When this came out in 2000, I saw it at my local 'Staples' store and momentarily thought from the game's title that there'd been a Wing Commander sequel that I'd somehow not heard about. Upon closer inspection of the box, I decided it wasn't worth dallying outside of the Wing Commander universe, and left it on the shelf.
A week ago, I picked up a boxed copy for £1 from a charity bric-a-brac sale put on at a local school. I just got done completing the game, well half the game, since you can fly for one of two factions. Overall I'd give it a 6/10, it's fun, but has little replay appeal - in fact, if it weren't for Bruce Campbell's voiceover and one liners I'd only give it a 4.
The game borrows heavily from Wing Commander, blatantly - and the box markets the game as if to make it sound like it's free roaming (like Privateer) - but it's not, the story is linear, and you can't freely travel the Universe and land wherever you like, you can only transfer to a new star base after a certain number of missions. There's no trading either, other than you get to buy/sell new ships and customise them out with a wide variety of weapons. Here are some familiar Tachyon: The Fringe ship names:
- Shrike
- Barracuda
- Manta
- Demon
- Piranha
- Orion
- Leviathan
What I'm most curious about though, is the game's engine. It flies just like Prophecy's vision engine; the lighting, the ship handling, weapon locks, capship components, weapon projection, cockpit struts that drift around, but most curiously of all - the autoslide feature, and it's afterburn 'bug'. In Secret Ops, you can cheat fuel consumption and fly at afterburn speed by releasing the TAB key once you're up to speed, and holding down the autoslide button - exactly the same glitch is true in Tachyon! Hold autoslide and you still get full speed, but you don't burn off the extra fuel (or boost power, as it's called in Tachyon).
Can anybody confirm if Origin leased out the Vision engine for this game?
A week ago, I picked up a boxed copy for £1 from a charity bric-a-brac sale put on at a local school. I just got done completing the game, well half the game, since you can fly for one of two factions. Overall I'd give it a 6/10, it's fun, but has little replay appeal - in fact, if it weren't for Bruce Campbell's voiceover and one liners I'd only give it a 4.
The game borrows heavily from Wing Commander, blatantly - and the box markets the game as if to make it sound like it's free roaming (like Privateer) - but it's not, the story is linear, and you can't freely travel the Universe and land wherever you like, you can only transfer to a new star base after a certain number of missions. There's no trading either, other than you get to buy/sell new ships and customise them out with a wide variety of weapons. Here are some familiar Tachyon: The Fringe ship names:
- Shrike
- Barracuda
- Manta
- Demon
- Piranha
- Orion
- Leviathan
What I'm most curious about though, is the game's engine. It flies just like Prophecy's vision engine; the lighting, the ship handling, weapon locks, capship components, weapon projection, cockpit struts that drift around, but most curiously of all - the autoslide feature, and it's afterburn 'bug'. In Secret Ops, you can cheat fuel consumption and fly at afterburn speed by releasing the TAB key once you're up to speed, and holding down the autoslide button - exactly the same glitch is true in Tachyon! Hold autoslide and you still get full speed, but you don't burn off the extra fuel (or boost power, as it's called in Tachyon).
Can anybody confirm if Origin leased out the Vision engine for this game?