Space Sim First Look: Starshatter: The Gathering Storm (November 5, 2006)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Starshatter: The Gathering Storm is an enhanced release of the original Starshatter. The game has been bolstered with upgraded engine graphics, music, animations and more. Players have the choice of becoming either a fighter pilot or small capship commander, and the size, strength and number of ships under their command grows throughout the game. Smaller craft can fight both in space or planetary atmospheres, and numerous different control schemes and physics models have been implemented to provide different methods of flight control. Parts of the game are comparable to light RTS titles due to the large scale nature of fleet combat, and the game tries to integrate fighter and starship combat throughout. Another cool feature is support for the NaturalPoint Head Tracker that syncs your onscreen view with the direction your head is pointed during flight. Starshatter TGS has gone gold and should be available by the end of the year.







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Original update published on November 5, 2006
 
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Not sure anyone is interested, but after watching the demo, I decided to take a chance on this one. I should have a copy by the end of the week, and I'll let people know what I think.

Visually speaking, one of the small details that got me really psyched was watching the small maneuvering thrusters fire on the fighters as they flew through space. However, I've had high hopes dashed before on a new game, so we'll have to see....
 
I'm not sure if people know this but the creator of this game, Milod (I believe his actual name is John Demillo) used to post to these forums fairly regularly. I played Starshatter back in its early incarnation and it was pretty good right then. My knock against it then was that there was no storyline but then again this was when it was just one guy building a game engine. I think its a great success story of how one person can create something pretty darn incredible.
 
hey, that's pretty cool. I definitely didn't know that.

I'll admit even from the demo and the website, the story is probably still not like a typical wing commander game; what got me quite interested was the campaign engine, the physics engines, and the ability to be both a fighter pilot and a capital ship commander.

It seems to be quite easy to mod; their website even encourages it! I'm not sure I'm correct, but there may be possibilities here for a successful wing commander mod sometime down the line (though I dont think the small fighters sport shields in Starshatter TGS)

Hmm, that's odd. I just noticed that my post counter didnt advance. Don't ask me why I even noticed! ~~~...
 
Hello

just lurking around. I have an earlier version of Starshatter, before " The Gathering Storm" enhanced version.

You can mod shields on a fighter, but they are a single shield unit. No forward, sides or rear shields. You can change the power level and power consumption too.



=BigD=
 
ChrisReid said:
Starshatter: The Gathering Storm is an enhanced release of the original Starshatter. The game has been bolstered with upgraded engine graphics, music, animations and more. Players have the choice of becoming either a fighter pilot or small capship commander, and the size, strength and number of ships under their command grows throughout the game...
Click to expand...

I will definitely be looking out for this one. Thanks for the heads up, Chris!
 
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I did some beta testing for Milo (It's John DeCamillo, by the way) for the original Starshatter, and was given Starshatter: The Gathering Storm as a gift this year from my wife. While I haven't had much time to play it, my experience with it has been great and I highly recommend it.

The Gathering Storm does a good job of adding things to the original that I wanted: voice acting, a more fleshed-out plot with cut-scenes (which should make Major Striker happy), better graphics, etc.

The gameplay is very compelling. Absolutely everything in the various campaigns actually acts itself out. If you are on a patrol mission while other forces carry out a strike on an enemy destroyer squadron, the other forces will actually be out there in the background, and you will be able to seem them duking it out at long distance. If you really want to, you can even add a nav point and sail out there to help out with the strike, if you have a loadout that can damage capital ships.

Friendly and enemy forces in the system are presistent, although at times reinforcements will arrive. If your intelligence tells you there is an enemy carrier with 80 fighters in the region, then there will actually be 80 enemy fighters that are sent out on various sorties. Until you and your forces whittle them down, they will be a major threat to friendly forces and relief convoys. If you fly strike missions before establishing space superiority, you will encounter a lot of fighter resistence. If you first engage in a lot of patrols, you can wipe the fighters out and go after the capital ships without having to watch your back.

Both fighter and capital ship combat are very well done, with a lot of opportunity to use various tactics. You can order a wingman to "bracket a target" with you, sending your wingman/wingmen off to approach the target from various angles, thus drawing its fire in two different directions.

One of the things that I enjoy is that as you earn higher ranks, you can assume command of more and more forces, and then even go back and play the whole game. So, you could start out the first campaign by taking command of a destroyer squadron and taking out a minefiled in one mission, then switch over to being a fighter pilot and flying patrols to take out space based fighters and planetary installations. If you want, you can then take command of the carrier and orchestrate the movements of all of your forces, or take the helm of a cruiser for some heavy firefights. Once again, the amount of different tactics and approaches you can use is enormous, giving Starshatter: The Gathering Storm a huge amount of replayability.

By the way, it will indeed be availble in the USA, and is in fact available now for digital download purchase at the Matrix Games website. You can purchase it here: http://www.matrixgames.com/games/game.asp?gid=334

(And no, I don't get anything for promoting it. :) I think it's a great game and I think many of you will really enjoy it).
 
I recieved my copy and have so far really enjoyed playing TGS. I was planning on offering a full review, but I think that most of what I was going to say was just covered before. On top of everything that was said, I also love the small details like seeing in an external view all of the actual missiles that you loaded up on their hardpoints.

Question that I dont really expect anyone to know right away; what is the starshatter update that is in the mods section already included with the game? I cant find info in the documentation or a read me saying that something was left out and needs fixing.

Haha, yeah, I realized my error with the post counter LOAF... I'm a real idiot sometimes :D
 
I downloaded a demo of Starshatter, which is from 2004 and I am quite impressed by the game. :cool: Too bad, few retailers carry them. The only one I can think of is Compusa.
 
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