Juffo-wup is the Hot Light in the Darkness
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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| 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.
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| 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/
