Previous Next

If you'd had the chance to attend the initial meeting where all the programmers and people had met to discuss what they were going to put into this game, you wouldn't have had very much to contribute at all really. You see, they did a pretty good job all on their own.

It's a complicated do-I-really-have-to-read-the-manual fantasy space game, though far more of a role player than your standard Starglider or Elite-style shoot-'em-up-with-a-few-tactical-bits-bolted-on. Here, you don't directly fly your ship via the joystick, but instead spend your time setting destinations and watching a small picture of your craft zooming about in the corner of the screen. Not exactly action-packed, and perhaps lacking the variety of an Elite, but that doesn't mean it's easy or dull - you do, after all, have to step into the 47th century shoes of the ship's Captain, Navigator, Scientist, Engineer, Doctor and Communicating person all at the same time.

The rest of the game is of the usual flying-around-the-universe-trading-and-killing nature, operated via the mouse or by simple single keypresses. And it is this straightforwardness in both gameplay and graphics which is the game's high point, despite the initial over-complexity and apparent dullness. It's certainly not a classic, due to the rather restricting gameplay, but it's still a potentially absorbing and value-for-money giving sort of game.

A reasonably simple but undeniably vast space exploration type game. Fun, but rather too limiting.