Dark Star One

yeah, heard about it. all sounds good, but as Joystick says: we really cant say anything useful until we've had it 'hands on'...
 
This game has gained my interest, I've had it on my watch list for months now. Looks good, but still not much I can say about if it will live up to people's hopes.

At this point, I will nearly certainly pick up DarkStar One when it is released, but that doesn't mean very much. I have always been a sucker for space simulators, open-ended or not.

You might want to check out the offical website.

...and the Oc'to flag reminds me of Cthulhu.
symbole_die_rassen_octo.gif
 
What the f***?!

I've always picked up whatever title I could that involved space combat via ships (simulation) probably due to my intense love of the huge space battles in Star Wars and the like. It didnt help that Wing Commander was my first and actually made me involved for the story as well.

I dont believe this game...

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Darkstar One Demo (warning: this 'review' is hardly complete)

The demo was released a while ago, but I never bothered since the game was due for release soon. However it turns out they resheduled it to next month, so I caved in & downloaded the 919MB demo.

Anyhow, lets start off with the cheap whore side of things: the graphics (since SHINY (TM) sells games!). The in-flight graphics are pretty nice when turned up high & don't seem to lag at all during big fights. It's nothing terribly new or goodlooking, but it certainly gets the job done nicely. The only trouble related to graphics is judging how far a certain thing is from you. A ship, you can usually judge quite easily, but an asteroid? Could be any size really. Some freighters do look a bit too small to my tastes. The collision management works as if you have a bubble around you the entire time, which is fine if you have the illusion of shields, but when you're shields are down, it seems weird to see things bounce off you like that.

The story doesn't seem to be anything shocking or new, it's a simple revenge story caught up in a bigger conflict. You want to kill your dad's killer (well, saboteur actually) and turns out that that dude has ties with the big EV0L dudes in the galaxy (attacking science stations, using outlawed biomods & such). The playingfield (galaxy) looks pretty big, but overall, a lot of the action inside it is more or less recycled. Got a pirate boss kill scenario? Change the name & poof you got another bountyhunter mission! Luckily there seem to be enough types of missions to at least overlook that for a brief moment. A problem with the missions though, is that it's not always clear who you'll be turning into an enemy. It's clear that bountyhunters wont be liked by pirates much, but when it comes to corporate sabotage or rebelsVSempire it becomes more complicated.

Now, lets turn to what really matters: the general gameplay. The cockpit interface is a bit minimalistic, it seems they've strived for a big field of view, which aint bad. However, the things on the cockpit that matter aren't exactly eyecatching. Maybe it's because my screen is too big or something, or my resolution too high. Speaking of resolution: when will devs learn to make GUI's scale with the resolution so they still cover decent amounts of the screen? It's annoying to have a high res, a tiny window & a long text with 3/4th of your screen unused...
But to continue on the interface, the HUD (not the cockpit, but the things displayed 'in space') is a bit overcrowded. you have all ships visible at all times with []-tags around them. In combat, I want all friends & foes visible, not some neutral freighter or an asteroid on the other end of the flightzone. Police are also marked with a special tag at all times, which isn't useful at all if you're not a pirate or a smuggler. I wish there was the ability to turn that off.
I also think the use of spacebar+mouse to freeze your flightpath & use the mouse for other stuff kinda gets old fast. But I suppose that wont be such a gripe once I learn the shortcuts to the functions, instead of having to use the icons on the HUD.

The mouse handling is ok, but somewhat tiring. The center of your HUD is a zero point. If you move your mouse out of there, you'll start turning your ship around. It can be quite annoying to find the zero point during long flights straight forward (but thats not really relevant, since you use time acceleration, and correct the trajectory from time to time).
Tachyon did a much better job. It was simpler & less traumatic for your wrist. I cant comment on joystick flight, since mine is busted.

