weapons and upgrades available for your fighters. Multiple targeting systems help you keep one eye on the mission objectives while fighting off enemy fighters and capital ships. Smarter wingmen would have been nice, mainly because the enemy AI is tough to beat, but as your skills improve so will your hit-ratio. Definitely at the top of the current crop of space-combat sims, Tachyon delivers solid gameplay based on a good story and lots of player interaction.

Tachyon’s story revolves around Jake Logan, a hotshot pilot running errands for one of the big corporations in the Sol system. Bruce Campbell’s voice acting as Jake is so good, you’ll wonder if you’re playing him or he’s playing you. In a very short time, you’re framed for mass-murder and expelled to The Fringe, a lawless place at the edge of explored space full of pirates and helpless miners. Grab a ship and open a bank account, ‘cause you’re gonna clean up out here.

The mission structure is closer to one of the later Mechwarrior games than most other space-combat sims. You’re given a choice of 3 or 4 contracts at a time and can play them in any order, as well as jump through one of the Tachyon mega-gates to other sectors for more work. As missions are completed, your bank account grows and new contracts are added to the list. This is a fairly standard method of play and the missions themselves are as limited as missions in space can be (escort, deliver, or defend), however Tachyon integrates elements from the overall story into each mission in such a way that you’re surprised and intrigued as the game plays out, almost like watching a really good sci-fi movie where you get to take control when the fighting starts.

After a few contracts in the Fringe, you’ll need to make a decision as to whether you’ll work with the Bora Mining Guild or take a job with the Galspan corporation. The story is so good on both sides that you’ll definitely want to duplicate your pilot here and play the other one later. Some elements remain constant on both sides, with the biggest differences between the two being how much each contract is worth (lower for Bora), and when new technology becomes available. Working for Galspan pays more and the weapons are better, but it’s a sell-out working for “the man”.

The vastness of space is well represented with bright colours and amazingly huge starships and space stations. If you look closely, you’ll see lightning strikes in the larger galactic clouds. The scale of the Fringe outposts is enormous, as if you could dock at any one of them and play another entire game inside. Each base has it’s own docking sequence, and a different user interface from which to choose contracts, check news reports, and outfit your ship,. There are about 10 fighters to choose from, and you can have your pick once you’ve earned enough credits to buy a new one. Each one can be configured with several hardpoints, including various classes of beam weapons, missiles, power sappers and performance-enhancing computer modules (for targeting, etc). The cost of most of these is very reasonable relative to your pay, so you’ll seldom have to “save up” to buy a new item. Of course, you can always jump to the New Vegas station and play the slots for up to $100,000 in jackpots.

Enemy AI is about as good as you can expect in a space-combat game. No programming could ever successfully imitate a skilled human pilot, but the ships in Tachyon do a pretty good job of twisting, spinning and turning out of your way. Again, Bruce Campbell’s voice adds a lot to the game here with his dry-cool wit (“Did I get you?”). Other ships and their pilots play a large part in your interaction with the Fringe as well, and the interaction between yourself and these inhabitants can be quite humorous at times.

Tachyon is not without its flaws, and it does have one or two. First, there’s no way to bypass the in-game cutscene when your ship docks at a space station. It’s only 5 or so seconds, but it’s almost always the same and there’s no reason to force a player to watch it. Also, I couldn’t prove it but I think my wingman shot me in the back on more than one occasion. In general, the wingmen don’t fight very well and serve mostly to draw enemy fire. On a couple of missions, it was also possible to have mission events occur out of order. For example, I located a crate that was required to complete a mission, and when I scanned another crate Jake indicated it was the wrong one and we had to look for the right one, which I already had. Again, not a showstopper, but it does pull you out of the game for a second.

Novalogic has put a lot of effort into producing a game that doesn’t need to bring anything new or revolutionary to the technology front in the space-combat genre, and instead shows gamers (and developers) what they’ve really been missing; an experience full of action and interaction that doesn’t fall back on eye-candy or wave after wave of enemy ships to keep the interest level up. Good story with lots of sub-plots and Bruce Campell’s action-hero voice-overs add humour and character to an already great game. Also, it’s probably the only space-combat sim ever that features a working slot machine.

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