Friday, August 6, 2010

Star Control 2

Juffo-wup is the Hot Light in the Darkness



Star Control 2 Box Art






Time to talk about an old PC game that kicks some serious ass. It's called Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters and was released for the PC in 1992, and later for the 3DO console. Years ago, I was given a copy by a friend and instantly fell in love with it.



The Story



A group of colonists from earth becomes stranded on a planet in deep space. They discover an abandoned starship factory belonging to race called The Precursors. The Precursors had vanished years prior, leaving their advanced technology behind. The character you play is some kind of super-genius, who's able to interface with the factory and re-activate it. The colonists spend years scrounging for raw materials until they have enough to finally construct a barely functional ship. They use this ship to escape and return to Earth.






While the colonists were away, Earth forces were defeated and enslaved by aliens called the Ur-Quan. They've raised a slave shield around the planet to prevent any outside contact. Your mission is to destroy the Ur-Quan, and free the people of Earth.

Yes, it sounds like the typical sci-fi Human vs Aliens plot, but there is enough storyline here to keep things interesting. I would say the game is very story-driven, in fact. By the end of the game, you'll be given insight into what made the Ur-Quan turn evil. They're not the typical one-dimensional villians you might expect.

Gameplay


Cruisin' through Hyperspace in my pimped out ship.


Exploration of space makes up a large portion of the game. Navigation is made easier by use of an in-game map that allows you to plot your destination. The map also outlines each space-faring race's sphere of influence. There are dozens of different stars you can explore, each with a variable number of planets. Though Star Control 2 is somewhat difficult to classify under a specific genre, it is definitely an adventure game at it's core.




Exploring the surface of the Moon

In order to build new ships and upgrades, you'll need mine the planets for minerals. When orbiting a planet, you can send a lander down to pick up minerals while avoiding any hostile alien creatures and environmental hazards. Whatever you've collected can be offloaded at Earth's stardock in exchange for credit.




The Utwig must listen to a lot of black metal

When travelling through space, you'll frequently bump into other space-faring races. Each has their own distinct personality and rich backstory that is learned by interacting with them. Creating alliances with other the races is a necessity in order to progress through the game. You need to have allies in order to bring down the Ur-Quan. Certain races will give you their ship blueprints, which allows you to mass produce their ships. Some will yield valuable information or technologies. For example, one of the races, called the "Thraddash" will attack you every time you run into them. You'll need to win around ten or fifteen battles, before finally gaining their respect. Once this is done they'll grant you access to a special item that you need in order to finish the game.






I got destroyed by some asshole name Death 23.

When engaged in a battle, the gameplay switches to "melee-mode". This is basically a deathmatch mode and takes a bit of skill in order to win. It is loosely based off of the classic game Spacewar!". You pick the ship you want to use and square off with the opposing vessel. If your main Precursor vessel gets destroyed, it's game over. This will likely happen to you
a lot early on in the game which makes it a good idea to save often.







Game altering events will trigger under the right circumstances. For instance, if you wait around long enough, the Ur-Quan will proceed to carry out a "death march", and annihilate every species they come into contact with. These races are essentially extinct and are absent for the rest of the game. Eventually, they reach Earth and the game ends.



Graphics and Sound


The main baddies of the game (Ur-Quan Kzer-za)

The graphics are top-notch, considering this game was made in 1992. Each type of alien has it's own distinct appearance and ship design. The soundtrack is composed of MOD music. It's very catchy and suits the space exploration theme well. Some of my personal favorites are the Hyperspace theme and Yehat theme. Probably the weakest part of this game is the voice acting. It's not particularly bad, just sort of inconsistent. The original version I played on my PC didn't have any voiceovers, so I just shut if off.


Here's a sample of the music:





A Sequel Gone Bad



Obviously, Star Control 2 is the second game in a series, but what about the first game? Well, the original Star Control was quite different as it more strategy based. It didn't really have much of a story to it. It did have the same "Melee" combat system that was carried over to the sequel.

Star Control 3 was released in 1996. I remember seeing a preview for it in an old issue of PC Gamer. It looked amazing, to my 13 year-old self, anyway. I even read the novelization that came out, which I remember being somewhat disappointed with.


This is what happens when you don't pay your developers.






I didn't actually play the game until a few years later and it wasn't the same at all. Somehow they took a amazing game and completely messed it up. The hand-drawn graphics from the first game are gone, and instead the alien creatures are animated using some weird puppetry. The stellar MOD music was replaced by some crappy MIDI tracks. The gameplay is not nearly as engaging. The reason for such a poor sequel is most likely due to the original developers not being involved. Allegedly, they refused to work on it because they were paid very poorly during the development of Star Control 2.



