Playing Starsiege

While Dynamix has moth-balled the Earthsiege name to denote the company's larger focus on the Starsiege Universe, its first game bearing that badge, an online first-person shooter, bears the name Tribes.

GameSpot News first got wind of Tribes at last year's E3 in Atlanta. When Dynamix said that it had an FPS to show us, we winced a little. That was until we saw the Tribes demo and it change our minds. This was the beginning of a new Dynamix with games that seemed to answer gamers needs. Now, after the release of Tribes, gamers are beginning to talk more about Starsiege - Dynamix's return to its robotic fighter roots.

The playing field has definitely changed for robotic simulations: Consider Activision's Heavy Gear II and MicroProse's MechWarrior III stomping closer to release. Dynamix hasn't released a game like this since the middle of 1996 when Earthsiege 2 came out. The company is focused on releasing something that gamers can love - and it took a very different approach to gaining that enthusiasm.

It released an early demo of the game in early '98 that it called an Alpha Technology Release (ATR). While there were only two ATR's, momentum began to build as gamers played, destroyed, found bugs, and developed into squads. Gamer interest has remained strong ever since. Now the game has gone gold and has been prepped for a March 19 release. We had a chance to play the final gold edition of Starsiege and discovered what all the buzz is about.

Starsiege continues the storyline of the two earlier Earthsiege releases. The human race has been battling an evil AI named Prometheus. At the end of Earthsiege 2, Prometheus flees Earth and heads for Neptune. For the next two hundred years, mankind expands its reaches to the other planets and gets as far as Mars when the human race begins to fight a battle of its own. All the while, the Immortal Emperor Petresun (also Prometheus' creator) has been building up Earth's defenses in anticipation of a battle Th Prometheus and his Cybrids when they return to battle Earth once more. But Petresun has not been building up those same defenses on Mars and the Martian colonists begin to rebel as more sanctions are imposed on them. Harabec Weathers, once the top seed in the Emperor's Imperial Knights now stands as the leader of the Rebels. His brother, Caanon Weathers, sticks to his honor as the Grand Master of the Imperial Knight by swearing to destroy his brother Harabec.

All the while, Prometheus watches from Neptune waiting, feline-like, to bounce on the battling Earthlings as they war amongst themselves.

The game follows your pilot as he takes control of a large mechanized Herc while you seek to gain notice and rank. Gameplay is similar to many other games in the genre: You ambush the Imperial forces, test new alien weapons the Rebels find on Mars, and other such pursuits. Starsiege uses the same engine as Tribes. This allows you to view enemies and other objects far in the distance.

Dynamix is also looking to bite back at its competitors as well by building an extensive storyline in its game. Coupled with the retail release of Starsiege will be a 152-page manual detailing the historical events and key players that lead up to Starsiege.

All we know right now is that Starsiege is the third and final game in which humans do battle with Prometheus. Where Starsiege ends, Tribes begins.

With all the player hype surrounding the upcoming full release of Starsiege and the recent success of Starsiege: Tribes, we're sure that March 19 should be a grand day for Starsiege. And GameSpot is sure to have a complete review covering the entire game. Until then, start cleaning your hard drive.