Mindcontroll

[Pezko]

O.R.B

Gameplay
The gameplay of this game can be summarized in one word: slow. This is mainly because of the sizes of the maps. They are huge, and that could be really cool. But in this case it makes the game boring to play.

One of the reasons I wanted this game was that it was the first game where there would be a real difference in size between fighters and capital ships. Well, it is a big difference, so big that it makes the game all but unplayable. To have some kind of control over the (fighter-) battles you need to be zoomed out a bit, but that makes the battle look like green and red dots moving around on the screen... If you zoom in you can see the fighters, but you have no control.

Battles with capital ships aren't good either. Two reasons: 1. Slowness. 2. Stupid AI.

It's so slow it gets boring... I mean... they wait 30 seconds between each shot... Maybe doesn't sound like much, but it is.

And the AI is really stupid, can't hit another capital ship which is not moving.

The campaign are kinda crappy too, at least what I played of it (The first 4 missions). All the missions are of the type "go to this position, then kill everything". The problem is that you only have fighters, and killing a base with fighters only takes time... You can basically kill all enemy units, then order them to attack the base, then go eat dinner or something.

Graphics
The graphics are really good, if you don't count the weapons. The backgrounds looks nice, textures on ships and planets looks good.

The weapons looks like crap tho. The weapons on fighters are just white or yellow lines, and the beam weapons look like they did in Freespace 1... It's a bit hard to explain, but it's like the beam is split in 6 pieces and then painted one by one...

Sound
The music is nice, it changes in battle and stuff, not much to say about that.

The sound effects are good, if you are zoomed in long enough. But like I said earlier this means you get no control over the battles.

Another bad thing is that there is no voice acting in most of the cut scenes... Only text that is "typed"...

Overall
This game could have been great. They have a pretty cool story, good ship design, lots of good ideas (like scale, fighting in solar systems, etc) but the implementation is bad... There are one big problem, that is that the game is sooooo slow.

There is lots of small things too, which all together adds up to a game which is barely playable.

Total score: 2.5/5

Go play homeworld instead... ;)