27th Century Hotrod

A Review of Star Quest I

by Edmond Meinfelder

In the 27th century, life is dull. Brave freedom fighters beat back evil aliens long ago, establishing a secure, albeit boring, place in the galaxy for mankind. With teleportation, star travel via space ships, is dangerous and expensive. Well, you hope star travel is dangerous -- you purchased a "Stochastic" ship capable of light speed and you crave excitement. With luck, you can scratch your itchy trigger finger in one of the occassional skirmishs with the remaining evil aliens.

Star Quest I's premise is a refreshing change from the standard substandard "galaxy on the brink of destruction at the hands of evil aliens." Star Quest's gameplay reminds me of the original Wing Commander, an easy game to master. This 3d star shooter features missions with extremely customizable difficulty, more so than any game in the genre to date. Now anyone -- and I mean anyone -- can grab a joystick, race across the galaxy, and dogfight other star fighters. Virtual Adventures Inc. designed a game fo r those not flying star fighters for a living. Even better, with the 10 levels of difficulty and the ability to win upgrades for your ship, the missions have replay value. I find Star Quest's replayability ironic.

These days, few companies foul the sound, graphics, programming and music. Instead, companies bury lousy gameplay beneath a attractive facial of dazzling art. Beauty, however, is only skin-deep and once you get fast the pretty face of many games, you receive only disappointment and fizzle for $50. The irony here is the game-play, though wonderful, is packaged with below average graphics and awful sound and music. Space Quest's graphics are 256-color 320x200, similiar to Looking Glass's Terra Nova and the now dated X-Wing engine (not the new CD version of X-Wing). The Star Quest graphic engine does a bit more than the original X-Wing with elegant gourand shading, active light sourcing and animated texture maps, but Wing Commander IV and TIE Fighter offer stunning SVGA graphics, leaving Star Quest I looking dated.

Each mission begins with a difficulty screen, ranging from 1-10. At the lower difficulty levels enemy ships are less agressive, becoming more so at the higher levels of difficulty. After the pilot selects the difficulty, Star Quest presents briefing on how to complete the mission objectives. After the mission, pilots receive a debriefing. The debriefing tallies the success and failure of mission objectives and, if the mission was a success the pilot receives a reward, like a weapon or engine improvement.

Star Quest has something the others do not: planets. You can veer your star fighter seemlessly down to a planet's surface, shooting everything in sight. Players can zip out to the sun, recharge solar batteries and fly between a planet's moons. The drawbac k is the scale. Imagine a basketball with buildings roughly the size of matchboxes; expect exactly this in Star Quest I when zooming over planets. The thrill of flying between a planet and its orbiting rings is undeniable.

Star Quest sound effects consist of an annoying engine drone and severely uninteresting weapon noises. The music, all MIDI, has grating, tense airs. As the music looped, my musical frustration increased. I have a high tolerance for MIDI -- I played X-Wing , TIE Fighter and the first Wing Commander all the way with music on. I enjoyed Star Quest more with music and sound off, playing my favorite CD in the CD ROM drive. After the masterful CD audio music of Mechwarrior 2 and Fantasy General, I may be spoiled.

The missions in Star Quest I vary greatly. In the one scenario, you man a mobile gun, defending a space station from incoming asteroids. Another involves disabling a computer by destroying nearby powers sources while avoiding hostile air craft. Other sorties are simply races around futuristic space tracks.

The races disappointed me. X-Wing had a sallom with players weaving their ships through ususual gates in space, similiar to Star Quest's races. I loved the X-Wing obstacle course, but the Star Quest races left me cold. I did not like how Star Quest remapped the joystick controls for the race. In a race, pushing forward increases velocity, while pulling back reduces speed. Throughout the rest of the game, the same controls adjust the ship's pitch not the speed. This simple, sudden change in the interface frustrated me as I switched from the battles to races, still trying to control my speed and pitch.

One mission touts itself as an adventure. The only difference between this "adventure" and the tactical missions is pilots gain information on mission objectives during the mission rather than the briefing preceeding each mission. The idea of a space adve nture is a good one, but Star Quest's implementation is uninspiring.

Despite the adjustable difficulty and easy interface, Star Quest leaves star jockies with an unsatisified itch this game can't scratch. Aside from the weak graphics and sound, there is a demonstrable lack in depth of gameplay. Perhaps justly so, for without the complex sim aspect found in Wing Commander and TIE Fighter, Star Quest is simplier game. Yet for me, the simplcity translated to a lack of depth and boredom. For the novice, however, Star Quest I may prove an excellent introduction to a classic genre.

Virtual Adventures Inc. may not be competing with Origin Systems and Lucas Arts, though. Star Quest I sports a price tag of $29. Considering the quality of the game and the ease at which anyone can have fun -- if only for hours -- the price is right. Since Virtual Adventures made the first three missions available as downloadable shareware, you can decide for yourself.

486 DX2-66, 2x CD ROM, 10 megabytes of disk space,
DOS (runs under Win'95), Soundblaster or compatible card,
joystick is recommended

Overall Score:

Click for more reviews

Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.