Bad Stuff

The Ugly

ORB left me thoroughly unconvinced that a 3D space arena was truly necessary. What plane I was in hardly mattered to me at all, as the game consisted of a ‘get to point A and mine the asteroid’, ‘get to point B and check the story-directed waypoint’, and ‘get to point C and wipe out the enemy fleet’. As both of our fleets were on perpetual aggression, we engaged at the slightest bit of contact. Theoretically, it would be possible to skirt around each other, but this point of contention has two significant flaws. First off, the computer, being on aggressive the entire game, would simply merrily make its way to my starbase if I got out of its way, making it efficient to directly engage the enemy in order to avoid any setbacks in production. Secondly, the majority of ships in ORB move excruciatingly slowly. Even on x3 speed, I found myself often reading a magazine or preparing a snack while my units took several minutes to get across a map. Reinforcements arriving in time to turn the tide of battle? You have to be kidding me, unless you’re playing one of the smaller maps. The size of the maps in ORB would make any other game blush with shame, and often results in an unnecessarily prolonged and tedious gameplay experience.

The Ring

Lots Of... Dots

Easy To Pick Apart

Despite the various mission objectives, you’re always just playing against the computer set in melee mode. The computer usually outnumbers you, is richer than you, and is technologically more advanced than you, forcing you to immediately take the upper-hand in most maps. If you wait too long, the game will often pass the point where defeat is inevitable. Additionally, for the most part, the ships in ORB don’t really do anything other than attack. Beyond the small fighters, there are missile launchers, powerful but prohibitively [and inefficiently] expensive, and then there are the almighty capital ships. Capital ships in ORB are the equivalent of Command & Conquer’s mammoth tanks. With multiple laser beam weapons, they rip through small fighters like a zergling rushing into a siege tank encampment. This imbalance is made complete by shields and armor capable of withstanding ludicrous amounts of punishment. Coupled with a repair ship, your capital ship armada is nigh-indestructible. The computer, in typical fashion, will send hordes of small, ineffectual fighters to be mauled and rent by your virtual Imperial Star Destroyers. Once this level of technological prowess is achieved, its best to retire your entire fighter fleet to free up manpower and build only capital ships. Once battle is engaged, there really seems to be no point to micromanagement beyond manipulating your repair vessels or targeting specific ships.

Incoming

Slaughter

It's Mine

ORB relies upon a heavily menu-driven interface. Given the real-time aspect of the game, the whole menu-based system feels unnecessary and cumbersome. Conversely, ORB features full, in-depth help files easily accessible in-game, a welcome feature all strategy games should, but often don’t feature. Up to four players can multiplay over Gamespy. At this time, however, there are very few players publicly playing ORB online. Despite such, the ORB community is a small, but dedicated group of serious gamers with a substantial number of mods in development. Finally, one small but appreciable part of ORB is the great stability out of the box. It’s nice to see game developers taking bugs to task as of late.