Darkstar One

DarkStar One puts the player in the boots of a spacefaring rascal who's been gifted a unique upgradeable alien-tech craft by his genius father, and must uncover a grand conspiracy involving the galactic power elite, captains of industry, and of course aliens. At the risk of dropping spoilers, the whole thing is very 'Iron Man' though that isn't a bad thing. The plot, such that it is, is pretty decent though it clings too closely to played-out plot devices. There's an obligatory trench scene, and the twists are about as sudden and unexpected as an approaching dreadnought. One fun feature I wish more games would implement is the ability to respond to hostile radio chatter with some smacktalk of your own. It's very gratifying. Unfortunately, the gameplay is a disaster. Each system is basically one copypasta'd station, and occasionally one asteroid which contains one alien MacGuffin for your one alien MacGuffinmobile. The organic ship upgrades are actually a very neat idea, but they're permanent, finite, and there's no reset button so if you mix fighter-path and corvette-path upgrades too much you can easily wind up stuck with a ship that isn't very good. Weapons and combat get the job done, but they're very workmanlike and forgettable. Trade is nonexistent, and missions are extremely repetitive. Like Ye Olde Battlecruiser Of Internet Infamy, all the elements of a good game are present but none of them were fleshed out enough to make a compelling product. The plot is decent if you're into space opera, and some of the stuff they tried may justify a playthrough. But you won't find yourself spending any time here when you're through with the campaign, and frankly I can't recommend this game in the face of other, much better, space sims both before and after.

I had a lot of fun with this game back on the Xbox 360, and was really excited to see it here. This game has one ship you can upgrade in all sorts of different ways, and you can make progress in the story in just as many ways to. You can shoot asteroids to mine them, spec into becoming an interstellar freighter, hunt down pirates, become a pirate, automate away the fighting bit if you invest in turrets, go all-in on customizing your ship's capabilities for a certain playstyle... All sorts of things. Sadly, I am one of the people who gets a consistent crash when FTL jumping between systems, so I can only play the tutorial on this version. It's a known bug that's never been properly fixed, and seems to stem from a change in DirectX that happened at some point. Console versions still work, but weather even compatibility mode can help you with a PC release is a roll of the die.

I picked this up at a Target not long ago and I was pleasantly surprised. I'd never heard of the game before, but I checked out a GameSpot review, which compared it favorably to games like Freelancer. I loved Freelancer, so I bought Darkstar One immediately. I am very glad I did. It's different than most space sims in that you don't change ships. You're flying the same ship through the entire game, although you can upgrade it. How you upgrade your ship determines how it flies and fights, which makes the game seem almost RPG-ish. My main complaint is that the side missions get very repetitive, as can be expected. Escort this guy, shoot this guy, gather this material, etc. However, the storyline is very engrossing. It takes you throughout every region of the game's universe, slowly introducing you to the different races and giving you interesting missions. I haven't yet played to the end, so I have no comments on how the story ends, though I suppose it'd be bad form to reveal too much in a review. Graphically, the game is very good looking. I'd recommend a pretty decent machine if you want to crank the settings up all the way. I haven't run into any technical issues, but keep in mind that I'm not working with GOG's version. Another minor complaint is the voice acting. It's decent, but a bit amateurish at times, especially with some of the alien races. But I've certainly heard worse voice acting, so it's not too distracting in this case. Overall, this is an excellent game for people who enjoy space sims. I'd recommend it to anyone, really.

This is one of those games that, while you play it, it is enough to keep you playing and, once you finish it, you forget about it. Not bad, but not amazing. I think those who would appreciate it most are those that haven't played games like Freelancer or X before. The rest will see it as an alright game that doesn't do anything new, but was amusing nonetheless.

While the combat portion of the game is alright, the story is ok, as what some others have said I agree on. This game in my opinion is a fail. Stack it against Freelancer, Nexus the Jupitar Inicident and others in the genere, this game is very boring. In the begining it seems like a really neat game but... as you continue to explore, its allll the sameeeeee generaly in every system you warp to.