So, I finally beat Star Control 2 and it’s been quite an interesting experience for me. I have a LOT of stuff to say about this game, both good AND bad, so let’s get down to it! (As a side note , I played the Ur-Quan Masters version of the game , which combines aspects of the DOS version with the 3DO version of the game)
WHAT I LIKED:
- Exploring space. This game is actually surprisingly really big! Especially for a game that came out in 1992. At first, when I saw all the little dots on the starmap, I initially thought that as soon as I would get close to a cluster of dots, I would get into a sort of hub with the dots being planets, but then I was pleasantly surprised to learn that EVERY SINGLE DOT is an explorable SOLAR SYSTEM with a lot of different planets and moons to visit. This got me really excited to not only discover new planets filled with secrets and minerals, but also to meet new alien races along my playthrough. Exploring the starmap made me remember how inconceivably huge our universe actually is, and that the almost infinite amount of stuff we haven’t discovered is kinda insane. The exploration in this game really made me appreciate the awe of space itself!
- The simple gameplay mechanics. I’m usually very afraid to try my hand at space exploration games like these in general because a lot of times there’s a lot you have to learn right off the bat in terms of controls and gameplay mechanics and that can sometimes really intimidate me, but here the gameplay is actually very simple and easy to process, so I didn’t have to worry about having to remember about what button does what or how do I fly my ship properly again after a week of not playing the game. I particularly enjoyed the planet mining sections, as it plays like a fun minigame where you have to collect little dots that represent minerals while avoiding environmental hazards.
- The huge number, variety and originality of alien races. I feel like a lot of times, games like these that have alien races usually end up with aliens that are basically humanoid, but with alien variations to specific parts of their body. However, this game goes the extra weird mile with their aliens, and I really loved the weird and varied designs the develeoppers came up with for this game. Some aliens you meet are blobs with faces on them, others are just living talking minerals, and others are even just literally sentient air sacks! Not only that, a lot of them have really interesting personalities and backgrounds, and discovering more about their race and home planet was really interesting! I also really liked the voice acting in this game, as it gave just that little extra in terms of personnality and character that I liked about the numerous alien races I discovered. My personal favorite alien race has to be the Orz, because I loved their almost non sequitur dialogue and weird fish like appearance (I still feel bad I accidently angered them when I mentioned the Androsythn race to them too many times : (…).
- Customizing your ship and allied battle ships. This game allows you to modify and customize your ship with a variety of upgrades and additional ships to help you in combat. What I like about this particular customization process is that the game encourages you to experiment with those upgrades throuought the game and to try out different modules at different times depending on where and what you want to do on the starmap. This gave me a lot of freedom to improve my ship in my own style and to play the game in my own way, and I really love that aspect of it. Pair this with unlockable modules you can get by mining minerals or biological data, and I had a lot of fun slowly seeing my ship become more and more capable and explore further and further.
Unfortunately, all of the things I liked about this game got severly hampered by one major thing…
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:
- You have a set amount of time to beat the game before you automatically lose the game and it becomes unwinable! (to be precise, you start the game in the year 2155 and you have about 4,5 years of in-game time to beat the game, which means your deadline is the year 2159. Problem is, if you travel a lot in Hyperspace like I did, then time goes by a lot faster and you end up only having approximately 3 HOURS to beat the game!! Even when you eventually have access to things that extend the time limit or slow it down this is still ridiculous!) I. HATE. THIS. GAME MECHANIC. HATE IT. HATE IT. HATE IT. I hated it in Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, and I hate it here too. The worst part is, there is absolutely NO mention of this timer in-game whatsoever once you reach it. All you see is the bad alien race slowly moving and killing off other adjacent alien races, but for someone who played this game blind and actually didn’t successfully avoid the 2159 deadline on my first playthrough, I couldn’t possibly have known that this meant I ran out of time and that the game was therefore unwinnable! In my opinion this almost ruins the game for me, as it forced me on my second playthrough to avoid exploring too much (which was the thing I enjoyed the most!) as well as forced me to hurry up and figure out the things you have to do to beat the game (which is another problem entirely, but I’ll get to that in my next point) when instead I just really wanted to play and figure out the game at my own pace. If I only had to do like a few specific timed missions over the course of the game, then that wouldn’t have bothered me as much but bottom line: when I play a game, I don’t want to be in a hurry in-game to beat the entire game. PERIOD.
- Figuring out what you have to do to beat the game is very difficult. At first, I thought you just had to recruit as many alien races as possible throughout the game until a specific event triggers so that you can eventually fight the villains of the game, but it turns out what you ACTUALLY have to do is get some random artifacts from specific planets, make friends with very specific alien races, combine some of said artifacts, and then use some of your other artifacts at VERY specific moments and times, and THEN visit a very specific planet to beat the final boss. This wouldn’t have bothered me too much, IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE FACT THAT, AGAIN, YOU HAVE A SET AMOUNT OF TIME TO BEAT THE GAME!! Let’s just say that after my first playthrough, I basically decided to just finish the rest of the game with an online walkthrough because my patience was reached at this point.
- The dialogue options. I do like the fact that you can roleplay your captain a bit to fit your playstyle in this game, but unfortunately, it’s pretty limited. Your dialogue options basically almost always consist of either an obviously nice response, an obviously evil response, or an obviously silly/stupid response. Those limited choices kinda took me out of the game, as I was forced at certain times to make my captain say things I wouldn’t normally say just so I could advance the plot. I would’ve like to have a bit more options and nuance between them to really kinda fit my own roleplay style.
- The final boss of the game. This boss was really difficult for me to beat and can EAT MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF COCKS SIMULTANEOUSLY. Fuck that boss. That is all.
OVERALL:
As much as the negative stuff I said ruined a lot of what I enjoyed about the game, I still think, in the end, it’s a good game worth at least checking out. It’s just for me, it could have been so much better had it been for just a few game design changes and a few tweeks when it comes to figuring out what to do in the game (a quest log for example would have been really helpful to me to keep track of a lot of the stuff I had to do to beat the game, as I had to write down a lot of notes on paper, and it ended up being clustered and messy and I didn’t really like that). So the game started out as “this is an awesome game! ”, but the time limit and all those other negative points I mentioned brought it down to “it’s a good game” category for me. That being said though, if even after all I’ve said the game still made me appreciate the awesome wonders of space and the wonderful possibilities of discovering new alien races like Star Trek: Next Generation did, then it did something right in my opinion : )
