Accolades to Legend
A Review of Star Control 3
by Edmond Meinfelder
What seems like eons ago, Reiche and Ford created the epic science fiction action/adventure games Star Control and Star Control II. Today, gamers revere Star Control II as a high-water benchmark for quality games. I was skeptical when I heard Accolade slated the small Virginia- based company, Legend Entertainment, to create Star Control III (SC3) without Reiche and Ford's input. Creating a follow-up to a successful game is difficult -- ask the team responsible for Ultima VIII (a perceived failure by loyal Ultima fans worldwide).
SC3, like its predecessor, successfully bucks the game design maxim: Do one thing and do it well. Traditionally, games trying to combine adventure, action or strategy in one package failed miserably. SC3 cheerfully ignores tradition, following the proven formula in Star Control II (SC2). SC2 combined action and adventure with liberal doses humor to create a game now regarded with profound respect by many loyal gamers.
SC3 is an adventure. Players travel the galaxy, gathering items, talking to aliens and solving puzzles. More importantly, SC3 has non-linear puzzles. Players will not feel strapped to confining rails found in traditional adventure games. Some events are linear, but many quests can occur out of order. In most game situations, players respond as they see fit. Should a star implode in a nearby system, a player checking the system makes sense, but is not required.
Frequently, I point to Lucas Arts’ adventures as the epitome of adventure game design with: no dead-ends, easy interface, quality stories and stylish art. However, some Lucas Arts puzzles were not intuitive to me. For me, non-intuitive puzzles are the anathema of adventure games. In the past two years, the most intuitive and enjoyable adventure game was Mission Critical created by -- who else? -- Legend Entertainment. Indeed, all the puzzles in SC3 make sense, in a wacky Star Trek techno- babble way, of course.
Like most adventure games today, professional actors speak the dialogue. There is, however, a LOT of dialogue. This is good, as it lends a lot of depth to the story. Some voices, like the Spathi, grate. Frequently, I found myself clicking through text as I could read it faster than the actors would speak. Interestingly, rather than have computer-rendered aliens, Legend employed complex puppets. For me, the puppets work adding even more color to an already pastel universe, but some players regarded the SC3 aliens as a Muppet special gone bad.
SC3's story is similar to SC2; players roam the galaxy, finding friends, allies and neutral races. The player must unite as many races as possible, deal with the enemies and solve the “great mystery” surrounding the inoperability of hyperspace engines all across the galaxy. The now defunct hyperdrives strand a lot of races. Luckily, your latest starship, again built with Precursor technology, has a new stardrive system known as "Warp-Bubble Transport." The story is good, but has a kludged feel, to better serve the plot. I suspect having nearly all aliens confined to their star systems was convenient.
SC3 is an action game, too. Remember Space War? Many gamers will not. Space War goes way back to MIT’s famed Model Railroad Club (a haven for hackers) in the early 1960's. Two players navigate ships on a playfield, each trying to blast the other to oblivion. At the center of the playfield is star, sucking ships inwards towards disaster with its gravity. SC3 takes the venerable idea, adds in quality art and sound showing some life still exists in this classic of yesterday.
An odd idea introduced by Legend for the SC3 battles is a disorienting isometric perspective. Rather than look down on the play field from above, players view the battle scene as if looking at a chess board (above and to the side). The only reason I can fathom for this annoying perspective is someone felt the isometric perspective shows off the art better than the traditional top-down view (it does). I know a lot of SC3 fans personally, and none of them could stomach the jarring isometric perspective. Fortunately, SC3 allows players to select either the isometric or the top-down perspective at the touch of a function key.
True Star Control diehards, or cultists, tout HyperMelee as a Zen experience. In HyperMelee, players select ships and fight either the computer or a human opponent. The melee is Zen-like since each ship has different capabilities. For example, the cowardly Spathi ships work best fleeing from combat while shooting rear-launched missiles. The Pkunk ships, though lightly armed, are fast and gain strength by audibly insulting the enemy with words like "jerk," or "idiot." HyperMelee now features network play, but if the network code fails, two players can play from the same keyboard.
Legend deviated from SC2 with your Precursor ship. In SC2, you spent a lot of time gathering resources and earning credits to buy more weapons, defenses, and range on your ship. However, if you fought and lost with your Precursor ship, you lost the game. So, gamers spent a lot of time, building the "SuperShip" and never having fun with it. In SC3, the Precursor ship is no longer extensible.
Instead of tweaking your Precursor ship, Legend added the idea of manageable colonies to SC3. You place down some colonists in an agreeable area, determined by the location and race and you have a new colony. The colonists will build a research lab, star base, mining facility, refinery, factory and a landing pod factory. At the very star of the game, you rely on your first colony for fuel and landing pods. Shortly into the game, you find yourself swimming in fuel, ships and landing pods. Thus, this entire aspect of the game was poorly designed filler. I preferred the ability to improve my Precursor ship over manageable colonies as the cutsomizable ship added to the game.
A terrible disappointment on Legend's part was obsequiously employing MIDI music. This is a shame -- Star Control 2 used MODs successfully. MODs, unlike MIDI, use digital waveform samples mixed to produce complex songs. Music groups, often techno bands, employ MODs for backup. Today, most MOD archives swell with techno-sounding MODs and, as a result, many people mistakenly believe harsh synthetic sounds is all MODs can do. Even if MODs were so limiting, the synthetic and eerie sounds in the Star Control 2 MODs worked beautifully. At best, the MIDI riffs go unnoticed. At worst, the MIDI tunes grate. In neither case does the music contribute mood.
Many may complain about SC3's short duration and easy puzzles. A veteran gamer can finish this game in less than 2 days. For me, the length was just right. I do not like games with artificially drawn out lengths due to tedious mazes or puzzles turning me into "Postal Boy" delivering stuff all over creation. Let's face facts, I know many game designers who regularly become stuck in puzzle games -- a lot of puzzle games are hard due to bad design. Thus, many games are too tedious for me, but I found Star Control 3 just right. SC3 is solvable without being patronzingly easy.
Disappointing music aside, SC3 is a quality recreation of the now-classic galactic romp: Star Control II. The combination of spoken voice and puppets lends a cinematic feel to the game. Though the game is short, I had too much fun to notice. Still, Legend’s spin adds nothing noteworthy to a proven formula and, in a few places, falls short of Reiche and Ford's masterwork. Star Control 3 is, however, one of the better games to appear on the shelves this year.
Gamer's Zone Scorecard
| Product: |
Star Control 3 |
| Company: |
Accolade
|
| Cost: |
n/a |
System Requirements:
486 DX2-66 (P90 recommended), 8 megabytes of memory,
Windows 95 or MS DOS 5.0 or greater,
VESA SVGA card, 2x CD ROM (4x recommended)
Breakdown:
Fun Factor 5
Graphics 4
Sound 3
Interface 5
Replayability 4
Overall Score:
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