|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
I want you to look
heavenward for a moment
That's the trouble with space sims. You wait ages and ages and suddenly three
turn up all at once. I refer, of course, to I-War, Wing Commander: Prophecy
, and Colony Wars, all of which are due to hit the PC round about now.
Now, there are those that might say that taking on the might of the latest installment
of the Wing Commander series is folly indeed. After all, WC has dominated the
space sim market for so long, it's difficult to remember what life was like
before anyone had heard the name Iceman Casey. But Particle Systems, the developers
of I-War, are confident that their product represents 'the ultimate space sim',
and are no doubt hoping that the quality of the product is going to speak for
itself. Fair enough, this game wants to be judged on its own terms, so I will
do just that.
Enter Infinity
I-War is set in the late 23rd / early 24th centuries. Mankind has been using
faster-than-light (FTL) travel for some time, and the colonisation of new solar
systems is well under way. As has happened so often in the past, the newly formed
colonies wish independence from their rulers back on Earth...
And so to the I-War; on one side, the powerful navies of Earth and her Commonwealth,
with their huge cruisers, destroyers, and legions of smaller ships; on the other,
the Independents ('Indies'), 'a bizarre mix of pirates, terrorists and an underground
political organisation', who have amassed a fleet of commercial and mining ships
as well as a few stolen military vessels.
Given such a spiel for a game it's easy to assume that you're about to slip among a rag-tag fleet of underdogs and fight for liberty, fraternity and equality. Ha! If you fancy playing the down-trodden eco-warrior type, you've come to the wrong game: here you play an up-coming Commonwealth Navy officer, fiercely loyal (at least at first) to the cause of Earth, who views the Indies as law-breaking scumbags. But at least they keep you in a job.
As a junior officer, you take command of a 150 metre long Dreadnought-class Corvette, the workhorse of the Commonwealth Navy. When you first start out, you must complete some basic training exercises before being allowed out on 'real' missions. As your career progresses, so the level of responsibility you are given increases. Sometimes you will fly alone in combat against Indie installations, sometimes you will act as part of a fleet sent to defend a specific target or rescue stranded Navy crewmen. In each mission, you score points for completing objectives as quickly as possible. Most have specific sub-objectives to earn you extra credit. As you complete missions, you are drawn further into the unfolding story of the I-War...
making the jump into capsule space for FTL flight
The Dreadnought
Let me begin by saying that this game is not for the faint of heart. The blurb
that comes with the game promises you 'a fully-working space ship in a box',
and the game really does live up to this promise. Learning to fly the Dreadnought
effectively is a truly demanding affair. Even after three weeks' solid gameplay,
I would consider myself still a mere novice.
The Dreadnought is controlled from the bridge by way of four workstations; Command
(Cmd), Navigation (Nav), Weapon (Wep) and Engineering (Eng), which you can access
either using keyboard shortcuts (quick and easy) or by wandering around on the
'virtual bridge' (slower, but graphically more satisfying). Each workstation
offers access to different attributes of the ship; the Command workstation allows
you to view mission objectives and use the ship's remote access (which I'll
discuss later); the Nav workstation offers the best forward-facing viewpoint
and is the best for viewing contacts and targets; at the Wep workstation you
are afforded a 360 degree fully 3D field of view, so you can target ships behind
you; and the Eng workstation provides you with data on ship condition, allowing
you to direct repair teams to specific areas. There is some overlap between
workstations; for example, Nav allows you limited access to weapons and engineering;
Wep allows you full flight capablities. What is not made clear in the manual
is whether, when you access a workstation, you are taking the part of the character
operating that workstation, or remaining in character as the captain and overriding
your crewman's orders... But whatever the scenario, you will have to become
adept at handling the ship from all four workstations if you are to complete
your missions successfully.
a mission briefing viewed from the command workstation
You rarely have to use the Command workstation. In fact, once the mission briefing is over, the only time I have ever returned here is to use the remote access function, which allows you to tap into the flight controls of other ships (providing you have access, of course). Once tapped in, you can fly the remote ship from the safety of your own bridge, allowing you into tricky situations without risking your neck. Of course, while you're logged in to the remote ship, you can't fly your Dreadnought, so you need to make sure it is safe from attack before attempting a remote.
