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62 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If Freelancer and X3 had a lovechild..., 13 Aug 2006
...it'd be Darkstar One. Like the title says, it's part Freelancer, part X series, although it remains to be seen if this latest successor to Elite can actually live up to the promise.
INTERFACE:
Where Freelancer was way too simple, X3 is equally complicated. The learning curve was so steep as to almost be vertical, and the interface -- no matter what the die-hard X fans say -- is simply not easy to use and not at all intuitive. Freelancer on the other hand had a very simplified, almost "even a child can use it" feel to the interface. You want to go somewhere? Click on the thing, and click "GO". You want to dock with it? Well, you get the idea. Darkstar One does a little of both. You can't simply click on something and click "Go" or "Dock", but there isn't the perpetual lostness that comes with X3. No frustrating menus and sub-menus, but you do need to use the mouse AND the joystick AND the keyboard. It's simple enough to pick up and doesn't take long to learn how to control your ship.
MISSIONS:
This is something that, if Freelancer had done better, it's likely I'd still be playing it. However, its missions were always so formulaic as to always be "fly out to Sector X, kill the ships/assassinate the leader/tractor back the cargo", with the only changes being the difficulty level of the enemy. X3 was much, much more varied, with interesting and seemingly inexhaustible mission ideas. Luckily, Darkstar follows the latter -- there are missions which can be as standard as "fly to Sector X, kill the ships" or as unusual as "go and spy on a meeting in a nearby station", or as simple as "take some cargo to the freighter in Sector Y". A variety of missions to give you a rep as Mercenary, Bounty Hunter, or Merchant.
But there's also the main mission, the storyline you have to follow, which so far seems interesting and drives your progression through the huge number of 300 different star systems. And there are also occasional side missions which pop up and give you something new to do. And there are random missions, which can happen whenever you jump into a new system -- someone will hail you and ask you to save them from pirates, or go and retrieve a cargo pod, and so on. AND there are the escort missions, which are a great new idea -- if you're going to a system anyway, why not look around for a nearby freighter that's going your way and offer your services? From what I can tell, there's a 50/50 chance you'll either make a safe run or have to fend off pirates. Ascaron have really outdone themselves with the layers and layers of mission types in Darkstar, which should make it almost infinitely playable.
CUSTOMISATION:
One thing Darkstar One doesn't have in common with either Freelancer or X3 is that you simply can't get another ship. The ship you start with is the same ship you end with -- sort of. What allows change and growth is that the ship itself can evolve due to the discovery of artifacts; you can choose which section of the ship to improve, which in turn strengthens it and allows more and better equipment. An interesting way of looking at it, but it's still a little irritating that you can't get a different ship. Ever. Still, the weapons and equipment are numerous and varied, and the gradual evolution of the ship means that you can't make yourself all-powerful right at the start of the game. The Plasma Cannon powerup is quite confusing at first, with a sort of RPG-like skill tree that improves as you upgrade your ship -- at first, you get bonuses like weapon boost, shield boost, etc. I'm finding it not that useful, but that may change as the upgrades get better.
TRADING:
This is very well done. Unlike Freelancer, and like X3, prices of goods fluctuate. There is no comprehensive list that tells you how much an item bought at Station X can be sold for at Station Y -- you have to make educated guesses based on the items produced in each sector, and the type of industry. Also, there are actual events which affect the prices of goods -- for example, you may hear an announcement on a station that a new plague has broken out, and so your response would be to buy lots of medical supplies. Within minutes you can see the prices going up -- sort of like playing the stock market. Of course, because you never really know whether you'll make a profit or not, you can always resort to smuggling illegal goods. This is especially hard in Darkstar because, when carrying cargo, your ship is much, much slower. So if a police shuttle starts moving towards you, best thing to do is just hyperjump and pretend you had somewhere to be in a hurry.
GRIPES:
Some gripes, but mainly minor ones. It doesn't have the same polished prettiness that Freelancer had, or the visual splendour of X3, but something very close to both. There's no Multiplayer online, which could seriously limit the game's playability -- but with 300 systems, you'd probably never bump into another real person anyway. The missions are great, but so far I've not found a way to abort one in progress. This means that if you LOSE the cargo you were meant to be transporting, you may have to re-load your last save point. The story, while interesting, has nothing of the excitement of Freelancer's plot, not to mention the good voice-acting. Darkstar's plot is a little slow, and a little dull at first, and the voice-acting is very wooden. Another thing that annoys me (and did about X3, too) is that you can't land on planets -- systems have very little in them in Darkstar, with only a trade station and a research station in each. Finally, one of my biggest gripes with the game is that you can hyperjump from ANYWHERE, simply by activating the engine. While this is good for getting from system to system, it makes it all a little too easy. You get the feeling that the 300 Darkstar systems are equal to the 50 or so Freelancer ones, simply in terms of station content and time spent in each.
That said, Darkstar One is definitely worth buying, and succeeds in combining many of the positive features of both Freelancer and X3. If only for the realistic fluctuation of trading prices, the huge number of star systems, and the sheer variety of very good missions, this game is right up there with the best of space-flight/trading sims.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre, 24 Oct 2006
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
I was a little disappointed with this game. It had been pushed as being as good as Elite (probably showing my age) but it isn't.
The gameplay is good and I would recommend having a good mouse rather than a joystick. Don't get me wrong, it is very playable and you'll probably enjoy it especially if you have a good graphics card to allow you to see what the game has to offer - visually it is impressive (it should be with almost 5GB of disk space needed for the install).
It does have a lot of similaraties with Freelancer. These are easy to see with the main difference that you can upgrade your ship and have different attributes rather than buy different ships in Freelancer. The free trading is better but when the storyline ended I ended up thinking "well is that it?".
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The freedom of the aether., 1 Oct 2006
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Darkstar One deserves a fair amount of praise for being the most original and ,cruicially, fun game of this genre in a long time.
Many make comparisons to Elite but I feel this is a poor comparison as the game is so aged we need a new modern benchmark and this may well be it.
The story, cliched it may be, gives reason and curiosity enough to encourage progress. In a nutshell; Dear daddy died after completion af a bio organic ship built from an ancient alien race (Hardly a shocking storyline.) fly as your fancy takes you to over 300 different solar systems in the search for revenge. Revenge that, handily, ties in with the imminent offensive approach of genitically modified aliens.
Luckily, the gameplay is solid and immediatly engaging. Accepting a bounty and hunting down pirate scum is simple and satisfying. Trading (or smuggling, naughty!) is also a task in simple pleasure complicated by the possible onslaught of aformentioned pirates.
On to my negative points; the game runs well on my low spec laptop (system min;1.6ghz,512mb ram,128mb graphics card, g.5gb and directX 9 inc.) but with occasional lag and stuttering which can be fatal in battle.
The voice acting is...venomous. Absolutly appaling and considering the story isn't exactly Oscar worthy makes for some frequent cringing. (Darkstar One here, you blaggards will pay for your misdeeds!)
The game is well worth getting and watching your ship grow and change is something to behold. Let's just hope the rumoured sequel invests in some proper actors.
Get it in.
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