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High Expectations

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: March 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game is a must have for anyone who has followed the tremendous works of the Roberts brothers. Keeping in line with they're always popular Wing Commander and Privateer series' they bring to the table a much awaited space flight sim. They are returning to the original cockpit style of the original Wing Commander, yet with the visibility and view screen of Privateer 2. This game is sure to be a huge hit with previous owners of their previous projects. Check out their company at www.digitalanvil.com

Simply incredible!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: April 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Anyone who ever played the Wing Commander games or any other space sim will enjoy this title for sure. Made by Warthog (the same company that made Privateer 2), and Digital Anvil (wich has a large number of Wing Commander vetrans) StarLancer will please even the most demanding gamers. I was lucky enough to get a beta copy of StarLancer, and I enjoyed playing through every mission in this game. The story is great, presented through CGI cutscenes, cockpit chatter, briefings/debriefings and news reports available between each mission. As a member of the newly formed 45th Volounters squadron you will have to prove yourself to the Western Alliance fleet. The Alliance is made up of Japan, Itally, France, Germany, Spain, USA, and UK. You're going to fight against the Eastern Coalition which is made up of China, Russia, and various Middle East countries. If you complete your mission objectives you'll get promoted and receive new ships and weapons, but be careful. If you screw up in some missions it's all over. The game begins with a Pearl Harbor-like attack on the Alliance, and the French and Italian fleets are nearly completly wiped out. The main point of the game is to defend the remaining Alliance fleets while they try to regroup. The game is set 160 years in the future, and takes place entirely in out own system.

The minimum requirements are prety low, especialy when compared to recent space sims like Freespace 2, but it looks better than any other space sim out there.

Big Trouble For Moose and Squirrel

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 14
Date: April 24, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I, too, was one of the ones lucky enough to be chosen for the Beta test of this game. While the hype surrounding this game is immense, it is not underserved. The graphics engine and immersion factors on this game meet and excede what anyone could hope for. This game is truly spectacular, visually- far exceeding what one has come to expect from Microsoft's publishing arm.

Ther's one problem, and a big one, at that.

The designers of this game are lauded for their past work on all the Wing Commander sagas...scads of praise. And they are equally condemned for that atrocious ... movie ... that was served up as the "Wing Commander Movie." What I don't understand is why the reviews of Starlancer so far haven't touched on how downright horrible the acting and writing is all those pretty CGI movies. Russians as bad guys? C'mon folks. Could you have come up with a more dog-eared set of villains? And the utterly hopeless set of "motivations" for the cartoonish villains is almost as bad as the wretched Boris and Natasha accents.

We've played all those Wing Commander titles for a pure sense of escapism coupled with Space Opera plotlines. They always satisfied on some level. The Roberts' make a damn good action-sim, but should we be forced sit through their stifled movie careers, again? I want those 88 minutes of my life that I spent watching the WC movie back. And the dreadful writing aspects that mar Starlancer bring back the bad taste in my mouth from the movie. Sigh...it's not even campy. Just bad.

If you can get past the lame-duck backstory, the actual game is a stellar example of what can be done in this action genre. If the writing had been even average, Starlancer would have merited 5 stars (it's that beautiful).

Freespace Lite

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 49 / 61
Date: April 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

My god, I can't believe what passes as a good game nowadays. Being an extreme fan of the Wing Commander series, as well as other space simulations like Descent Freespace, I was more then ecstatic when I first bought Starlancer. After playing the game for 5 hours, I was disappointed. 2 days later I was downright appalled.

Descent Freespace 2 raised the bar for what a space sim should be. Starlancer is nothing more then a colorized version of Wing Commander. Sure, there's alot of action, and the graphics are purty, but it could have been better - alot better. Actually they should have called it Freespace Lite - For Dumbies.

First of all, it's downright impossible. Even at the easiest setting, I barely managed to finish each level. Why? The enemies weren't' that hard to destroy. It had to do with the fact that your ship, no matter which ship you choose, couldn't carry anything worthwhile. In Descent Freespace 2 (DS2), the ships could carry dozens of missiles of various types. In Starlancer, you have 3-7 hardpoints which carry one missile each. Yep, one missile. Except for the screamers, which come in 20, but they have no lock-on capacity. Imagine trying to kill 10-20 ships each level with 4 missiles. And the worse part is you can't reload!