The workstation you'll find yourself returning to time after time is Navigation. As the name suggests, Nav is where the pilot of the ship sits, and it's the workstation from which you'll do most of your flying. As well as providing you with a view out of the spaceship, Nav gives you a head-up display displaying tactical information about your ship and other contacts you can see. You may set your HUD to display information about vessels, weapons, inert objects (e.g. asteroids) or mission waypoints. You're also provided with a 3D radar orb which makes it pretty easy to visualise the contacts surrounding your ship.
view from the Nav workstation
The Dreadnought comes with three different methods for getting from A to B. Most of the time you move using the thrusters, which are designed for flight under 2000m/s. Flying with thrusters is a dream. You are afforded so many options, you'll feel like a kid in a candy shop. Switching between roll and yaw is as simple as pressing a button. Speed is normally constrained between -1000 and +1000m/s, but of course you can choose to override this. Another level of control is afforded to you by being able to switch between 'assisted' and 'free flight' thruster mode. In 'assisted' mode (the default), when you move your joystick, the ship's thrusters compensate against the current direction of movement to start moving you in your chosen direction, as you'd expect from a standard flight sim. However, because there is no friction in space, if your thrusters don't compensate when you move the joystick, you carry on flying along the same path, but facing in a different direction. It sounds complicated, but it's kind of intuitive if you think about it. Being able to freely switch between the two modes means that you can fly in one direction whilst turning to face another -- very useful for strafe fire. All this, and I haven't even begun to sing the praises of the lateral thrusters, allowing you to slide effortlessly in any direction... Give yourself a week to get to grips with it all, and you'll be doing handbrake turns into jump points, free flight backflips to target Indie ships at your rear, and generally behaving like an 18 year old in an XR2 driving round the Bishop's Stortford one-way system.
In addition, you're provided with four autopilots which make life a lot easier. They're fairly self-explanatory, so I'll just list them: Approach, Formate, Dock and Match Velocity. Engage one with a press of a function key; disengage it with Escape. It's that simple.
Remember, kids, that was method one of getting from A to B. There are two others! 2000m/s is quite a modest speed for interplanetary travel, so the Dreadnought comes with a Linear-Displacement Drive System (LDS) which allows speeds between 1000m/s and 1/3 the speed of light. You can use LDS manually, but it's pretty difficult to judge when to come out of LDS travel in time to stop at your chosen destination! Mostly I let the 'Approach' autopilot take me in and out of LDS, though, as a method of getting away from an unfavourable firefight to carry out repairs, manual LDS can't be beaten.
And so to method three... For interstellar transport, the Dreadnought is equipped with a Capsule Drive which allows FTL transport. The capsule drive can only be activated by passing through a specific jump gate ('Lagrange Point'). These are distributed at various points throughout solar systems, so, to achieve interstellar flight, you'll need to navigate to your nearest Lagrange Point, set a destination, fly through it, and watch the nice FMV sequence of your ship in Capsule space. When you emerge from the Lagrange Point at your destination, you're back to navigating with LDS and thrusters.
Nav allows you access to the ship's weapons, but the best place from which to direct combat is, naturally enough, the Wep workstation. Combat can take place under standard flight only; you can't engage in combat under LDS or in Capsule space. From Wep you are given a full 360 degree view around your ship, with it occupying the center of the screen, displayed in outline polygon view. The open polygons allow you to look 'through' the ship, so you can see all around you.
a battle rages above Mars, as witnessed from the Wep workstation
Before I discuss the weapons themselves, a note on targets. There are several ways of choosing a target, both for combat, or for your autopilots. Over about 1km, repeatedly pressing joystick button 2 will cycle through all possible target ships, starting with the nearest to you, be they Navy or Indie. If you move within about 1km of a ship, repeatedly pressing button 2 will target specific systems on that ship; the command section, the thrusters, weapon systems, etc. In addition to button 2, specific keys let you target the nearest enemy ship, the last attacking ship, or the last attacking weapon.
The Dreadnought is equipped with two basic weapons (though for certain missions your arsenal is increased). First up are the Particle Beam Cannon (PBC), mounted fore and aft, with limitless charge. In normal use, the PBC is computer-assisted; simply get your target within 4km, and in the cannon's field of fire, and the computer will aim your shot for you. You can choose to aim the weapon yourself by selecting 'rapid fire' mode, which (as you've probably guessed) lets you fire off PBC shots far more quickly, but you have to be very close to your target (typically under 1km) to get an accurate shot in. When you're within 1km, you can target a ship's specific system, and blast it to hell with rapid PBC fire. Of course, not many Indie ships are going to let you get within 1km without making some kind of protest!