Throughout the game, you'll have the same ship. You can upgrade it beyond normal stuff, because it has some imba modular alien artifact technology onboard (thanks daddy). But you'll also be able to upgrade it by conventional means: board computer, better energy coils, better weapons,...
However, some upgrades are just moronic:
- landing computer rank 1 (at the price of a laser cannon): allows you to land without having to contact the station by hand. effective at 1.0 distance (which quite frankly = right on top of the fucking station).
- landing computer rank 2 (at the price of a bigger laser cannon): allows you to land without having to contact the station by hand. effective at 2.0 distance (which quite frankly = STILL right on top of the fucking station).
Yes, without it, you need to radio the station by hand & request landing rights.
I presume they dont allow you to autodock at a distance to allow the cops to scan your cargo for illegal stuff, but really, thats a bit too stupid an upgrade for me to buy. The price is pretty 'out there' if you see that you have to fly like 3 'beginner' missions to get enough cash for rank 1 & 6 for rank 2. It becomes cheapass after that, but come on... Which hyperadvanced long distance fighter has an alien plasma cannon, modular design, is at least three times better than a normal fighter, but doesn't have a fucking autopilot?
Still, thats pretty easily forgiven.

My biggest gripe is this: ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?

This game seems to have been developed in german. This is fine. If translated correctly, the only trouble you'd have is fubared lipsync. That aint no disaster.

However, the porting sucked, at least for the demo. Both written & spoken english is full of mistakes. I'm sure you know the kind. I often call it Eastern European or Scandinavian English. It's not quite as bad as French English, but still. Sentences are formed wrong but the general message is still conveyed. Hell, most of the time the sentences use the correct words, but have words or verbs thrown inbetween that screw it up. How hard can it be to hire a native englishman (or american) to do your translation kids? You'd understand if it was just the written stuff, but nope... The voice actors (even the ones with british accents) don't seem to care if they read errors or not. It'd probably mean more wasted time for them to correct stuff & they'd still get the same paycheck?

I know that you cant always have Richard Dean Anderson (FO1), Ron Perlman (FO1/2) or Bruce Campbell (Tachyon) reading your lines, but shit, cant you hire competent people?

As far as I'm concerned this totally breaks the immersion, unless we're supposed to be living in a galaxy where moronspeak is acceptable english. Fuck! They better fix this before release or I'm gonna be really sad...
 
THAT WAS BRUCE CAMPBELL IN TACHYON?! Holy Shit! I'll have to replay it again.

Anyway, nice review, Suaside, I'll download the demo as soon as I finish, downloading... erm... what I'm downloading now :look:.

I can't wait, the broken English is a bother but the rest seems wunderbar so I'm still looking forward to it.
 
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
THAT WAS BRUCE CAMPBELL IN TACHYON?! Holy Shit! I'll have to replay it again.
Click to expand...
you didnt know?
you didnt hear it?

zomg!

even the character of the pilot is greatly based on his goofy-ness.

PS: his picture is even on the back of game box man!

Tachyon still holds a place in my heart, even if it's simplistic crap :)
(just go straight for propulsion & weapons generators = any huge battleship dead in the water, condemned to watching you punch holes in it)

DirtyDreamDesigner said:
Anyway, nice review, Suaside, I'll download the demo as soon as I finish, downloading... erm... what I'm downloading now :look:.
Click to expand...
wasn't really meant as a serious review, just wrote down what i could think of.

i bet there are a lot of people out here that'll play it in the near future

DirtyDreamDesigner said:
I can't wait, the broken English is a bother but the rest seems wunderbar so I'm still looking forward to it.
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well, if you understand german, you might as well get the german version to spare you the pain.

but i hate german :p

poor me...
 
Yeah, I know German but I hate it too so I'd rather play in poor English than German.

The voice sounded familiar but I just thought I heard it in some other game but now... Also there's no picture of him on my box.

Tachyon is a great game even though it has its flaws.
 
SuAside said:
My biggest gripe is this: ENGLISH MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU SPEAK IT?

