With a gripping story and fantastic visuals and gameplay to accompany it, StarLancer is a must play for everyone.
First off, the gameplay for this game is quite phenomenal. The entire game spans about 24 different missions, exposing you to a various amount of military situations. Many times, the situation will change during the middle of a mission, causing you to rethink your strategy and change tactics to fit the new situation at hand. Dogfighting does become a challenge, as the cleverly-programmed A.I. ships do evade your crosshairs pretty effectively and call in reinforcements from time to time. In addition, they might decide to taunt you when they let a hail of lasers at your ship, but retaliate right back at them and they won’t be laughing soon after. The one dislike that I have is that it seems many of the objectives are left for you to accomplish (I guess the “Army of One” mentality really comes into play here) with none of your squadron wingmen to back you up, other than just to distract the onslaught of fighters. Aside from that, the gameplay is superb.
Hmm, graphics. The graphics are absolutely fantastic for a game made back in 2000. Many of the ships are flawlessly textured; explosions, jumping from system to system, warping, lasers, many of the visual effects of the game are rendered phenomenally for its age. All of the cutscenes are rendered quite well with 3D modeling, and the speech does coordinate with mouth movements. In-mission cutscenes are also created perfectly, with cinematic camera angles and panning. There are some Z-fighting issues from time to time, but with such upgrades in graphics card capabilities nowadays, there is no trouble bringing StarLancer up to maximum settings. The voice acting in StarLancer is quite excellent. There is plenty of audio to supplement the 24 missions, with mission dialog from fellow wingmen to threats of death from enemy combatants. The audio is timed well and is very fluent throughout all of the sequences. Voice accents of pilots match with their in-game nationality, so that’s a plus for realism there. Other game sounds such as the jump drive, cloaking, and afterburners are made well, simulating a realistic environment, even in deep space.
All in all, StarLancer is a fantastically-made package of interesting gameplay, extended replayability, and complex storyline that will keep you entertained for hours. It might be a bit difficult at the beginning, but seasoned combat flight simulator players should have no problem applying their previous skills into this intense game as well. A recommended game for any serious space flight sim player, StarLancer is definitely a game that will have players hooked.