Review: DarkStar One
It’s been a long time since the classic story driven space shooters. Now comes DarkStar One, a space adventure with fast paced action and an original storyline. You play as Kayron Jarvis, a young commander of the spaceship DarkStar One, destined to defend mankind from the aliens (who else?).
You start off like in many other space combat games; as a pilot, you get offered some jobs, transporting or protecting cargo from point A to B. As you progress, you’ll earn money to upgrade your ship, better shield, weapons, etc. The gameplay is fairly straight forward and simple, no need for a long tutorial or introduction. You’ll have some spare cash from the beginning so can upgrade your ship right away, and for the most part, you can skip the trading game and just go hunting aliens.
The game plays like a typical FPS or combat sim, you use the mouse and keyboard to control your ship during flight and combat. The combat and dog fighting is pretty easy, since your HUD will automatically target enemies and give you a direction.
Visually the game looks great. There is a certain feel of just how vast the space is, and there is a great variation among the planetary systems, over 300 indivudual in the game. However, there are repetitions at time. The menu and item interface is easy and straightforward. You won’t be wasting too much time figuring out how it all works.
Overall, the game hold some good value for space shooter fans. It’s not like X3: Reunion, where you have to deal with so much trade and economics, this is a simple, easy to pick up action game that will keep you busy for some time.
The space combat and trade missions are fairly repetitive after a few hours of gameplay, and the absence of a multiplayer feature means that there is no real replay value.
Publisher: CDV Software
Developer: Ascaron Entertainment
System requirements:
Minumum: 1.6 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, 128 MB DX9 graphics card
Recommended: 2.6 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 256 MB DX9 graphics card