Dark Star One: Broken Alliance - The new Privateer?

[twmac]

Now that I have gotten over my giddiness about EDF getting a sequel, I wanted to mention a game called 'Dark Star One: Broken Alliance'. It just came out on X360 and is based on a two year-old PC game.

So far it has been very promising, the game has a central story line around your upgradable ship (the titular Dark Star) and exploring space. This involves warping from zone, seeking out missions and excorting freighters as well as tradign produce from space station to space station.

The dog fighting has been a hell of a lot of fun and reminds me of the good old X-Wing days. It is published by Kalypso (Tropico 3) and was originally made by the company who made Sacred 2.

Just wanted to say that anyone interested in exploring asteroid belts, dukign it out with Pirates and generally exploring an open universe should ignore the terrible box art and give it a play.

[Donk]

It's out on 360 now? I have it on Steam, it's on my to-play list. Did they add anything for the 360 version?

[miffy495]

I played the demo back when it first came out. I don't remember much about it, honestly, except feeling that Freelancer was better. Sell me on this one, man.

[spindrift]

I hope it's only loosely based on the PC game, because that was garbage.

[twmac]

Okay, if you didn't like the PC version then you aren't going to like this.

The review on Eurogamer does sum up a lot of what I feel about this game.

It is simply a nice diversion from all of the other games I have been playing, the peaceful cruising through infinite space, occasionally navigating through asteroid fields (with every rock being rendered). The fact that every space port is bussling with ships going about their day make everything feel like the episodes of Babylon 5 that I always wanted but never were.

My advice is that if you have it muscle through the slightly clumsy tutorial because it really is quite delightful dropping into another star system, doing a quick scan for stuff in the area, waypointing to a space station for jobs, maybe tagging along side a bigger transport vessel as support or just attacking it and stealing equipment.

I'll admit that there are probably better games (privateer and freelancer) but I have not played a game like this in over 8 years so it was so much fun to know that they still exist.

The missions do get a little repetitive but the enjoyment I get from space faring is enough to offset it.

[Gabbo]

I hope it's only loosely based on the PC game, because that was garbage.

Hopefully the four years in between the PC game and this allowed for hindsight.