Starlancer Article

At the beginning of the year I got a glimpse of Starlancer. Now I've gotten to play the early Beta - and it didn't look all that bad.

The Roberts Brothers
Most of you who think of the words 'Space Sim' immediately think of games like X-Wing, Freespace and, of course, the Wing Commander series. With the Wing Commander games we had a lot of fun for a long time. Chris Roberts, the creative mind behind the Wing Commander series, decided to leave ORIGIN to start his own company and with his brother Erin formed Digital Anvil. They have been working on two titles for a while, Starlancer and Freelancer - and guess what kind of games these will be. That's right, space sims! We will have to wait a while on Freelancer, but Starlancer will hit stores in Spring,2000.

Voluntary
Starlancer is set in the 21st century, and space technology is finally advanced enough that the superpowers are working hard at the colonization of the solar system. As you can expect, this brings along the usual problems - it even goes so far that a 3rd World War breaks out, the old rivals once again against each other. The west (USA, UK, France) versus the East (China, Japan, Russia). Here's the important difference compared to other space sims - in Starlancer you don't have to fight alien species or such - rather, you fire your lasers at normal human beings. In the game you play a volunteer who fights alongside other voluntary soldiers in service of the Allies. They are not taken very seriously by the professional pilots. No wonder seeing that you have to work with old junk ships and weaponry. After a few succesful missions you can really show your teeth and will slowly earn respect, better ships and better weapons.

Space-Movie
Starlancer might make you think about Wing Commander, but luckily there are differences. You have to make certain main targets, but besides that there are lots and lots of sub targets which you CAN, but do not have to, attack. Many things can happen during a mission. Sometimes the computer takes over the camera movement - this makes you feel as if you've landed inside an action packed space movie. The graphics are great! With small monitor images of your wingman, a lock on camera of your missiles (you can see what you hit), beautiful space flights, huge space stations, neutrals and planets where lots of things can happen, you don't have to blast every ship in sight. The game will run on a Direct3D engine so that Starlancer will support almost every 3D card. The game will have about 30 hard core single player missions and there are at least 100 ships in the game. Lets hope that's enough, because even though it looks super, this game offers little new. But maybe the fans don't need that and maybe this is just what they are waiting for! Wing Commander fans MUST keep an eye on this title!