Secondly, you have a magazine of 16 seek-and-destroy missiles which can hit targets from a much greater distance than the PBC. The disadvantage of these is that they may be evaded, shot down, or spoofed by an ECM flare.
Both the PBC and the missiles can be used in normal mode, when they are directed against a single target, or in 'ripple' mode, when multiple targets are selected and fired at in sequence. This is pretty handy if you're under attack from a squadron of enemy ships, or are facing many incoming missiles, but can only be selected when at the Wep workstation.
In addition to the offensive weapons, you carry LDSI missiles, which can be used to force enemy ships out of LDS mode, allowing you to engage them in combat. You're also provided with disruptor shields and ECM flares for defence, which operate automatically but can (of course) be manually overriden if needs be.
When you engage a ship in combat, your head-up display gives you an indication of how much damage that ship has taken. If you let a ship escape from your fire, it will start to carry out repairs, so you really need to concentrate on finishing off any baddies that you have targetted as quickly as possible.
Just as you can use weapons from Nav, so you can fly from Wep. But, if you thought flying the ship sounded complicated from the Nav station, you ain't seen nothing till you're at Wep firing PBC in ripple mode...
It's inevitable that you're going to take a few hits in combat. The Eng workstation is where you get an overview of the ship's current performance. Each ship system is represented on the Eng workstation screen, and you can zoom in and out of each of them to take a closer look. Systems can be in one of three states: working normally, damaged, but functioning, and severely damaged. Too many systems with severe damage and you're history. Damage control teams automatically begin work on repairing any malfunctioning systems, following a set sequence (the cooling system is given a higher priority than the thrusters, for example), but, as with most other aspects of the ship's controls, you can override this sequence and direct specific teams to different areas. For example, if you're coming under heavy fire, and wish to make a quick exit to carry out repairs at leisure, you may wish the LDS drive to come on line before the main thrusters, so you simply tell a team to do this. Alternatively, if you're confident that you can finish your enemy off, you may wish to get your PCB cannon back on line before your lateral thrusters.
the Eng workstation after suffering heavy damage
Eng also allows you to customise the power output of your ship. Power can be redirected towards the ship's thrusters, weapons, or shields using the Tactical Resource Interface which appears as a truncated triangle in the top right of the Eng viewpoint. Move the pointer into the triangle closer to one of the systems to increase the power to that system (though of course decreasing output to the others).
Gameplay
'This technical stuff is all well and good,' I hear you say, 'but is the game
actually any good?'
Well, as you may have gathered from what I've said above, the flight engine
in the game is truly amazing, and, from that perspective, I-War is easily the
best space sim I have ever come across. Nothing, literally nothing, comes close.
It is so difficult for me to think of it in terms of a game, because you actually
do fly that spaceship.
your crew keep you informed of important events during the game
Of course, a great flight engine does not necessarily make for a great game. What we need in addition to that is interesting baddies to fight, and interesting missions to fly. I-War brings baddies on a-plenty. AI in the game is, for the most part, excellent. The Indies have been given enough intelligence to offer a real threat to both your mission and your health. They co-operate to an unprecedented degree, using pack hunting techniques to separate weaker ships away from a squadron, or forming squadrons of their own to take on larger ships. You can't always play the lone gunman; you need to deploy wingmen, think about strategy, and consider the survival of ships other than your own if you're going to win. Fortunately, your Navy colleagues have also been credited with a modicum of intelligence, so a lot of the time you can leave your colleagues to look after themselves.
I did have a couple of problems with the control of wingmen. Firstly, you can't give different wingmen different orders: if you are controlling a number of ships, they must all be given the same objective. This is frustrating if you're being attacked by a squadron of Indie fighters, each of which can target one of your squadron, because you can only direct them to attack one Indie ship at a time. A second (less important) problem is that you can't give your wingmen multiple obectives. This isn't too much of a problem, since, as I said above, they do have enough intelligence to look after themselves, but it would have been nice to have said 'attack Indie ship 1, then ship 2, then ship 3', rather than have to give each order separately whilst under heavy fire. But these really are minor gripes; controlling wingmen isn't the be all and end all of the game.
