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Topic: STAR CONTROL 3 - A SPACE RPG BY LEGEND ENTERTAINMENT (Read 13501 times)
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Galactic
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Well, Pelit gave it about 75 out of 100. 
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Shiver
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I would give massive brownie points out to anyone that could find the TotalGames.net and Computer Games Magazine reviews in their entirety. They're the two top reviews on Star Control 3's Metacritic page, but the links to them are sadly quite dead.
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Galactic
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No, I was wrong. It gave SC3 85 points.
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Shiver
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(Fragment of the TotalGames.net review courtesy of Valaggar)
Not that Star Control 3 is all just pretty pictures though: strategy fans can sigh with relief because all the usual small dot represents ship, menu-driven icon selection stuff is in full evidence as well. The astute amongst you will have noticed that this is number three in the Star Control sci-fi adventure series. In numbers one and two, humans fought then befriended other sentient beings across the galaxies. Sadly things are now going downhill: a malfunction of all hyper-space systems and the slow disintegration of reality in the universe combine to stop you from feeling too cocky. Bodging together some bits and bobs, you design a Warp Bubble Transport system, this one-of-a-kind replacement hyperdrive allows you to set off on your mission. This involves contacting all sentient races to persuade them to join a League of S.R. to find out what''s up before they all fall through a patchy corner of space.
Personally I like to think of the game play as working like one of those microscopes with swivelling lenses of different magnification. No, no, bear with me and I''ll explain all, using your start location of Helios as an example. You start on the main Quadrant screen seeing the whole quadrant of space and your position but only represented by dots. Toggle the Star names button and you soon realise that all those specks are in fact systems waiting to be explored. Wanting a little more excitement, you metaphorically swivel your lens up one notch by clicking the System button and hey presto -- you''re on the System screen. Now you are able to see the planets in your present location, with details of atmosphere, resources, colonies and so on and a radar scan highlighting planets and craft in the area. Still want more? Well the zoom lens metaphor still applies (honest) so click on a planet and you''ll fly to it. Zoom in a bit more by selecting the Orbit activity screen to display a scan of the surface and details of your resources, animal and mineral. Feeling settled? Select a suitable race to build a colony, select a site, then one click and your little town is up and running. Feeling really nosy? Choose the Colony Screen, which displays an overhead view of the place and allows you to control its production. It''s a good idea to whack up the fuel production department ''cos you''re going to need a lot of it if you don''t fancy drifting aimlessly in space like an utterly forgetful moron. The ultimate in satellites-that-can-see-in-your-window thrills though, occurs when the communications window screen opens up. You''ll then be treated to some excellent interactive FMV sequences, giving you the chance to meet the aliens, chat to them and abuse their appearance if you should wish. There are 24 animated aliens, all designed by top special effects artists and they really do look excellent and rubbery. This same screen appears if another craft or inhabited planet are reached and it''s worth pursuing the conversation to see what hints you can pick up, even if some of the beings'' conversation tends to be limited. Like ''Daktaklakpak! Daktaklakpak!'' for example.
It''s these Daktaklakpak-whatever characters that''ll cause you the most grief. When you run into them they''ll just start scrapping no matter what and have to experience the battle screen. I know that this is primarily an adventure game but it''s weak when compared to the rest of the game: you control your ship with the mouse or keyboard and shoot at the bad guys. Then you die, or you carry on: seems a bit daft like.
That is my only grumble with Star Control 3, it really is an involving adventure game and I have the feeling I''ve only skimmed the surface so far. FMV in game play usually makes me wince but the humour, relevance and interactivity of the footage in Star Control 3 actually add to the game as a whole (shock!). There''s ''playing hours a plenty'' here for all strategy fans, the soundtrack and speech are great and the story is complex and intriguing. Put it this way, it''s my present number one pastime apart from swivelling my microscope.
 92/100
~Mark Smith (Couldn't be bothered to play the game for more than 20 minutes; too busy "swivelling his microscope")
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« Last Edit: June 19, 2008, 07:52:30 pm by Shiver »
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Shiver
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(Computer Games Magazine review courtesy of Valaggar)
At last, the wait is over. Following years after Star Control 2, Star Control 3, by Accolade has been released. Now maybe we can get answers to our questions. What's so bad about the strange Orz? Who were the Precursors? Where did the big round ship in the closing credits come from? Can a sequel done by a different team than the original be ANY good? For those not familiar with the Star Control series, the core of the series is a starship melee mode reminiscent of the old Atari "Space War" game, where two craft shoot at each other and maneuver around a point of gravity in the center of the map. On its own, the melee mode of a Star Control game would be worth the price of admission. But wait, there's more!