Conclusion



Star Control 2 has combines a good story and memorable characters with space exploration and combat. In 1992, there weren't many other games like it. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a proper sequel made yet, as the original company that developed it (Toys for Bob) is still in business today. I haven't played the Mass Effect series but I've heard that it borrows more than a few ideas from Star Control.




The 3DO version was open-sourced a few years ago and has been ported to various platforms including Windows, Mac OSX and Linux. You can download it here: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

Friday, July 2, 2010

Why PC Gaming Sucks


I'm kicking off my new blog (that I will probably use for a month before neglecting) with a post about why I don't play PC games anymore.

I stopped playing PC games about 5 years ago. A lot of what I'm writing about in this post, is based on my gaming experiences from then but still holds true..

The last game I really played on my computer was Half-Life 2. I had just bought a brand new system with a new video card, the works. I installed HL2, and started playing. The framerate was just OK, choppy in parts but it was playable. The game crashed a lot. Having played games on a PC for years, I was used to this sort of thing happening.


Purchased in September of 2005.

I can play a console with less hassle. Much less.

I gave up on Windows a while back. I'm more productive on Linux, so that's what I use for my operating system. Unfortunately, there aren't many games that run on it. I'm not into dual booting either. Too much rebooting every time I want to switch between tasks.

The last version of Windows I really used was XP, but I'm pretty sure Windows Vista and 7 have most of the same problems, because I hear friends talking about it all the time, and they ask me how to fix it. How many times have you been playing a game when it craps out and boots you back into Windows, or worse, locks up your system completely, requiring a reboot?

This seems to happen WAY too often, and the fix is always something stupid, like "upgrade your video card drivers to version XX" or "make this change to your registry" or some other bullshit. Granted, it's not always the fault of Windows either, it could very well be a bug in the game, or a hardware issue, or something else.

Anyways, it's happened to me countless times on a PC, while rarely ever being a problem with any of the consoles I've owned over the years.


Clippy shows up on Spock's viewer, followed by a blue screen.


Sitting at a computer desk sucks.
I'm already tied to a desk 40+ hours a week at my day job. I'm also on the computer a lot at home, surfing the internets, coding, writing e-mails, whatever. If I want to play games on my PC, I might as well install a shitter in my computer chair because it means I'm going to be spending most of my time there. With a console, I can lay back on the couch after a night of drinking and play Metal Gear Solid on a big screen. Granted, I could move my PC into my living room, but then I'd have to sit on the couch to do everything else that I use my computer for.

This is me levelling up my level 46 female Night Elf!


Expensive hardware upgrades.
When a new game is released there's always a chance you're going to need to upgrade in order to play it. It's an endless cycle. The other option might be to lower the resolution, turn off lighting effects, disable the sound or some other half-assed attempt to squeeze an extra 3 frames per second out the thing.

Yes, I understand that technology advances every few months, and newer games require steeper system requirements because the game engines are doing a lot more. But I think in some cases, developers have just gotten lazy. Instead of optimizing their game to work on a wide variety of hardware, they develop for only the latest and greatest tech, and assume everyone will upgrade just to play their game.

The result is that someone with a system that is only one or two years old, either can't play the game, or has to fuck around and disable everything to get it to run decently. Better shell out $200 for that new ATI card. Maybe some more ram too. At least with a console I only have to upgrade every 5 years or so.

You can either disable 'splosions, or buy a new computer.


DRM makes me not want to buy your shitty product.
Lately there's been some real crappy DRM implemented in PC games in an attempt to curb piracy. The latest I've read about is Assassin's Creed 2 DRM that will require a constant internet connection in order for the game to run. Apparently, if your connection drops out while your playing, the game stops and you lose all of your progress. More about it here: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235290


There's nothing stopping this from being implemented in a console game, but right now the focus seems to be on the PC because those games are so easily pirated. After I've purchased a legit copy, I shouldn't have an enter a 32-character activation code in order to play it. I shouldn't need an internet connection to "validate" it, or only be allowed to install it a limited amount of times. I own it, and therefore I should be able to use it freely.

Crippling software with any sort of DRM is asinine. It only serves to piss off legitimate customers, who might decide to torrent the software instead.

Instead of installing a rootkit on my machine, just make me watch this on repeat during the installation.

PC's are for FPSes and World of Warcraft
Many games on the PC are also available for consoles as well. I can't think of any PC exclusives that I'm really interested in playing. Diablo 3, maybe. Team Fortress 2, just because I have friends that play it on PC.

Just one example of a potentially great game that I'm missing.

That's all I have. Next time someone asks why I don't play PC games, I'll point them here.

Posted via email from cjo's posterous