Review: DarkStar One Broken Alliance

Space simulators are starting to become hard to come by these days.  Long since gone are the glory days of Tie Fighter, Freespace, and Wing Commander each of which were pinnacles of the genre.  Nowadays we have titles that fill that need like Eve Online, X, and Star Trek Online but none of these can really capture that unique feeling a singleplayer space simulator can bring you.  DarkStar One, originally released back in 2006, dated back to that age with a determined focus on exploration, deep combat, and an objective story, but four years on now can its console port, DarkStar One Broken Alliance, capture that same awe I felt as a kid?

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Beyond the Sky

DarkStar One takes place far into the future in a time in which humanity has spread out to the stars, encountered extraterrestrial life, and established itself as a permanent race in the vastness of space.  In the years following a grand galactic war five sentient races have formed the Galactic Union, a United Nations-like government that rules across the known galaxy.  As the game begins a series of indiscriminant and seemingly unrelated attacks by a sixth race known as the Thul, have stirred up controversy and put the militaries of the various races on high alert.  With the Thul attacks on the rise and their targets becoming increasingly larger the various races are bracing for what could be an inter-cluster war.

Meanwhile, deep within Terran (human) space a young man named Kayron Jarvis receives his first ship, the DarkStar One, from Robert, a family friend.  DarkStar One was a top secret ship developed by Kayron’s late father.  After spending some time getting to know the new ship Robert informs Kayron that he suspects his father’s death was due to sabotage.  Indicting a rogue human named Jack Forrester Kayron begins his quest to bring Forrester to justice.

The overall story of DarkStar One is a lackluster one that takes far too long to get through.  While you do encounter several semi-interesting characters throughout your journey you only meet one really permanent figure: a girl named Eona whose arrival is extremely predictable and whose dry, dim attempts at humorous puns and quips leave you groaning instead of smiling.  And yes, Eona is unfortunately your copilot throughout almost the entire game.

DarkStar One’s story is typical at best of the classic space opera: guy goes on revenge trip, meets a cute redhead, has adventures, and ends up saving the galaxy.  The problem is that this method of delivery does not match up with the scope of the gameplay; more on that in a second.

You Aren’t Actually Going IN to an Asteroid Field?!

The DarkStar One is a very versatile ship in both design and gameplay.  The true character of the game, the ship can accept weapons and equipment modules made by each race and will actively transform over time as you collect artifacts, pieces of long dead alien technology.  It is here that the game utilizes an almost RPG-esque tech tree leveling system.  By upgrading certain sections of the ship not only do you enhance aspects of gameplay such as adding automated turrets or increasing your engine’s throughput but you also visually alter the appearance of the ship.  Watching your ship transform from a mildly appealing Terran transport to a badass, nigh unstoppable marauder will take you dozens of hours but the results are inextricably worth it.

As you venture through the known universe of DarkStar One you’ll find that, while there is an overall narrative to the game, it is almost a completely sandbox experience.  You have on hand several hundred star systems to explore, an almost infinite amount of missions to be had, and, of course, plenty of enemies to shoot.  While you will be attempting to follow the story to its conclusion you’ll find yourself relegating most of your time to exploring each star system and only going after story goals after having finished all other tasks available.

This is all well and good but one of the main problems the game suffers from is repetition.  And by repetition I mean a lot of doing almost the exact same thing all the time just to earn a paycheck.  Almost all of the missions in the game can be consigned to one of three mission types: escort, reconnaissance, and attack.  While there are small variations therein the game’s missions can get old fast so only the most patient souls may be able to tolerate doing all the side missions.  The missions to wipe out the pirate gangs alone will take up more time than you are willing to give.  There are very few missions down to the surface of a planet either and even these are letdowns.

One other nagging problem you’ll find yourself experiencing is the game’s failure to encourage true exploration.  With hundreds of star systems to explore you would think that there would be endless amounts of things to find but the problem is that this simply is not the case.  Almost all of the star systems, while vast in size, are lacking in differentiation between almost all the other systems.  Most systems have a large asteroid or debris field in them.  In fact, other than the Terran Sol system there is almost nothing worth visiting in almost half of the star systems.  Most visits the systems that have missions and quests in them will result in only a handful of minutes being spent in them before moving on to the next one on the map.

Despite it these problems though the main part of the game that Ascaron Entertainment, the game’s developer, got right was the combat.  While most of the space battle are far from epic in size (the most you’ll see of enemies in a map at a time is usually no more than a dozen fighters or so) your engagements will have you dogfighting waves of enemies at a time with the occasional back up of AI mercenary ships.  These ships share the same AI as the enemies of the game and thus charge into battle with almost no hope of survival but hey, as long as you survive, usually there are no consequences.  Regardless, the controls for the flight mechanics are spot on and the game’s auto targeting system allows you to all but slaughter your foes.

The Wall of Space

DarkStar One was originally released in 2006 as a PC title.  Back then the current console generation was still in its infancy and thus it was visually on par with that of titles of the time.  Today however, four years after the game’s original release, Broken Alliance does not match up.  Despite being advertised prominently as being presented in 1080p four years on the game simply doesn’t hold up to expectations.  While some scaling on large asteroids and planetscapes look nice the game does have noticeable pop-in issues and the framerate can dip significantly should the amount of rendered objects in a given map be exceptionally large.  In other words, if you’re in the middle of a large battle, be prepared for some shuttering.

The biggest offender technically speaking is the voice work.  Put quite simply this reviewer has not heard such a horrendous effort put into a Western-developed title in years, and that’s saying something.  In fact, if I had to hazard a comparison I would liken it to last year’s auditorially detrimental Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers; it’s that terrible.  Almost every single line you will hear is cookie-cutter at best and downright read-straight-off-the-page quality.  The voice work doesn’t even lip-sync to the characters depicted on screen, nor does this port even seem like this was attempted.  Eona is the biggest offender in this case as her attempts at humor neither amuses nor enlightens the player.  May her voice actress find work outside the realm of video games.

One last quip that needs to be mentioned: the cinematics. While prerendered FMV sequences still exist prominently in video games they are becoming increasingly obsolete in an age in which visual wonders like Mass Effect 2 and Killzone 2 exist.  While this isn’t to be expected of a four year old port it would have been appropriate for the cinematics to have been at the very least upscaled properly if not having undergone a complete reworking with enhanced models and redone character articulations.  Sadly this is not the case.  More egregiously it seems that the cinematics have had almost no work done on them at all as they have been poorly scaled to match the demands of 1080p.  There is even very visual artifacting during these sequences, something that is almost unforgiveable in my book.

All in all if you’re looking for a visually compelling game you aren’t going to find it in DarkStar One.

The Wrong End of the Galaxy

Overall DarkStar One, despite many items that have not aged well and some technical flaws, is still a welcome entry in a genre that rarely sees new titles anymore.  For those looking for a decent game to pass the Summer gaming drought DarkStar One Broken Alliance is an appropriate fix, especially for obsessive compulsive collectors, but for those who have plenty of other games they could play you should stick of this near-black hole.