Gameplay

It's All in the Wrist...

As time has passed, space sims have gotten increasingly more complicated. From the simple arcadish shooting, and occasional selection of weapon in Wing Commander, to all-out 5 screens of controls in FreeSpace 2, we've advanced, to say the least. The Roberts' games have also moved towards a more complicated set of controls, but for the most part the Wing Commanders stuck more to action than sim. How is Starlancer? Well...

Oh yeah, Toasty!

KABOOM!

So far, the game still seems more action oriented than the LucasArts or Volition entries, but the sim-like qualities are starting to peep in. Missile selection at the moment requires more thought, as each weapon is very specialized. No longer is it the kind of lock that the weapon uses, but its effect that determines your choices. There are dumb fires that just fly straight but you have many of them, standard lock-on explosive missiles, the Havoc missile which releases an EMP-like blast to fry electronics, and the Jackhammer, a big mofo of a missile that does lots of damage, but is very slow and cumbersome. Obviously, each of these weapons has a use that's very specific, and you'll be sure to choose it in the appropriate situation.

See the sparks fly

Missiles away!

Aside from that, you can now strafe both ways, in a limited fashion. There are all sorts of useful displays on the HUD - from a wingman status display to power distribution.

Future Glocks

Guns are wide and varied. They come in two general types - ammo and energy based. The ammo-based weapons don't have a cool-down time and generally do pretty good damage. Of course, you can run out of bullets. Energy based weapons, on the other hand, use your ship's internal energy supply to feed their power. They can't run out of lead, but you can drain your power and their rate of fire will decrease substantially. You'll have to wait for it to recharge to get a good burst in.

Debris of the recently deceased

Death sequence :(

I'm "Special"

Each ship can have several special abilities. There are cloaks, spectral shields (time-limited invulnerability to energy weapons), reverse thrust engines and blind-fire guns (which aim automatically.) Wow, does this ever add to gameplay! All these are being balanced out right now to not make things too easy, but they do make it interesting. Got someone on your tail? If your ship has reverse thrusters, you can quickly turn things around. Or maybe you can cloak and pop into visibility a safe distance away. Blind fire weapons are particularly abusive against torpedoes going against your ships. Also, while you tend to get better ships as you go through the ranks, this doesn't make your previous choices absolutely useless.