Most missions are excellent, and really do represent a good spread between out and out combat and problem solving. Things start out fairly easy to complete and draw you into the game, then missions get progressively more challenging as you become more experienced. Sometimes, however, I couldn't help feeling that I was moving my ship from one set piece to another. Let's take an example. In one mission ( 'Venturi'), you must pick up a team of engineers from a fuel processing station. Your mission objectives are initially:
Rendezvous with the cruiser San Francisco
Travel to Venturi System
Dock with fuel processor
Get engineering team on board
Return with engineering crew to Saltlake Base
Of course, some Indie ships turn up to steal the fuel, so an additional objective
of Remove most hostile vessels appears. Now, providing you carry out these objectives
in order, you complete the mission. But I felt like I was just pressing buttons
when prompted. There wasn't much room for my own creative flair.
You might argue that as a junior officer, my duty should be to carry out the orders assigned to me, but even so, I would have liked a little more flexibility within the I-War universe. I kept feeling that there was a great big galaxy out there for me to explore, and I had such a great ship in which to do it. Then again, I guess you could argue that, rather than a criticism, this is yet more praise for the sheer believability of the whole experience.
swooping in low over the cruiser San Francisco
"I can't believe, I CAN'T BELIEVE that just happened"
Bugs in the game were very few and far between; indeed I-War ranks alongside
the most stable games I've ever played, happily letting me Alt-Tab out to look
for hints on the Web or on newsgroups, then dropping me back into the thick
of the action with no complaints or time delay (try doing that with Quake 2!).
However, I did encounter a few minor AI niggles. At one point a navy cruiser
informed me that it was heading for Mars space, and set off on its chosen course
-- which happened to pass directly through my ship. Boom-bang-a-bang, and the
source of the quote at the head of this paragraph (expletives deleted -- this
is a family show). In one mission a pirate was trying to board me whilst my
ship was spinning out of control; his vessel just kept bouncing off my hull,
unable to dock properly, and causing increasing amounts of damage to my ship,
until I exploded. One of the autopilots let me down once, as well; I laid in
a course to approach a friendly cruiser, which was turning to face me, and the
autopilot took me in so close that I ploughed straight into the cruiser... Don't
get me wrong: these incidents were the only niggles I encountered in what is
an enormously complicated game. I don't want anyone to get the impression that
the AI is flawed. 99.9% of the time it's not.
Graphics and sound effects
At first glance, you might be forgiven for thinking that I-War is graphically
nothing to write home about. Look at all those outline polygons! Those primary
colours! It's little advanced from the original arcade Star Wars!
How wrong you would be. Remember that those 'outlined polygons' in 'primary
colours' are your head-up display, and are there to help you identify ships
in the blackness of space. Look beyond the HUD and you'll see that there are
actually spaceships out there. Real ones. And you don't need a 3Dfx card to
see them. Occasionally the computer will elect to show you certain sequences
in 'full screen view'; for example, when you're docking with another spaceship,
or when you jump out of capsule space. You'd be forgiven for thinking that you're
looking at an FMV sequence, but you're not. And, yes, full screen view is another
option you can choose manually! Go back and look at the screenshots again, and
tell me they aren't stunning.
The only quibble I had with the graphics was with some of the larger explosions, which weren't actually that great. But you can't have everything.
the crew of a Dreadnought class navy vessel take some shore leave
There is no music in the game. Whoever heard of a pumping techno track onboard the command bridge of a combat-ready space vehicle? Pah! Instead you're treated to a soundtrack of computer bleeps, incoming radio messages and communications from your crew. These are all utterly, utterly perfect. You are there.
The question on everyone's lips...
'So,' I hear you say, 'I've got enough cash to buy one space sim this month.
Do I buy I-War, Wing Commander: Prophecy or Colony Wars?'
This is indeed a tough one to answer, so I'm going to duck out of the question
and tell you to save your cash for all three. Despite my enthusing over I-War's
graphics, I have to admit that Colony Wars on the Playstation is more visually
appealing than I-War on the PC, but, at the end of the day, playing Colony Wars
still felt like playing a game. Not having played the full version of WC: Prophecy,
I can't make a full comparison between it and I-War , but I have to say that
I-War's flight engine completely blows that in the WC: Prophecy demo out of
the water.
In conclusion
Particle Systems really have succeeded in giving us a 'fully-working space ship
in a box'.
Back To Index Page