But I Can Pretend It's a Void War Wannabe, Right?
I recently played the demo for Battlestar Galactica on XBox Live Arcade.

My first thought was, "Oh, so this is a Void War clone!" Except with 2D gameplay. And I doubt that the developers ever even heard of Void War. Which means it's simply a descendant of the same kind of games Void War is a descendant of. Games like SpaceWar and it's descendants. Like the incredibly awesome Star Control series.

Maybe Void War would have been a more appealing game if I hadn't taken it the "true" 3D route, with all the baggage that entailed. Which would basically have made it just like Battlestar Galactica (and, from what little I played of it, Wing Commander Arena for XBLA) - 2D games with 3D graphics.

The sad part, though, is that I think Star Control II did it better. Strip away the pretty XBox 360 graphics, and you've got... what, exactly?

Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. I mean, the time was due to introduce a new generation of gamers to gameplay that s about as classic as you can get. I mean, Computer Space was the coin-op version of Spacewar that predated Pong. That's cool and all. And much of the time, bigger + more features is not the same as better. That's cool too. And maybe far cooler stuff opens up if you play more of the game, which I did not see. Maybe. (Update - I managed to play a little bit of the campaign mode before it kicked me out, and that was admittedly a little more interesting).

But I still have a suspicion that a 15-year-old game was superior to today's offerings.

To know what I'm talking about, here's the freeware version of the game:

Ur-Qaan Masters

Am I just smokin' something here? Because it seems to me that this would be a better game to remake for the 360. Well, okay, I really think Void War would have been the best choice of all, but I must admit some bias there.

Labels: Mainstream Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:34 PM (Permalink)