GOG Patron
An Apogee game, the very last one, and one I had not played. I was very hyped and looking forward to th is. But...it was not to be. The sprrites are huge and poorly made, animations and effects are subpar, your attack graphics are the same with the enemy's. The levels are mostly variations of three themes (space, terran and oceanic), and the enemy sprites are uninspired. On one level you fight a floating megacity that has a size similar to your ship, and on the very next level you fight against realistic human battleship much larger than an enire floating city. The game itself is unnecessarily tough, with whole levels existing just to screw with the player. The end game bosses can either be exploited due to poor design, or they will totally murder you. And even worse, between each episode you lose your hard earned progress. This is not a game I can recommend, and I am grateful I got it for free. If it is not free, stay away!
I remember reading about this game on magazines when I was a kid, but I did not have a PC capable enough to run it. By the time I did, newer and better games (as well as Windows 98) had come out. As a DOS game, it is impressive. The character have mapped textures on them, the environment is impressive, the athmopsphere is fantastic. The story, though cliched, is interesting and your choices have an impact on it. On the negative side, the game is a product of mid-90s. Tank controls, awkward movement, menus that require multiple inputs for the same action, and great parts of the story revealed through texts instead of action. Finally, the game is uniwinnable for me. I have come across a bug in which (SPOILER WARNING) the reactor explodes even if you succesfully shut it down, and see the cinematic of the core stabilizing. I tried tweaking the cycles, tried changing to earlier DosBox version and finally, I even tried running it in VirtualBox. No luck. Even without the above flaw, I still would not recommend buying this game. Despite its impressive accomplishments during its time, it did not leave an impact on the gaming development, and has mostly been forgotten. If you are curious, I suggest you watch a playthrough of the game. It deserves at least that much.