And then there's the fuel. Even though it's 2160, you're still using solid fuel, so if you tend to use the afterburner (which you need alot because everything is so far apart), you'll have to install fuel pods, which limits the missiles you can carry. So now you're left with 2 missiles, which makes the game even harder.

And then there's no logic behind it. At the beginning of mission 8, the enemy carrier is launching torpedoes at your carrier. Your carrier informs you to just attack the fighters and disregard the torpedoes, because their cannons will handle it. Yet 30 seconds later, when enemy bombers jump in and start launching ALOT of torpedoes at your carrier, the carrier begs you to shoot down all the torpedoes before they are destroyed. So you command your wingmen to destroy your bomber, but since they're so inept, it takes them 15 minutes to destroy 1 bomber. Meanwhile you're chasing back and forth shooting down torpedoes. I had to replay that mission at least 8 times because the wingmen couldn't tell the difference between a bomber and a hair dryer.

Communication Remember how in DS2 you had complete control of your wingmen? In Starlancer you only have three options: help me, ignore this enemy, or go home. What happen to guard? What happen to rearm? Even though half of the missions require you to guard a freighter or convoy, you can't even tell the wingmen to guard it. And the worst part is, on the keyboard, you use 1-6 to change camera view. Pressing "C" will bring up the communications display, then you hit "1" for talking to the enemy, "2" for talking to your wing, etc.. But since it's so slow, if you hit C then 2 really fast, it will change the camera view! So if you need to issue commands in a hurry, you can't, because the screen will change view! Who's the genius behind this?

Graphics The graphics are the best part of the game. The engine is basically the same as Privateer 2, except with some heavy tweaks. The blackness of space is replaced by distant nebula and asteroid fields. But the odd thing is, you're flying around in our solar system - there's not suppose to be nebula in this area. Ships blow up in little pieces after you destroy them. Each weapon has its own look and feel. Missiles leave a trail of smoke after you fire them. But it's not nearly as good as Freespace 2, where deep space is alive with nebulas, comets, galaxies, planets, etc.

Also there's little things. Every time you play another mission, you have to change your HUD settings. You can choose what displays are shown - missiles, guns, damage, etc. If you turn it off on a level, when you start the next one, it jumps back to the default HUD display. So you have to waste time setting the displays back to what they were before. And then you can't bypass the in-game cinematics, which just takes forver.

Starlancer should have been called Wing Commander 6. Except for the graphic overhaul, the introduction of online gaming (which is pretty cool) and the new ships, it's the exact same gameplay, same commands, and same missions. After 2 days of Starlancer I went back to playing Wing Commander 4. Sure it's outdated, but at least it's got Mark Hamill.

Starlancer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 05, 2000
Author: Amazon User

When I first played Starlancer, I was VERY impressed. The graphics may be it's best feature, other than the fun missions. What I like about it is that you don't play the same kind of mission over and over again., they are pretty much different. Some aspects may be the same, but the setting always makes it different.

The gameplay is great! Downing your fist enemy will be historic to you, as you fly by you will see the debris (and mabye the pilot) of the fantastoc explotions. The missions are nice and long, so the game will last. If only there was an in-game save feature. The story ties the game together well with in-mission events. The sound is great too. Except for the constant "ARGGHHH!" and "NOOO" of the downed Russian fighters, everything is great.

The ships are cool, and I love how you can land during a mission. Multiplayer is the funnest I've played yet, and the game will run fine on a 56k modem. And if your stick on a mission, log on and find some guys to help you beat it-hence-co-operative gameplay. Deathmatch is better, though.

Starlancer is great, and for the guy who said Russians as bad guys were bad, the designers wanted a change from furry lions and wanted a more close to home conflict. BUY THIS GAME!

More alive than FS2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: May 18, 2000
Author: Amazon User

FS2 seems to be the one to compare it against. The graphics are better than FS2, the system requirements are less demanding than FS2. I played FS2, but never feeled part of the story. In Starlancer you feel more part of it. The ships are nice, dogfighting is cool. I am amazed at how good the graphics is, I only have a 333 with 64megs of ram, and I get no jumpiness (word?) like I got with FS2. It is also difficult on hard level. In summary, if you enjoyed Wingcommander and played FS1/FS2 and do not demand the right to modify the interface then GO FOR IT. The plot: Well, it may be Cold War, but it is cool. Time to fight that Cold War.

