Darkstar One Review





Developer: Ascaron Publisher: CDV
Release Date: August 14, 2006 Also On: None

Welcome to the great world of Dark Star One. You play as Kayron, a young space pilot who sets out to examine his father’s untimely death. His father’s friend gives him the mysterious Dark Star One and off you go. One of the truly fun parts about this game is the ship itself. You quickly find out you are able to upgrade your ship and customize it to fit your needs. Eventually you can have a behemoth of a death cruiser to blow shit up. You are also able to make money to give your ship new parts and weapons. The weapons range from standard lasers to missile launchers to the “spell weapon.” The spell weapon can take different attributes to help you out in a pinch or affect a battle in a certain way.

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The game controls like a standard flight simulator. Break out the old joystick and get ready to be in the cockpit. The game feels like you are piloting a space ship all the way down to calling in “permission to land” on the trade stations. So few games take advantage of hardware like a joystick, and I wish I had one to fully test this game out with, but the keyboard and mouse did their job. Also, the game does a great job of upping the difficulty as it moves along. Do not expect to be able to not upgrade your ship and still be taking out enemies; space pirates will kill you before you even hear “YA!”

There are only two departments where this game loses a few points, one being the ever amazing foreign voice acting. This is a world where Americans do not exist but Europe does, so everyone has an accent from somewhere across The Pond except those damn snakes. The “raptors” like to slur their “s” sounds so you have to sit through dialogue where every “s” gets multiplied by five. It’s kind of funny at first but after 2 minutes it gets really annoying. The other disappointment were the missions for it. You have a few ways of earning money: bounty hunting, smuggling, transporting goods and being a pirate. I know a lot of people would let out a loud “YAR!” and start blowing stuff up, but all the missions given by the terminal get replayed over and over, just some of the names are changed. The voices even remain the same so it’s like you are playing the same mission over and over.

The final word on this one is to go out and buy it if you are up for an old-school space themed piloting game. Especially since all you Trekies don’t know what the next enterprise is going to be like, and this gives a fun experience behind the pilot’s seat. On top of blowing away enemy ships you can watch your ship morph into something really awesome. For a game that took somewhere around 20 hours to beat, it is worth the price. If you are looking for a game that allows you to fly your own ship give it a shot, especially all you wanna-be Han Solos.

Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Gameplay: 8
Creativity: 9
Replay Value/Game Length: 8
Final: 8
Written by Matt Marzin Review Guide

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