This game seems to have been developed in german. This is fine. If translated correctly, the only trouble you'd have is fubared lipsync. That aint no disaster.

However, the porting sucked, at least for the demo. Both written & spoken english is full of mistakes. I'm sure you know the kind. I often call it Eastern European or Scandinavian English. It's not quite as bad as French English, but still. Sentences are formed wrong but the general message is still conveyed. Hell, most of the time the sentences use the correct words, but have words or verbs thrown inbetween that screw it up. How hard can it be to hire a native englishman (or american) to do your translation kids? You'd understand if it was just the written stuff, but nope... The voice actors (even the ones with british accents) don't seem to care if they read errors or not. It'd probably mean more wasted time for them to correct stuff & they'd still get the same paycheck?

I know that you cant always have Richard Dean Anderson (FO1), Ron Perlman (FO1/2) or Bruce Campbell (Tachyon) reading your lines, but shit, cant you hire competent people?

As far as I'm concerned this totally breaks the immersion, unless we're supposed to be living in a galaxy where moronspeak is acceptable english. Fuck! They better fix this before release or I'm gonna be really sad...
Click to expand...

Yeah, this game might get a 0/10 from me if they don't fix this. I'd also start a petition to urge people to download it illegally, as lazy cheap people who don't bother to hire actors don't deserve any money.

Also, I have to say the usual "I wish I had a PC powerful enough to play this" line again.
 
a pigeon with a top hat said:
I'd also start a petition to urge people to download it illegally, as lazy cheap people who don't bother to hire actors don't deserve any money.
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watch your step, afaik they dont condone that kind of talk here. :s
a pigeon with a top hat said:
Also, I have to say the usual "I wish I had a PC powerful enough to play this" line again.
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the sys req's dont look so bad...

Intel/AMD 1.6 GHz; Windows XP; 512 MB RAM; DirectX-9 compatible GFX with 128 MB; 4 GB HDD space; DVD-ROM

i got the recommended setup (Intel/AMD 3 GHz, 1024 MB RAM; Gfx with 256 MB vidram) though (or just below, actually: 2.54Ghz P4b), but i can run everything on highest without any lagging or drops.


EDIT:

appearantly the english in DS1 is not all that bad. i've played some more & now the content seemed ok.

for some reason, i ran into a huge bundle of errors at the start of the demo. with them all bundled together, i thought the entire game would be like that. luckily, it appears i was wrong in my conclusion.
 
Great memories with Tachyon, I suppose one of the aspects I really enjoyed about it were the dogfights around/through various space stations. It is something I found very fun, and also rather rare; since space stations tend to be rather small in space sims. A shame my copy of the game won't let me get more than two thirds of the way through the rebel campaign on my new computer, I tried to replay the game earlier this year.

I suppose my largest problem with the demo, and the larger game, is how simplistic they have made star systems. The developers advertise over 300 star systems, but the catch is that each only has a single dockable space station. You cannot land on any of the planets, research stations (though perhaps that is only the demo), or asteroids; only the one 'trade station' that represents the entire system. All missions and commodities flow through that single station in each system.

One nice thing is that there is some variation in the non-storyline missions, it isn't completely bounty hunting. The two examples I found in the demo were a mission where you had to take interesting pictures of a system for a calendar, and another where you had to use a microphone to spy on a meeting taking place on another station. Of course, they all end up dogfights, God forbid there was ever a non-combat mission. I hope there is more variation in the full game.

I found trading to be a pain, because of the sheer numbers of pirates. In the demo, you can't upgrade your ship to the point where you can outrun them or fight them with your cargo attached. You have to detach your cargo, fight them, retrieve your cargo, and continue. I found this went on too often to make trading interesting or profitable for the time required. However the system is such that I suppose you can dry up profitable trade routes, but I didn't test it enough.

Just a few things SuAside didn't go into.

By the way, SuAside, according to the official site, the game requires a staggering 6Gb of space (minimum, 7 Gb recommended).
 
