Preview Darkstar One prevoo at GamersInfo

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Darkstar One

<a href="http://www.gamersinfo.net/">GamersInfo</a> has a brief few paragraphs arranged in a <A href="http://www.gamersinfo.net/index.php?art/id:1066">preview fashion</a> about <a href="http://www.ascaron.com/gb/index.html">Ascaron</a>'s upcoming space flight CRPG, <a href="http://www.darkstar-one.com/">Darkstar One</a>. Here's a snippet on levelling up:
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<blockquote>In Darkstar One, unlike other games, it is the ship itself that is the class definer not the player. What makes this game truly unique is where most games have the player leveling a character it is the ship and the ship's abilities that improve over time, or “level” in DarkStar One. For example, the ship is modular and as such can be scaled to meet the player’s needs; this makes the ship extremely versatile and able to fit any player’s style of play. An example of this would be to take a player who loves to explore and wants a ship that will be able to survive if you end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. You can do that or conversely you could create a very fast and lightly armored ship that packs allot of firepower, its all up to you.</blockquote>
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Good example of how <i>not</i> to explain things so they sound different from any other space ship game.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>

 

[Noceur]

I must say I found the preview rather amusing.

I've played the german demo myself (even though my deutsch is highly lacking) and I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly. To say that Darkstar One is an RPG is rather - perhaps even completely - misguiding.
While you do have utter control of the Darkstar One ship's upgrades, it doesn't make it an RPG. It's a space exploration/trade/action game like Privateer or Elite.

"Players will have to truly lean how to fly, whenever players want to dock at a space station they will have to truly guide there ship in for a docking."
Uh yeah... wether it's my extreme skills or because controlling the ship is easy as crap, docking is not a problem. Ever. Besides, if you're that lousy at flying you can always buy the Auto-docking computer (or Das Automatische Dockstürmkomputer).

One fancy thing I noticed is that when docked you can get missions from the mission/news console or you can wait for the merhcants currently in-system and ask them if they want an escort. It took me a little while to figure out how it worked, because of all the abflug and anflug, but the merchants are entering the system, they fly to the station, get their wares then leave the station.
Now, this is where it gets fancy, they actuallyng around the merchants dock (in space) and watch while they unload and reload their ships and then open a c do it in real-time... not so fancy if you're IN the station looking at the Billboard mission/news console. But they do it when you leave the station too. You can actually haommunication-channel and ask if they want an escort.

Ah well, I'm rambling. I've been waiting for a game like this for a long time... hopefully the full game will be more meaty than Freelancer.

Ps. I really love that you can strafe with the ship, too. It makes my day, every day.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I've played the german demo myself (even though my deutsch is highly lacking) and I must say I enjoyed it thoroughly. To say that Darkstar One is an RPG is rather - perhaps even completely - misguiding.

From what I've read, levelling up the "ship" is about getting artifacts by doing missions, both story and otherwise, for the most part. You can liberate systems for artifacts as well, which go towards altering your ship. So, basically, the artifacts take the place of experience points.

The items you can buy for your ship are based around what you've done with the artifacts.

 

[YourConscience]

@Noceur: I really don't see what's so cool about Darkstar One. I played the demo too and honestly, I had to convince myself to start it up a second time and a third time didn't happen anymore.

From what I could gather from the demo, there are the following issues:

Gameplay: The star systems consist only of one or two stations, some asteroids and that's it. And yeah, some random traffic. The traffic consists of either merchants who probably persistently fly throughout the universe and sell/buy and pirates/police who act as those random monsters, depending on whether you're a pirate or not. So the game is utterly empty of anything and I wouldn't even know what to explore. Of course I could go and visit each of those 400 'star systems'. But given that they're all pretty much empty I wouldn't know why to do that, except for those artifacts.

Graphics: Now, I am really no graphics whore (for example I don't like the turn Europa Universalis took by adding 3D to a wonderful 2D game), but the graphics *in space* are bland, lack depth and I have the feeling to fly around in a dense fog, instead of open space. *On spacestation* the graphics are nice, but that's only static stuff which hasn't to do anything with gameplay.

Now, the only things that are hyped currently are the following:
* Darkstar One, the ultimate super new idea how to hide something that everyone else would call experience points. (This point gets hyped most)
* graphics
* dynamic prices, trading

Given that the first two points don't add anything to gameplay, remains the third point, that can't be judged from the demo.

But even if you have an interesting trading system, it doesn't make any sense if the only thing you can work towards is upgrading your ship one bit more. And this is what sets me off most: The only, really the only thing you can throw money at in this game is you ship. You can't buy or hire wingmans, you can't buy stations, you can't buy invasions (like in Space Rangers), you can't bribe anyone (because what for?), you can't be robbed, there is simply nothing to do with all that money, except upgrading you ship. While in Sacred (and this game is nothing else than a Sacred in space) this wasn't so obvious, because we all got used to not being able to buy anything else except armor in an action RPG, in Darkstar this *is* obvious, because it compares to games like X3.

Well, ok, enough of this rambling. It's just that it disappointed me so much. I was prepared for a rather simplistic gameplay. But not *that* empty...

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Darkstar One sucks. Period.
I know evberybody is starving for an decent space sim and stuff, but honestly guys...

The game looks so horrible. Sure, technicly everything is up to date, but artisticly this is just a catastrophe.
I don't know if I missed something, but last time I looked up in the sky at night it was black. Green, blue, red, yellow... Some colorfoul nebula in the background is ok, but
geeze, this game looks like fucking Freelancer on LSD.
Same with the Ship design. Its just GOD Awful. The ships look like they are made out of some sort of candy.

Next: The main charakter. Ok so I'm playing this gay little 16 year old dude. I don't know if there is an english demo out there, im talking about the german one.
Lock on an enemy target and press the K key. Your 16 old gay pilot will say things like (in german ) "this is the Darkstar One: Die!" in his 16 year old-high school loser- working at McDonalds voice.

How retarted has a Game Designer to be to assume I want to play and identify with such an stupid brat?!
More so since I see the fucktard every minute in some of these retarded cutscenes, which feature an optical design fitting to the rest of the game: too colourful, too bright, ridicilious.

Gameplaywise, the game seems like a Freelancer Clone to me. But maybe I'm not the best to judge on this since I couldn't stand playing the game longer then 30 minutes. My eyes were hurting...

 

[YourConscience]

Funny enough, although making it so colorful, they managed to have less contrast, than the grey-in-brown colortheme of X3. To test this, I fired up X3 for comparison and indeed, everything was much clearer, nicer.