Wednesday, May 23, 2007

More controversy!

Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters sucks.

When I first heard of it, it sounded awesome. When I first played it, I discovered it was awesome.

I decided to explore each planet. Of each star. This stopped being fun shortly after I realized the merchant dudes had no more tech or info or anything of use to sell to me. I still explored each planet, though, collecting ore and lifeforms and selling them to my starbase and the merchant dudes. I also kept a faint hope that someday I'd find something unique or interesting. Out of all the planets I managed to explore via this method, I found only one interesting anomaly: A planet encapsulated like Earth was. And there was no method of interaction with this planet; I don't even think it had a starbase like Earth.

Another item which eventually turned sour was interacting with alien races. They would either be outright hostile, or off-the-wall wacky and otherwise unhelpful. Except for the nice gents who sent out those crystal ships and lived on a gas giant; I always checked each gas giant after that in the hope that I'd find some kindred spirits for them to be friends with. But what I'm saying is, it would have been nice to have had somebody other than the merchant dudes to trade with.

Combat was also worthless. The only ship worth a damn was the mothership, and only then when it was fully pimped out. With a pimped-out mothership and a little skill, you always dominated except against the Ur-Quan and their cousins, the Who-Ever.

Which brings me to the killing blow. I noticed, as my exploration of the planets dragged on, that the spheres of influence of the various alien races I had met were vanishing one-by-one. I visited the homeworld of the one planet that had three separate sentient species, and all the cities were razed and burning. Puzzled, I turn to a FAQ to see what was happening.

It would have been damn fucking nice of the game to not have a fucking time limit.

Seriously, what the FUCK. The developers of the game put in umpteen million stars, and the game ENDS before you can visit even a tenth of them. That's like building a skyscraper, and the elevator only stops at the lobby and the top floor. It was honestly the most offended I'd ever been by a game.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Yeah, that's sort of my feelings towards the game too.

-- Doust