Demonstar Review

A bit of advice: Save your cash and just download the shareware version of Raptor - you'll have a lot more fun.

When Apogee released Raptor: Call of the Shadows in 1993, it was universally heralded as a genre-busting action game. Before Raptor's release, PCs were snubbed as too "underpowered" to handle graphically intense shooters, and console gamers took great pleasure in rubbing our noses in games like Keio Flying Squadron and Super Turrican. However, Raptor's graphics and gameplay took the shooter genre to a whole new level, and by allowing you to trade in cash for powerful new weapons, injected some strategy as well.

Now, Raptor's core team has returned to bring us Demonstar. This game is basically a one-man show - both the programming and art come from Raptor's lead designer, and the audio portion was performed by Bobby Prince, Apogee's pet composer. But when you fire up Demonstar, it may leave you asking, "Is this it?"

Demonstar is the most simplistic shooter you could ask for. As your tiny ship blasts through scrolling starfields, dozens of nasties fly towards you on a collision course. Wiping out these enemies yields helpful power-ups that enable bombs, phalanx lasers, and other destructive options. As you progress through the 20-odd levels, the action escalates in its intensity, with faster enemies and projectiles spewing all over the place. Chances are pretty good that you've played this type of game before, and you won't experience anything new here.

But the biggest disappointment about Demonstar is how it can't even come close to equaling the original Raptor. Aside from some stunning explosions, the graphics are amateurish at best, with little diversity over the course of the 18 levels. The sound effects are nothing to write home about, and the music is repetitive and dull. It would have been nice to trade in points to beef up your ship as in Raptor, but no go - you're stuck pounding through from start to finish (without any save-game feature to boot).

You won't have to worry about death - thanks to a whopping 18 continues, even the most joystick-impaired player can succeed admirably. But instead of challenging your reflexes, Demonstar tests your patience - chances are good that you'll be voluntarily pressing Alt-F4 to quit long before you run out of ships.

While Raptor ran in low-res VGA to keep the frame rate smooth on 486s, Demonstar ups the ante by running in SVGA. There's a major trade-off: Demonstar always runs in a window, even if you're playing in the so-called "full screen" mode (which simply crops out your desktop background with metallic textures). And while there is a two-player mode that lets you and a buddy take on the evil empire at once, the box falsely advertises some sort of "Internet play." Sorry, it ain't in my version - but I doubt that TCP/IP support could have helped this game much.

In short, Demonstar is an inadequate game, even though it is a bargain-priced title. A bit of advice: Save your cash and just download the shareware version of Raptor - you'll have a lot more fun.

The Good

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The Bad

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