There's many a night been spent by mankind dreaming of what the future may hold. And by future, we don't just mean tomorrow - we're talking about future, future, like the year 3000. Even Busted got in on the act. But while the world of flying cars, fountains of youth, and holographic displays may be a while away yet, Star Raiders offers a slightly different glimpse of the world in years to come - a world where everyone's developed hawk-like eyesight. At least, if the game's menu's anything to go by.
You see, for somewhat inexplicable reasons, Star Raiders uses an absolutely tiny font. It's ridiculous. Having obviously been designed for a PC monitor first and foremost, the writing in Star Raiders is about as large as the font on your screen now - only it's on a 32" TV, which you're trying to read from several feet away. Mission briefings, objectives, upgrade menus - every single piece of text in the game, bar the very first menu, is written in a font so small that only those with perfect vision will be able to read it comfortably. Roll on those futuristic eye implants, eh?
Zap, zap, POW! etc...
It's something of a shame, as it gets Star Raiders off to exactly the wrong start, because what initially appears to be an amateur production is actually surprisingly good. Another game in Atari's recent line of reinvisioned Atari 2600 titles (the recently reviewed Yar's Revenge was the first), Star Raiders is a remake of the 1979 original space combat simulator - although that's not as scary as it sounds. There's very little true "simulation" here, as all you really have to do is fly around, and blast the enemy ships before they can do the same to you.
Somewhat luckily, there's not all that much of a story here, as you wouldn't be able to read it if there was. Instead, all you really have to do is choose a sector from the galaxy map, and follow the mission objectives that await you within. Each sector has its own mission waiting for you, whether you've got to defend a ship from attack, or simply clear an area of evil Zylon ships, although most will simply revolve around entering an area, and destroying everything in sight.
That's not to say that there isn't any variety, though. Each sector you enter looks vastly different to the last, with orbiting planets, asteroid fields, and swirling green, er, galactic mist, and is inhabited by a selection of different enemy ships, from nimble fighters that'll swarm you like flies, to the huge, daunting, capital ships, that take a special effort to destroy.
They're a lot bigger than you, so be careful.
Luckily for you, your starfighter's a versatile craft in itself, and comes prepared for every occasion, thanks to its ability to transform like an, er, Transformer. In attack mode, your spaceship controls a lot like a plane - powering itself forwards, you adjust your pitch and yaw with the left analogue stick. With a fairly even split between your shield strength and weapons, this mode's perfect for dogfighting with enemy fighters, and getting out of harms way when you've got a Zylon on your tail. Press the LB, however, and your ship will transform into assault mode, which, as the name suggests, is incredibly useful for assaulting enemy frigates. Less nimble than attack mode, assault lets you manually move your ship forward, backwards, left, or right on the left analogue stick, while letting you aim with the right stick, turning it into a sort of space based third person shooter. With a lot more control over where your ship's facing - and, of course, the ability to simply park yourself next to a target and blast away, assault mode's most useful when it comes to taking out capital ships - creeping around in the superstructure, dwarfed by the ship as you pick off its vulnerable parts is inexplicably fun. The final mode, turret mode, is your all out attack mode. You'll barely manage to move when you've transformed into this one, but all your power will be diverted to your shields and weapons, making you a formidable foe. When you're defending a ship from attack, if you transform into this and park yourself next to it, you can be fairly sure nothing's going to get past.
While it's fairly easy to swat the fighters that swarm around you, taking out a capital ship, such as a frigate, is a different challenge altogether. Comparatively huge, and swarming with turrets, the capital ships require a vastly different approach. In order to take them down, you'll need to destroy several things which look like reactor cores, that work their way in and out of the ship's surface like a piston. Of course, rather than leaving their most vulnerable parts fully exposed, these reactors are protected by large metal coverings, or other parts of the ship that make getting a clear shot at them from a distance nigh on impossible. Luckily for you, by switching to assault mode, you can get right into the cracks where you need to be, letting you pick the reactors off with relative ease.
Although the vast majority of missions simply involve destroying every enemy in sight, there are a few times where the game makes an effort to deviate form the standard course. One of the highlights of the game comes around nine missions in, when you have to infiltrate a Zylon base on an asteroid, and pilot your ship through a narrow system of tunnels. Navigating your ship around the inside of the asteroid, narrowly missing walls, all while coming under fire from the turrets they've built on the inside as you hunt for part of a super weapon that's been buried deep within the asteroid is exciting to say the least.
The asteroid level's one of the game's highlights.
As you progress through the missions, you'll earn salvage credits for destroying Zylon ships, as well as taking potshots at any asteroids you find along the way. In between missions, you'll get the chance to upgrade your ship's different forms, buying new weapons, and equipping different androids (think R2D2), which bring bonuses to the amount of damage your ship dishes out, or its shields.
Space Raiders isn't a perfect game, by any means, and it does have its fair share of problems. The levels have a nasty habit of telling you destroy something specific, yet not showing you exactly where that is. With the game not bothering to label what you're targetting, finding the specific thing you're meant to destroy (whether it's a Logic Core, or a lock), is a game of chance. The tutorial does a pretty crappy job of introducing you to the game, too, and doesn't really explain how to best make use of each of the ship's forms, while the controls are... well... weird. In attack mode, it seems hard to get your ship to bank exactly how you want it to, as the controls are either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough.
But while the above points are irritating, they're not enough to send this to space scrapheap, or make the majority of the gameplay any less fun. For 800 points, or around £6.80, Star Raiders is everything it set out to be - a lighter, easier, more arcadey version of a classic space simulator. If you're looking for something with a bit more weight, get the brilliant DarkStar One - or better yet, buy both. Games like this don't come round often enough, and while it isn't quite as good as DarkStar, it's still a great game in its own right.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
