Score: 8
"Too many holes in the polish"
date: January 2, 2009
You can fly right off the edge of the map in all directions. I don't know how others prevent this, but they do it, and so can you.
The first level, those buildings have targets behind them. Smack a target, and you're restarting. Blind attacks are an ungood.
The weapon fires much too fast to be limited by number of shots on the screen. Give me a refire rate limitation if that's your objective. If I wanted effective weapons, I had to move too far forward.
The story ends very badly, and possibly not at all, depending on whether that little blurb about Navjeh was to indicate its destruction. Storylines are not window dressing or distractions, they're the reason I play a game. Others are welcome to disagree. Regardless of your opinion of storylines in gaming, I want to know if Earth survived, and if my pilot character survived. If they're all dead, say that radio telescopes observed a climactic explosion that could only have been the rescue ship's main reactor, and large enough to wipe out all the fighters in the area.
I had to sit through the rescue op sequence a dozen times, doing nothing each time, till it completed. Putting that inside a cutscene would have been nice if you couldn't resume at the end of it.
Certain enemy ships seemed to be invincible. Since I was in front of it, and everything moves so fast, this invariably killed me. Several times. I learned which ones, and just let them fly past. The point is, they were repeating phenomena. I'm not making excuses for bad piloting, of which I have plenty.
The graphics were top-notch for this kind of gaming. I greatly enjoyed them. You also do an excellent job of conveying the idea of a persistent, expansive universe. Good voice acting, and excellent cut-scene illustration. I enjoyed the time I spent on here, my complaints about specific points notwithstanding. Good job, and keep it up.
PS: QUIT CANCELLING PROJECTS! Don't tease us with demos or trailers for an awesome product that will never arrive. Yes, Forgotten Rites, I'm looking at you.
