Posted on: October 4, 2011
Curunauth
Владелец игрыИгр: 1226 Отзывов: 23
Fun and customizable small-team tactics
A small-team space tactics game with RPG elements, Star Wolves looks good and is fun to play. The character advancement and ship equipment systems offer meaningful customization without forcing too much experience&loot grinding, and advanced character abilities give you a lot of options in combat. VISUALS and AUDIO: The game looks pretty good. There isn't a lot to render, so the render budget can be spent on detailed craft, good particle effects, very nice explosions, and just an overall nice visual experience. You'll spend most of your time zoomed out some distance, but you can pause at any time to examine the battle, frozen explosions, laser beams and all - and you'll occasionally need to, for example when a lucky hit forces you to split your squad for some evasive maneuvering. Sound is used sparsely but effectively. Weapons, explosions, etc. are all pretty standard fare, distinct enough to be flavorful and informative. Most communication is not voiced, but squad members verbally acknowledge orders, as well as speaking during a small number of cutscenes. The small, randomized selection of ambient and triggered combat background music is pretty decent. CONTROLS and GAMEPLAY: You control a mothership and a squad of 2 to 6 fighters, piloted by a motley crew with various specialties that can grow as you progress through the story. Pilots whose ships are destroyed will always eject, so you can keep going as long as the mothership remains intact (although ships are expensive to replace!). Destroyed ships and stations drop salvage that can be sold or used to equip your own velssels; this is a critical source of income at all stages of the game. Every character has a specialty and several unique abilities, but can train to some degree in all skills; combined with the wide variety of ships and equipment, this will allow you to define strong combat roles for every squad member but also switch up tactics when required. Available experience and money are well balanced, giving you enough to get by but not much more - for most of the game you will be forced to make compromises in your equipment purchases, prioritizing certain upgrades and relying on salvage for the balance. Controls are fairly standard RTS fare, although in a 3D environment. You can attach a camera to a unit, group, target, or free-roam, but you can only see units that are within your sensor range; the camera can be freely rotated around its anchor. There is a pan&zoom sector map that can be used to give long-distance orders as well. Everything can be controlled by mouse-clicks alone, but a few important commands have keyboard shortcuts. Since the game is single-player, it is possible to pause at any time, so targeting individual fighters is never problematic. Time can be accelerated up to 4x to shorten time spent crossing open space, and your mothership will alert you (and optionally auto-pause) when enemies are detected. STORY/ACTING: The story isn't terribly original, but it is engaging enough, and each mission has some character to it. You have the ability to play as you like to a degree, but your behavior outside of story branch choices has no lasting impact - you can wipe a sector clear and not only get no reputation for it, but even find everything restored if you take a future mission there. Still, being able to refuse evil missions is nice, and the split at the end is just long enough to be interesting and short enough not to be a pain to play through both. There are no big surprises, but it is still nice to hear each side of the story, particularly in the endgame - your choices there do have a significant impact on the universe, and said impact even affects gameplay in those last levels. Of course, even the smart villains never learn that betraying you is really stupid. (Admittedly, their odds in your final confrontation are pretty good.) DIFFICULTY: The difficulty varies considerably, and depends on your play style. Fortunately it doesn't depend *too* much on past performance, as a kill is a kill and much of the XP is gained via mission objectives . . . but in later levels, opponents provide a lot, so taking the hard route / level cleaning is somewhat important. At that point you should be able to wipe out patrols by just running into them, but if you can't, you're in a bit of trouble. That said, even if you haven't been maximizing XP, you'll probably only miss out on one or two high-level abilities, thanks to cost escalation. This could matter a fair bit, esp. with things like missile guru for 90% ECM resistance (without which missiles are nigh useless against top-tier opponents), but good use of abilities can carry you through most situations - I found I had lots left over for many missions, and some uses were superfluous (Viper, anyone?). You *are* stuck with any bad advancement choices you make, and characters don't "level up" except through the abilities you select and equipment you buy for them, so you should be a bit careful. That said, the same applies to your enemies. The final missions do involve an unavoidable uptick in difficulty of course. LEVELS, STRATEGY, and OTHER ELEMENTS: Invest in experience-boosting abilities early on! After that, defensive buffs are rare and therefore really important. You can't individually control squad members, so when precise or fast maneuvering is required, remove pilots from wings. Doing this also tends to make enemies re-target, further assisting when a lucky inferno hit forces you to take evasive action. Switching squad leaders can also redirect pressure. Note that squads will try to move in formation when not in combat, so you may find that only the leader fires at targets such as stations, particularly if he has longer-range weapons. When individually designating targets, the whole wing will attack until the ship has blown up, including after it has been reduced to 0 health. To save missiles and maximize combat effectiveness, re-target often, or use escort mode once enemies are in range - in that mode, wing members can attack different targets and will also take shots of opportunity. THE VERDICT: The game is fun and occasionally quite challenging. The system somewhat unavoidably encourages grinding for XP, but there's not too much of that - sector contents are finite (although randomized a bit at start). The time speedup function means that even sweeping a sector isn't all that tedious, although I'd have liked an 8x occasionally.
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