Kotario said:
A shame my copy of the game won't let me get more than two thirds of the way through the rebel campaign on my new computer, I tried to replay the game earlier this year.
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known bug. dont take your best vessel through the ripstar jumphole. it'll crash (cant remember the name of the best bora fighter (not the best bomber, the otherone, hammerhead?))

just take your battleaxe through the jumphole & you should go through just fine.


Kotario said:
I suppose my largest problem with the demo, and the larger game, is how simplistic they have made star systems. The developers advertise over 300 star systems, but the catch is that each only has a single dockable space station. You cannot land on any of the planets, research stations (though perhaps that is only the demo), or asteroids; only the one 'trade station' that represents the entire system. All missions and commodities flow through that single station in each system.
Click to expand...
a thing to add to that is that the station feels void of life. the only sign of life you get in the demo are the broadcast messages & the cutscene with a bar (although you cant visit one ingame. only an empty observation deck.)

although, if i recall correctly, Tachyon had no NPC's visible either, but you got human contact during missions & each job was with a contact explaining the contract you needed to fulfil before you accepted it.

Kotario said:
I found trading to be a pain, because of the sheer numbers of pirates.
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i didnt even bother. there is good money in just blasting skav's. those liberation things also bring in hefty amounts of cash once you've leveled a bit.
Kotario said:
By the way, SuAside, according to the official site, the game requires a staggering 6Gb of space (minimum, 7 Gb recommended).
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wow

the thing i pasted came straight from the official german site :s

either that means that ze german one is out of date OR that the english version contains all the other language files as well (french & german i believe), where the german one does not. still, it'd be kinda silly to actually install em, so i suppose it's just outdated.

one would think their native language would be better up to date :s
 
so, I received my copy of Darkstar One 2 days ago, and now that i've finished it, i'll give you my (random) observations & impressions.

first off, the things i already commented on when the demo came out:

- text: some english is just plain wrong, but luckily they made some fixes since the demo.

- voice acting: yet again, some word usage is totally wrong & some sentences make no sense. on top of that, there are quite a lot of voices that really dont belong. an alien oc'to pirate with an uber posh british accent? anyhow, it just doesnt fit right...

- generic: the games' biggest problem is that everything is generic. going from star systems, weapons, ships, pirate ships, people,... for instance, all pirate gangs are a random mix off all races (ships are racebound, so all gangs are a random mix of ships). what sets them apart from civilians? a red color. all pirates are pretty much red. now, ok, that makes it easy to spot, but why aren't there racist gangs, with only 1 or 2 races? it'd make sense.
it's the same with weapons. all races have weapons and all weapons go from generic mk1, mk2, mk3, elite mk1, elite mk2, elite mk3, secret service mk1, secret service mk2, secret service mk3, secret service elite mk1, secret service elite mk2, secret service elite mk3. what's the difference? damage & powerdrain.
in essence, this game could've been a lot better if someone had spent some time making some adjustments. just a few characteristic changes to set things apart. just a few extra lines to make descriptions more vivid & add background.
the same generic comment is also true for missions that aren't part of the story line. there are 8 or so archetype missions, all the rest is rehash or part of the story.

- GUI: the HUD is pretty minimalistic, which is usually a good thing, BUT here it fails to draw sufficient attention to important things: radar & shields. i've often found myself loosing shields without realising i was taking such heavy hits. sure, your co-pilot yells about loosing a few percent and yells again when they're already gone, but she does it so often, that when it's really critical, you just ignore her. imo, she should just yell at 25%, leaving you time to active the emergency shield recharge or the plasma 'cheat'.

- joystick support: joystick support was added late in the dev cycle & really is far less useful than the mouse. this is very sad for a spacecombat sim.