I'm gonna Have To Call This Game The Champion

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: May 23, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I can't really describe this game, but oh it's good, it's really good so here i go... It has the same interface as the old Wing Commander games...but siginficantly improved though..and this game is from "THE" Chris Roberts, as you know (if you are a space combat lover) Chris Roberts is the best in the business.....i did like Wing Commander.....and Tachyon was Cool (though not especially fun) but this tops it all the graphics are the best in every game i've seen and actually I didn't know it was possible to make this kind of graphics. the sound is extremely great and man it's million times faster than Wing Commander/Tachyon.....or just any other Space Combat game....it's of course harder (because it's faster) but not that much plus you can choose the difficulty levels...and i DO really recommend this to ALL people that like Cool GRAPHICS, Like to HAVE FUN....and those who like GREAT GAMES....cause this one is IT even the Lucas Arts masters could never make this kind of a game unless they'd EMPLOY CHRIS ROBERTS...oh sorry but i can't stop .....this IS THE ULTIMATE SPACE COMBAT SIMULATOR THE INTERFACE IS SUPER THE SOUND IS SUPER......IT'S REALLY FUN IT'S NOT TO HARD...but it still gives you a little resistance...this is THE BEST GAME EVER even better than: Tachyon (though i didn't like it), Wing Commander IV, Monkey Island, Imperium Galactica, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament or any other good game AVALIBLE....i just hope their will be StarLancer 2,3,4,5.....and i would hope i could make one or be a part of the developement team.

THANKS FOR READING......please vote weather this review helped you.

It's so-so.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: May 25, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I won't rehash some of the comments made by other reviewers here, as they seem to be right on (with the exception of the gushing fanboys).

This is a fairly decent space combat sim that looks and feels like a retro-styled Wing Commander 6, which is hardly surprising considering the source. No new ground is really being broken here in the way that FreeSpace 2 did, with its massive capital ship combat and nebula missions.

The graphics are good, and I got great framerates on my Celeron 400 with TNT2 graphics card. However, there's really heavy distance filtering applied to the textures on the ships, so if a ship isn't right in your face, it looks like a brown-grey blob. This is particularly bad because the game relies heavily on in-engine cutscenes, which come out looking awful this way. You also can't skip the cutscenes, which is completely annoying.

The fighter ship design is very cool--they all look like vicious WWII fighters--but the capship design isn't nearly as good, with one or two exceptions. Capship combat and anti-capship missions are a big letdown when compared to FS2.

As others have stated, the AI is profoundly stupid, and your options for controlling them are very limited. You're basically alone out there.

The flight model is also weird. You lose turning maneuverability when you slow down, which is the opposite of most space sims. This makes the game into a lot of high-speed passing and turning with a great deal of gunfire, as the ships don't mount many missiles (and the missiles are both easily evaded and usually ineffective), and there's no standard rearming in-mission.

What does make the game replayable is cooperative multiplayer, which you can play on the Zone--you can replay any of the campaign missions with others.

Deathmatch multiplayer is a different story, however. There are a lot of fun variants on deathmatch, but the actual playing of it is bad. There's a great deal of lag warping and other weirdness in deathmatch, even if you have a blazing connection to the net. You'll explode without even knowing you were being shot at; you'll get killed by the guy that you are drilling right in front of you because he has actually come around behind you and shot you, only you never saw that updated on your screen. So deathmatch becomes far less skill than luck, and not very fun.

Conclusion: you might have some fun with this if you're bored and looking for a new space action fix, but don't expect it to be the Next Great Thing, as it's pretty much more of the same. If you've never played FreeSpace 2, you owe it to yourself to check that out first before committing to Starlancer.

One final note: The force feedback on this game is absolutely the best I've ever experienced. It almost is reason alone to try out the game. For the first time, force feedback actually figures prominently in the gameplay; you hesitate to turn on certain weapons because your stick will be shaking so hard you won't be able to hit the target. It definitely adds a lot of fun factor to the flying. I wish other games' implementations of force feedback were as good.

Fun missions, but not very compelling...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: June 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I recently finished this game and I have to say that the single-player hasn't left me with a great aftertaste. Unlike the Wing Commander series, there isn't any plot in-between missions, hence no character development. We're limited to getting to know our so-called wingmen through in-game dialogue. Despite the lack of a compelling story, the gameplay is still pretty challenging for the seasoned gamer and the missions offer a good variety of objectives.

Graphics and realistic views

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: June 29, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've checked the reviews. I've ran the program and I like what I see, and I know this would be a great follow through for those who liked Desent Freespace,

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