When last we left our intrepid hero, he had just saved all the sentient races in our quadrant from the Ur-Quan masters. The Ur-Quan had been split thousands of years ago into two groups, the Green, and the Black. The Green Ur-Quan wanted to pacify all other races, but allow them to continue living on. The Black Ur-Quan wanted to destroy all other races, citing their "Eternal Doctrine." . Picking up the pieces of the Alliance of Free Stars that had fallen to the Ur-Quan after Star Control 1, and with the help of ancient technology, from the mysterious Precursors, our hero was able to defeat the Ur-Quan. Along the way he encountered many strange races, some he made into allies, and some he made into enemies. The strange, other-dimensional Arilou, and the other-dimensional Orz, the greedy Druuge, and the happy P'Kunk, just to name a few.
I am so *happy*. It is the *camper* I first *smelled* in the *heavy space* near Taalo *playground.*
Once again we are given the choice to play the adventure game, and the simple melee mode. I quickly looked at the melee mode, and I'll talk about combat later. What I really wanted to get into was the Adventure game. You start the game in the solar system with the first Human colony in the Kessari Quadrant. Why are you in the Kessari Quadrant? Oh, let me tell you about the premise.
Shot One
Shortly after Star Control 2, you retire to a quiet life with your Syreen wife. Certain events happen, detailed in the Star Control novel, and you decide to come out of retirement. A few years later, hyperspace collapses. All star systems are cut off from each other. You are still gifted with an understanding of Precursor technology, and you build another Precursor ship, and a new drive system that will allow you to go to other star systems. You also know from a vision that Hyperspace was just the first to go, and your galaxy is soon to follow. You know that the answers lie coreward, and you assemble a League of Sentient Races made up of the Humans, Syreen, P'Kunk, Spathi, Mycon, Vux, Ur-Quan, Utwig, Supox and Orz. With your new drive system, you catapult each race into the Kessari Quadrant, scattering them.
Now where was I? Oh yes, the plot. Well, you start by just trying to get the Human colony going, and you also try to locate the other races. Be careful about fuel. The new system for navigating makes it easy to accidentally run out away from home. This isn't necessarily fatal. If you find yourself stuck without fuel, you can build a colony in the new system, assuming you can find a suitable planet. More on that later.
Shot Two
Soon you are fighting a new enemy, the Crux, made up of the K'Tang, the Daktaklakpak, the Ploxis, the Doogs, the Harika/Yorn, and the Clairconchlar. You start forging new alliances with even stranger alien races than Star Control 2. And sometimes one of your races will betray you. That's life in the Big Galaxy, I guess. You just have to keep going. The mystery of what's happeneing to the galaxy must be solved. I have played for 30+ hours, and I haven't gotten to the end of the story. What I have seen is an exceptionally detailed story line, including interaction with multiple races to figure out each challenge. Events occur in relation to what you do, and again you have to occasionally employ innovative solutions to your problems. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.
To help you along you have an AI, ICOM, which looks like a H.A.L. 9000, and will give you suggestions on what to do next, and occasionally reports on new findings. These announcements are shared by your ship's science officer, who reports findings. You don't just find things on planets, sometimes he just shows up with an announcement. It's an excellent way of providing a help facility within the game that feels natural.
Puny League of Sentiment Races! We will Crushify you!
Shot Three
Once again we have the core of the Star Control series, melee combat. Several of the old races are back, and a dozen new races are here too. Another new item in melee combat is the 3D mode. This mode is very visually impressive, and can be quite a challenge to do the first few times. It's an isometric view of the ships on a plane around the planet. As I play in 3D, I get better, but initially I just wanted to keep the adventure game going, so I switched it back to the good old 2D mode which is also available.
Some of the new races have some really creative ships. The Harika fire two missiles attached to each other by an energy beam. When a missile or the beam, which grows longer as it travels, hits an object, the other missile is pulled towards what the first one hit. If the beam hits something, both missiles turn inward. This is especially effective against cloaked ships. I really encourage you to open up the melee mode and play with the new ships. There are some really creative weapons and defenses. You won't go through the adventure game using your flag ship in every battle like last time.
All the old ships that are included have the same special abilities they used to, with a few improvements. The Orz cannon rotates to 8 different directions, so rear = rear, not 5 degrees off. The familiar "Launch Fighters" of the Ur-Quan, "Go! Go!" of the Orz, and of course "Stupid. Jerk. Baby. *BOOM!* Hallelujah" of the P'Kunk are included.
Shot Four
This time around the ships aren't the cartoon graphics of Star Control's past. The 3D mode has very nicely rendered ships from many angles, and the 2D mode is equally detailed. All combats are in SVGA, with smoother scrolling magnification, and the screen can be toggled to follow ships, or be "fixed" and switch when one ship leaves the screen. And on those slow machines, the star field can be turned off. They really tried to accomodate all different preferances with the melee mode this time. The other BIG feature of Star Control 3 is that you can now play melee combat over a modem, null modem or network connection. Accolade has really responded to the demands of the users with their latest set of games, and Star Control 3 is no exception.
