Darkstar One: Broken Alliance takes place across multiple solar systems within our Milky Way Galaxy and follows protagonist Kayron Jarvis, a recent graduate from space-flight training school. Upon graduation, Kayron is contacted by his recently deceased father's business partner, Robert, and is given a special ship - the Darkstar One - which was designed by his dad. Robert then explains to Kayron that he has a lead on his father's murderer. Armed with this information, Kayron sets off to track down his father's killer.
Meanwhile, groups of strange ships have been randomly coming out of hyperspace and attacking colonies across the Milky Way. These attacks are blamed on a reclusive race of aliens and set the Milky Way's political climate on edge across all species in the galaxy. Kayron's journey to find his father's murderer unavoidably pulls him into this greater conflict and he must work to alleviate this growing political tension to avoid all out war between the species which inhabit the Milky Way, as well as to investigate his father's death.
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| I can never tell if I'm upside down in these games, or if everything else is! |
The Darkstar One is a unique vessel as it is partially organic and can physically grow into a more powerful ship. Strewn throughout the galaxy are 100 organic artifacts which, when collected, give the player access to upgrades for the Darkstar One. Upgrades can be given to the hull, wings, or engine of the ship, and upgrading each area improves specifics such as the number of weapons that can be equipped to the ship and the level of the ship's armor. Players are attached to the Darkstar One for the entire game, so it's nice that the ship visually changes to reflect its growth in power. It's too bad that, as the ship's power nears being maxed out, it begins to resemble a mix between a flying cube and a tree frog rather than something sexier. Seriously, this is the ugliest star fighter I have ever seen.
Across the Milky Way there are a total of 23 clusters and a total of 331 solar systems that Kayron can visit. That sounds like a lot of opportunities for exploration, right? Well, not really once you realize that every single system is just like the last one you visited. Sure, there is some variety to the systems. I mean, you have your asteroid fields, ice fields, crystal fields, blue planets, green planets, red planets, but these themes just keep repeating over and over in slightly different variations. Every solar system has a trade station which looks different depending on what specie's territory you are in, but other than that, you can expect the exact same thing in every cluster.
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| Who knew the universe was filled with identical, boring solar systems. No wonder we stopped funding a space program. |
To the game's credit, these five or six variations on solar systems look graphically pretty good. All of the game's spaceflight is viewed through the cockpit of the Darkstar One. Trade stations, planets, stars in the background, and all the other ships flying around the galaxy are, for the most part, graphically pleasing in the game. The story is told through horribly voice acted, terribly animated, eye-hurtingly blurry, and just plain ugly cutscenes, however. Character design clearly took a backseat to the spaceflight action, which would actually be fine with me if they didn't use cutscenes to tell the story!
Adding to the bad taste left in my mouth by this game is the fact that when you enter systems you will sometimes be subjected to "overheard" communications between ships. I can see that the developers wanted their systems to feel inhabited, and not devoid of all life except for the player, but this idea completely backfired as the same "conversations" play over and over and over and over again using the exact same voice acting, though with different character portraits depending on the cluster you're currently in. Things got so bad at one point, I actually had a female portrait talking to me in a male voice telling me what five other pilots had said to me already throughout the last 20 minutes. Enemies aren't any better with their insults either. The same lines are thrown out time after time, again using the same voices and different portraits.
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| What's that? Someone left multiple copies of this game floating around the solar system!? |
Speaking of enemies, the majority of time spent playing Darkstar One: Broken Alliance will be spent fighting space pirates. Nearly every mission in the game consists of traveling to a system, killing a group of pirates, and traveling back. Sure, sometimes you "get" to protect a freighter or a cruiser from space pirates, or scout out a space pirates' base and then fight waves of them, but for the most part you'll just be randomly fighting space pirates. Oh, and did I mention that this game has a reputation system? So, after killing all those pirates, you're going to gain the reputation of a mercenary which has a side effect of, you guessed it! More pirates attacking you randomly because you're known as a pirate hunter! At least you get credits as a bounty for each pirate shot down?
To the game's credit, space fights are actually done quite well, which is good since you'll be fighting a lot. Flight controls map surprisingly well to the Xbox 360 controller, with one stick controlling heading and the other controlling thrust. Rolls are rarely necessary, but can be pulled off by holding down the left trigger and moving the thruster stick. Multiple targeting options are available and easily accessible, which you're going to be thankful for in the middle of a multi-ship battle. The game provides a targeting system which helps you to lead your shots against moving enemies, which is nice. The Darkstar One can be outfitted with three types of weapons, projectile weapons, missile launchers, and turrets. Turrets acquire enemy targets on their own and fire independently, while projectile weapons have to be aimed by the player. Missiles lock on and track targets, or just fire straight out without guidance depending on the types of missiles equipped. Every weapon equipped to your ship comes at a cost to your available energy to power them, bringing in a bit of strategy to outfitting your ship. If you put the max number of the most powerful weapons on-board, you'll quickly find that you run out of power and can only shoot once or twice before having to wait for your generator to recharge, so it's best to find a balance between power and efficiency.
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| What!? I never expected pirates to be here! |
There is a variety of sub-types of weapons that can be purchased at trade stations, as well as many upgrades to the Darkstar One's systems. These items cost credits which are awarded to the player based on mission completion, through buying and selling items at trade stations, and in the form of bounties for shooting down pirates. Each weapon and bit of equipment has a base level and in order to equip them, the Darkstar One must have found enough artifacts to upgrade it to that level. My experience with the game was playing missions until I found enough artifacts to upgrade my equipment, spending all my credits on the upgrades and repeating. The problem is, eventually you are getting so much money as rewards and upgrading your ship so much more slowly than in the beginning that there is never anything to spend your money on, making side-missions pointless, well, unless you just want to shoot more pirates.
Oh, remember how I said this game rips-off other Sci-Fi series? Well, lets start by talking about the different races in the Milky Way. First, we have the Mortok, a war-like race obsessed with honor and dying in combat. That doesn't sound familiar, does it? I mean, these developers really must like to Klingon to ideas they see elsewhere. We also have the Thul, a matriarchal race of cybernetically enhanced warriors who see organics as impure and as a lesser class of life. Oh yeah, one of the Thul's threats is that "resistance is futile!" Are you Borginning to see what's going on here? When they didn't just straight-up steal from other media for their species, Darkstar One's developers created generic space creatures such as the Arrack, a group of multi-legged insects, or the Octo, a group of multi-armed slugs. The final ripped-off nail in Darkstar One's coffin has to be the final mission in which players fly through a trench inside of a massive ship with the goal to shoot the one weak-point in the entire structure. Kayron sure knows how to fight in these Star Wars.
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| "Ok, we're about to land! Pull out your light-swords, and set your lasers to 'tranquilize'!" |
It usually takes me a little while to decide if a game is bad or not. Playing Darkstar One, I knew within the first hour. Generic space locales, horrible acting, and ripped-off content definitely outweigh the good space fighting and trade simulation. It's kind of sad, because if one were to play the game and were able to completely ignore the story, the game's combat and trade mechanics would make for a nice playground for someone with imagination. I think this game was recommended by so may people simply for the fact that it is really the only one of its kind on the Xbox 360...
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Hey,do you know how to get to base level 9 and 10 on darkstar one?
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