At long last, a decent game for the Freelancer fan! After having played Freelancer I thought I would never come across another game like it. Then I played the X series and found myself hooked. On a lark I started playing Darkstar One; I was quite pleased to find an engaging, pleasant and fun game. In this game there are are 4 player categories: Pirate, Killer, Mercenary and Merchant. The Darkstar One is a ship which requires artifacts in order to upgrade. Each artifact provides extra slots for equipment or weapon mounts. The player is tasked with collecting these artifacts in the various sectors of the universe. Along with the artifacts one can perform various missions which reward credits. One uses these credits to buy equipment and weapons in order to improve the Darkstar One. There are some nifty features, too, One can speed up time in order to travel more quickly from point A to point B, as long as there are no bad guys lurking around. There are a few downsides. The voice acting is sub par. Soon after beginning the game you acquire a female companion. Her lines are so limited and repeated so often that half of the time I wanted to maroon her on a space station. The other characters are equally irritating. The taunts from hostiles are silly; unfortunately there is no way to deactivate them. That the game soon becomes predictable. Pirate attacks are all pretty much the same and one does end up grinding in order to earn the credits to buy upgrades for the ship. Of course, the graphics are not as dazzling as the more current space combat games. I don't consider these flaws to be fatal. I loved the X series -each of the games was amazing as much as it was complex. Darkstar One isn't in that arena. The learning curve is not steep and you can get the hang of it very fast. After that I found the game to be a lot of fun avoiding the problem of challenging to the point of frustration. All in all this is a game that is well worth the price if you enjoy this genre. IMHO there are few too few of these games for those who love to play them,
I loved a lot about this game; ditto for its sequel. So much so that I volunteered to see if it would run on a Mac using special software. OK, I admit it!! I am an absolute nut about space sims. It didn't take a genius to recognize that a game about exploring the ocean would closely resemble a game that takes place in space. And it did. Aquanox has its high points. Despite the fact that it is a decade old, the graphics are actually quite good. . It's been a while, but I seem to recall that the controls took some getting used to. Honestly, though, navigating a ship in the ocean for real cannot be a walk in the park so that added to its realism. Further, Aquanox didn't have such a steep learning curve that I wanted to throw the controller out the window. Some space games are so hard that I'm convinced there is some sadistic game developer out there laughing his or her posterior off. Alas, there is a catch. As my personal hero Roseanne Roseannadanna said: 'It's Always Something' The one thing that drove me bonkers was the voice acting. And just when I thought it could not get any worse, I started playing Aquanox 2 and IT DID! The irony is that I've snickered when I have read gamers complain about this before. Well, folks, KARMA is a total BEYOTCH!! I used to think that one could just ignore bad voice acting. I mean, who can blame a person for hiring his family members to read lines in a game - even if these relatives plainly cannot read? Well, this was so far beyond awful as to border on torture. One could ignore this as easily as one could chop onions and avoid shedding tears!! This game is a bargain. So is the sequel. If you want to enjoy this one be sure to bring along your sense of humor 'cause you are really gonna need it.
