Star Control III

I've loved Star Control ever since playing the first one on Sega Genesis in the early 90s. And Star Control II is an indisputable classic. Star Control III is... not quite. I appreciate what they were going for, though. SC3 has a lot of good qualities, but also major flaws. Still, with the help of a walkthrough, I really enjoyed it. Everything you expect from Star Control's mix of strategy, story, and combat is all here. One of the biggest flaws for me was the clock. Sometimes the solution to a problem is to just do nothing. There was a lot of speeding up the clock to trigger an event, and slowing it back down to avoid the approaching doom. (I say that, but I have no idea how long "too long" is to wait... Star Control II's threat was real, though, so I played it safe with this game.) The other major issue I had was the visuals. They don't pop the way they did in previous games--the Daktak weapons look like asteroids; ships are smaller, harder to see, and less colorful, making it sometimes hard to tell them apart. The iso view makes it harder to aim. I also found the play field quite a bit smaller than the previous two games--the planet feels like it's everywhere, and ships with weak engines can get snared by the gravity well and slowly bonk themselves to death. The colony system was also confusing. You don't directly control the factory, and it's hard to tell what it's doing, but fortunately colonies aren't actually that important. In my plathrough, I actually missed a fairly major (but unnecessary) game event because I never made enough colonies to trigger it. The puppets and voice acting are fun, the story is enjoyable, and I had some real laughs. Space combat is still fun and satisfying for the most part. While I can't imagine trying to complete the game in the mid-90s, today, with a good walkthrough, I found it to be a campy, memorable, and enjoyable follow up to one of my favorite franchises and I'm glad I finally got around to playing it.

SC3 is the sequl to one of the all time greatest games, so it had some pretty big shoes to fill. I wouldn't say it "filled" those shoes, but it is a moderately fun game that kinda keep in the lore and certainly isn't BAD. If you like Star Control it's worth a playthrough

I replayed SC2 a few times through out my life, it's a game that always kept me thinking about the things it told me about but never showed me or let me experince. the universe is big and there's a lot of fun little things scattered through it. SC combat is fast and furious but not over complex. find what you like and what works and give `em hell. mastering the lander is also pretty straight forward, I wish it had a bit more to planet exploration but hey, it was awesome when it came out :-) I had a lot of fun with it, liked the story and art style. highly recommended.

Fred Ford and Paul Reiche made Star Control 1 & 2 the greats that they are. Both of these amazing game designers were NOT included in the creation of Star Control 3. I remember the sinking feeling in my heart when I picked up the box to this game and saw "Based on characters created by Fred Ford and Paul Reiche". This is a terrible video game that never should have happened and it killed Star Control as an IP. Fred Ford and Paul Reiche recently created the Skylanders game that is winning the hearts of children everywhere. Skylanders features numerous references to Star Control 2 in its dialog and characters. I hope that Toys for Bob finally has the money to purchase back the rights to Star Control and finally scrub the pathetic Star Control 3 from history.

It made a few improvements on 2, but the shortcomings far outweigh the improvements. It's fine that you are in a completely different system of space (instead of our actual galaxy like in 2). I like that in this one, you can colonize planets and have continuous resources, fuel, etc. coming in, unlike in 2 where you always have to go back to Earth base, or trade with the Mello...whatever they're called. But the combat in 3 is horrible! For one thing, you know how in all the Star Controls, when you fly to far to one edge of the screen, like to the right, you pop up on the left? That's a compensation for not wanting too much distance to develop between the ships...OK, fine. But in 3, it happens so quickly, that your opponent will just keep flying from left to right, left to right, left to right. He just keeps going until you either get really lucky, or so annoyed you do something stupid and get killed! I like a challenge, but the challenge shouldn't be the ridiculous quirk in the game! Then there's those darned planets! They seem to appear and different places every time the screen flips from your opponent constantly flying to the edge to flip the screen! Other than combat, some of the dialogue looks like it was written by a 12 year old. The Doogs! No species can be that stupid and survive. And then the K'Tang! They are the leaders of the Crux?! Seriously?! But the dialogue with the Spathi is pretty good, and I personally found the Mycon fascinating, though many don't agree on that one. Overall, I'm about half way through it, and I can't even finish it. Just not a good game. Those combats are just too annoying!