He's the King of Manufactured Housing!
Building colonies involves no layout planning, everything is pre-selected. You just determine what importance each facility gets, and it's automatic from there. There are only a few buildings and fewer resources. The only really important resources are Fuel, and Resource Units. After a colony is set up, all you really care that it produces are RU's, Fuel, and new ships, and if you're good enough at combat, new ships aren't that important either. I thought it might be nice if you were somehow threatened by invasion, but with Hyperspace destroyed, and only a few ships capable of moving between sectors, no real threats exist. Yet. I may eat those words by the end of the game. Better safe than sorry, I allow colonies to build ships slowly, and over the course of my game so far, my oldest colonies have built about 10 ships each.
On the whole, colonies are a no-brainer. You want to make a few new ones, for RU's, and also so that wherever you go in the quadrant, you have a local source of fuel. And if you find a neat new Precursor artifact, you need to take it to a colony to get it researched. This is a quick process. Most of the artifacts are ship upgrades. Example: For 1000 RU's per ship, you can increase the crew capacity of an Orz Nemesis.
Planet searching is much easier than Star Control 2. Instead of flying over each planet, scanning, then driving around, you can look at each planet in the system and see its resource rating. This is Not the number of RU's that can be generated on the planet. I'm not sure exactly what the number corresponds to, but the higher the number, the more resources, the faster you get stuff.
Once you start making alliances you won't need to make many colonies. Make one of each, just because some plot points depend on having colonies of one race or another built. And they make great fuel stops. You tend to not visit all of them often, so when you need a ton of fuel, usually one colony nearby has quite a bit built up.
The Muppets Take Kessari
Shot Five
One of the biggest advancements over its predecessors is the inclusion of video of the aliens done with puppets. While the amount of animation and variation between shots for each puppet isn't great for some, it really works well for several. This is an area they could have done slightly better, but it's easy to be a critic, harder to actually do it right. I do think that they really messed up the Syreen. Syreen are supposed to be amazingly attractive blue women. The puppet they used is bald, and you only see her from the neck up. Many of the voices are great at expressing the thoughts of the alien race. Or at least, what they're willing to let you know. And some of the personalities are so fun that I've found myself talking like t hem when talking about the game. Not everyone will like a voice, either they don't think it's done well enough, or it's just not what they had in mind for what it would sound like. I personally think the Spathi sounds like the cross between a muppet and Woody Allen.
One of the advantages that the puppets offer is detail and expression that can't be captured by rendered characters, as well as realism that doesn't come from the more cartoon-like animations of earlier Star Control titles. In my interview with George MacDonald of Accolade, he explained some of what went into creating the aliens, the puppets and the voices. It really is an effective method, and unlike many games where you wish they had spent less on 'video' and more on plot , this game doesn't suffer at all from spending the effort on getting interaction correct. I won't say who you'll run into out in the Kessari Quadrant, but there are some surprises just waiting for you.
I did have some problems with the sound flaking out on me when I played under Win95, but with all the changes I've made to my system over the past year, I can't expect everything to work perfectly.
Assertion: Star Control 3 is excellent! Conclusion: Well worth the wait!
I've been waiting for this title for years now. I went wild with anticipation when it was announced in early 1995. I waited, and cringed every time it was delayed. I asked people what they might know about it. I heard rumors that the entire game had b een canceled, recalled, sent back for a new story, every bad thing under the sun. I was almost scared to play it when it finally arrived, but I was too full of expectation not to play. I'm glad I did. This is one of the best games of the year. It migh t even be the best adventure game of the year. The plot is deep, the characters are brought to life effectively, I haven't found almost any bugs, and they didn't leave anything out.
90/100
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« Last Edit: June 19, 2008, 08:08:20 pm by Shiver »
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Elerium
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Just comes to show game reviewers are a combination of bribed, stoned, and can't-be-arsed types of people who play your games to influence how you spend your money wisely.
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Cedric6014
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I think I might have sais this before at one time, but I suspect reviewers don't usually complete a whole game. The reviewers that gave SC3 a go probably did not come across all it's mechanical faults or truly appreciate the problems in the storyline
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AngusThermopyle
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A paranoid android.
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Well, at least he admitted the Syreen looked terrible.
As a side note, I could go back and read some stellar reviews of Master of Orion 3. Those are good for a laugh too.
Out of curiosity, does anyone remember any strongly negative reviews for SC3?
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Lance_Vader
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To be fair, it's entirely probable that these reviewers were predisposed in the extreme to giving SC3 a good rating because they liked the series and wanted it to sell well.
And they could have been high from playing SC2.
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