- taunts: both your own taunts and the taunts of your opponents are kindergarden grade stuff. spineless shit really. if you want to keep it 'civil' to prevent a bad rating, try being funny instead of moronic please. check games like Tachyon for examples.


now for the actual 'new' stuff:

- copy protection: the good news is, they arent using securom, the bad news is, their copy protection (or "disk checking routine" as they call it on their forums) brings some problems. randomly, the game checks if the dvd is in drive even if it's not needed to read from it. each time it does that, it slows the game down & even sometimes freezes it for a short moment. this is said to be a bug they are working on, but thats just too fucking lame to be true. this is alpha stuff for fucks sake, not gold.

- occasionally laggy in asteroids: no matter how heavy your pc is, there will be times where you will lag during fights in asteroids. there is no real explanation for it.

- bug 1: Ramirez is an NPC that you'll be doing some shitjobs for. either way, there will be fights where you fight alongside him. one of these include a fight after leaving a planet. mission starts *poof* 2 Ramirez's. now that aint bad, because now i have 2 wingmen instead of 1. however, mission finished, the two Ramirez start shooting at eachother, killing eachother. luckily, the mission was already successful, but i imagine a mission failure if either one of them dies...

- bug 2: random mission failure. it happens twice that a mission failed for no reason at all. i'm guessing script misfire.

- energy system: propulsion, shields & laser reserve seem too unconnected. i'd love to be able to tell me lasers to slow charging while i boost my shields quicker, or vice versa. you can transfer energy, but the only way to do this, is using a special one use item, not modding your energy routing. kinda blows for such a hightech ship...

- balance: i fear the game is TERRIBLY imbalanced. turrets = godmode. you can upgrade to 5 turrets, which makes that your ship isnt a fighter anymore, it's a gunship. it's a mini-cruiser. the only thing left to do, is evade, make sure the targets are above or below you & watch the poor lil' mofos drop dead like flies while your turrets just autofire at every enemy in the sector. however, the imbalance lies in the escort/protection missions. i doubt it's possible to succesfully complete any of the harder ones without having turrets (simply because you kill twice as fast when using turrets). hence the engine+wing spec that ignores hull (which provides turret mounts) is rather doomed in my eyes.

- turret emplacement: an annoying thing about turrets is that you appearantly cant control which turret goes where. which is kinda important if you are using different types of turrets.

- looks: many people will want their ship to look cool. overall the Darkstar One is pretty neat, but putting pink turrets on it kinda breaks the coolness you know? just paint them to go with the ships color please, thanks.

- turret lock: it'd be nice to have a way to enable turrets to fire on a friendly or neutral target when you say it should. it kinda blows to start shooting with a peashooter to initiate the fight, to flag the ship as an enemy, while you have an array of turrets that could've blasted the ship to smithereens with a single volley... it'd also be nice to designate a primary target to turrents, so it'd be prefered over others, instead of just shooting at everything.

[SPOILER WARMING]

- lameass Eona vs Ramirez & Kabro story: really, getting into trouble over fucking pets that were about to be skinned for their fur? what is this? Disneyland? granted, this could've played out rather funny, but the way it was brought out was just totally moronic...

- Eona, Eona, Eona: oh, how many times i've wanted to throw the bitch out of the airlock. she's rather goodlooking, true, but she just cant keep her mouth shut. either she nags all the time, or she neglects important warnings. make up your mind bitch! around 1/4th into the game, i started trying to figure out funny insults to throw at her each time she said something stupid or irrelevant. i'd yell them at my pc, but sadly i wasn't home alone, leading to strange misunderstandings, thinking i was insulting the other person rather than the npc. hairy situation indeed!
anyhow, Eona gets abducted and the game wants you to rescue her. i however really wanted to say: "FUCK YOU RAMIREZ/KABRO! KEEP HER! you wont be able to endure her nagging anyway!". anyhow, you have no choice but to rescue her, but it was ooooh so nice to fly missions without her for a while.
after rescueing her, you say something like "Good to hear your voice Eona.". after that, i flew into a planet & killed myself by disintegrating the ship on purpose.
there is some truth in the game though. Kayron asks "why is everyone we meet in difficulty?" after the xxxth rescue operation. Eona answers "because they're all stupid.". quite right, darling. i've rescued you TWICE, remember?
then, the final disgrace: after finishing the game & owning the evil fucktards, you first flirt with Naara (a Thul. THEY ARE HIDEOUS FFS! sure they are female, but that doesnt mean i'd bang anything with two legs, two arms, two tits & a pulse) and then, Eona says goodbye. i couldn't be more happy! toodles! cheerio! tata! we finally got rid of the bitch! it only took risking my life a thousand times & rescueing the universe, but she's gone now! haha! then, you depart & the HAL5000 board computer tells you Eona programmed it with her own voice, so she could always be with you. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! needless to say, i had no other recourse but to crash myself on a planet again...

