Developer: Paradox Interactive
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Genre: Space Shooter/Simulation
Release Date: September 23, 2008
Being the owner of a new, custom built PC, it's nice to be able to actually play new PC games again. My old PC was a great model for it's time, but it's time was just after New Year's of 2004, when I received it - a 2.2GHz PIII that I've since upgraded to the board max of 1GB of RAM, and a GeForce 6200 graphics card (the best PCI card you can get) - as a gift from my family for completing a military stint. It was passable for most of what I wanted to do with it, but for games, even lighter fare - such as Football Manager - was becoming problematic. So I made the decision to upgrade to a nice little system, with a dual-core 3.3GHz Wolfdale, 2GB of RAM, and a Radeon HD4870 that made my mother remark "you could land planes on that damn thing".
Naturally, I was happy. So was everyone at DHGF! They were so happy, they went and immediately assigned me one of our beefier games to review. Congrats, Chris! Here's some work!
Looking at Dark Horizon, I figured that it was good combo for me; after all, I like blowing things up as much as anyone, and is appeared to be a space shooter that lets you do just that, with some RPG elements thrown in. Doesn't get much better than that, right?
It can, but mainly because of some deep-seeded flaws that seriously hurt what is otherwise a good package.
Controlls, surprisingly, are with the WASD buttons, with straffing done by the bracket ([ and ]) buttons. The mouse controls the cursor, guns and missiles, which turns this game more into a first (or third, depending on your view) person shooter, the way it controls. Being a little more adjusted to flight simulators, I have to admit that this was disorienting to me; it completely threw off my control scheme, having to rely on W to put on afterburners, and A and D to yaw, and to be completely honest, I wish the controls were more "classic" in that sense. It made avoiding gun shots and missiles hard (though to avoid missiles, the "Z" button sets off chaffs, of which you get a limited amount), and because of the FPS nature of the controls, and just how many of them there are, it made using a control pad a limiting experience. That in itself was bad news because of the fact that a lot of important controls were mapped all over the keyboard by default. Having key controls all over a keyboard is OK if I'm only using the keyboard, but once you include the mouse into things, it gets in the way, and I think a lot of key control elements, by default, would have done better closer to the WASD buttons. It's possible that this is my fault, being primarily a console gamer my whole life, and to be fair, if you're sitting here calling me a prat for whigning about too many buttons, you're probably right.
Dying in this game is extremely negative for two reasons which combine to make it a painful experience. First off, there are no checkpoints. At all. No matter how long the stage is, if you die, back to the beginning you go. There's something decidedly old-school about that, but Joe Pesci damnit, even Super Mario Bros. had a bloody checkpoint in almost all of it's stages. That wouldn't be TOO bad, if it wasn't for the fact that it takes a LONG time to get from point to point. They're very far apart, and it never feels like your ship is going fast enough, no matter what ship you're using; even Wing Commander on the Super Nintendo had an option to skip ahead a quadrant or two to get to some action. Therefore, if you die in a stage - even the bloody tutorial - then you can expect to go through every part of the stage again, every unskippable conversation, every enemy you've fought, every single thing that you've done in the stage, probably plenty of times depending on your level of competence. You're given wingmen that you can control to help you out, but their level of competence can be highly debated, as for me, they were barely a help at all. I'd go as far as to say that the enemies have better AI than my wingmen, and to their defence, the AI is actually quite good; I had a lot of times where I'd look up, be chasing someone, and find out that I was getting an entire arsenal shoved up my tailpipes because someone snuck behind me. Furthermore, they move around very well, zigging and zagging well enough to stay out of gun range most of the time; you're going to want to be careful with your missile useage in this game to get anywhere.
Visually, the game looks good, especially if you like purple. It's not Crysis level, but everything is sharp, and most of all, it makes the game extremely atmospheric; there's an immersive quality to the look of the game, and anyone with an active imagination can get sucked in. It also looks really pretty when a ship or something else blows up, and it's realistic in that, if you blow something up close to you, you're going to have a problem seeing through the explosion for awhile, as it lingers; that's a pain in a dogfight, but looks great. Audibly, the game is competent; there is almost no music to speak of, but there really doesn't have to be, and more pronounced music would actually take me somewhat out of whack, considering how immersed I became at times, even as I fought with the controls. Voiceovers are decent and pronounced, and of better quality than I would have assumed. There is also a bit of humour depending on who's talking.
The Scores
Story: Decent
Graphics: Above Average
Sound: Mediocre
Control and Gameplay: Below Average
Replayability: Enjoyable
Balance: Above Average
Originality: Poor
Addictiveness: Poor
Appeal Factor: Poor
Miscellaneous: Above Average
FINAL SCORE: MEDIOCRE GAME
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