[/SPOILER WARMING]


a final word:
even with it's many flaws, i feel it's very likely some modders will turn this game into a gem. too bad the original dev didnt take time to exploit it's great potential...
 
Yeah I played the demo nothing much new.

damm it I want real-time planet landing. you would think that in a universe with interstellar travel they would have designed a craft that can land on a planet. geez we have not even gone past the moon and we can manage it, thats even without sheild technologies.
 
I played the demo. To me, it seems to be a cross between the X series and freelancer, but not quite as fun as either one. I'd preffer to play the two games seperately (freelancer for the multiplayer, story line and combat, X for wel... everything else and more).
 
Serifan said:
Yeah I played the demo nothing much new.

damm it I want real-time planet landing. you would think that in a universe with interstellar travel they would have designed a craft that can land on a planet. geez we have not even gone past the moon and we can manage it, thats even without sheild technologies.
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the game already weighs a whooping 7gb and they have failed to actually 'fill' the galaxy. everything is generic.

how do you suppose they find the time & place to put in all the planet bullshit? each planet in each system of the game has about as much habitants as Earth. how do you suppose they fill that up if they cant even break away from the generic shit in orbit (which is a lot easier to remove)?

anyhow, you can go on planets but only for 2 missions. a third mission is a similar mission on a spaceship/station deathstar-like.

edit: typo
 
Serifan said:
what if the devs use a random terrain generator.
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were you born a moron or did you have to work on it?

fuck man! i already said all goddamn systems and 'random' encounters are generic. meaning they probably were created with a sucky random generator (pirate encounters & the like for instance).

however, they already totally failed to make that feel genuine. HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THEY'LL SUCCEED IN MAKING A RANDOM TERRAIN GENERATOR (and to what fucking use)?

however, even that is irrelevant...
they already rushed the dev cycle, where the fuck do you think they'd find the time to add a WHOLE NEW facet to the gameplay, being planetside 'stuff'. what 'stuff' would you want to do on the planet anyway?

it's a space sim for crying out loud. "ZOMG! wouldn't it be totally cool if we could like totally land on the planet & like shoot buildings for fun & stuff?"

how about you first make sure your gameplay, story & programming are a-ok before moving on to irrelevant drivel like that?

as for a logical answer to your question of why not allow spaceships to fly into the atmosphere of planets (which you do 2 times in this game, but let me answer for other games): aerodynamics, technology & gravity.
you know, a brick would fly perfectly in space... but in Earth's atmosphere?
it's also possible certain types of uberwtfpwnage space engines would fail in an atmosphere, which means you'd have to incorporate a third type of engine into the spaceship (the two others being normal space engine & hyperspace engine in DSO)
 
SuAside said:
a final word:
even with it's many flaws, i feel it's very likely some modders will turn this game into a gem. too bad the original dev didnt take time to exploit it's great potential...
Click to expand...
nevermind that last part...

i just talked to a rep & learned that the game doesn't allow added ships & such. the number of different ships is HARDCODED... if you want to make a mod, you gotta scrap an old one to add a new one.

it's but one example of the idiocy. marvelous design, i'd say...
 
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