StarLancer for Sega Dreamcast

Released: November 28, 2000
Platform: Dreamcast
Publisher: Crave Entertainment
Developer: Warthog/Digital Anvil
Genre: Space Combat Simulation
DB Link

While all of my Dreamcast friends were off playing NFL2K1 online, I was tearing shit up withStarLancer, which is easily one of the best games in its gene in the last decade, and hands down the best game of its kind of ever grace a home console. I'm still waiting for a game to be this good on a home console.

So, where to begin? StarLancer Is a flight sim, but it's a flight sim in space. You know what that means? You don't need to worry about gravity, there's to ground, and you can travel in any direction. What's more is that it's a combat game, so you're guaranteed action, and lots of it, because again, you're in space, there's no "ground" to be rendered so they can use all of the system resources for more bad guys and better AI. The game is just beautiful.

The basic gist of the plot is that there are two warring factions in the solar system, the Alliance and the Coalition. After a great many years of fighting, a peace treaty is signed. But anytime a military conglomeration takes the name "The Coalition," they can almost never be trusted (plus, they speak in Russian accents). The Coalition double-crosses the alliance, which in turn retreats to Neptune. They're desperate for recruits, so you're the best they can come up with. This whole plot is told through a computer generated cut scene. It's worth mentioning that the voice acting is pretty good. The pre-rendered scenes are par for the day.

Once you get into the campaign, you begin with a basic ship as a member of the 45th squadron. Missions vary in difficulty as the game goes on. Mission objective vary as well. They range from the standard "kill everyone" to scavenger hunts, to the usually frustrating "babysitting" mission in which you have to prevent another craft from being destroyed by taking out missiles, to very specific objectives, like take out the cannons on this asteroid, or destroy these supplies.

As the missions go on, the variety of ships and weapons increases, each with their own set of weaknesses and strengths. All ships have shields, but some have better shields. Some ships also have armor in case the shields fail. Some are faster, some are less agile, and some can carry more weapons. Basic stuff. Towards the end of the game, you'll get a ship that has a cloaking device, which is pretty much required for the last mission to be successful. Of course, you can also customize your weapons between missions. What kind of a game would it be without that?

One touch that I liked is the news reports that display between missions. These reports would vary depending on the outcome of the mission, and the level of success. By the end of the game, your 45th squadron is essentially famous.

StarLancer was a PC game. Usually a reviewer would take this time to bitch that the complex keyboard controls translate horribly to a console controller, and therefore the entire game is ruined. I'm not going to do that, because I found the controls to be intuitive and precise. I had no trouble manipulating my craft on any axis, X, Y, or Z. And I had no problem tearing it up in the game or online against other players.

Basic features that we've come to expect from this genre are present, such as the ability to change camera angles, or give orders to other members of the squadron.

Online play was a blast. There were several modes of play that the person setting up the game lobby could choose from. Most games where straight up death match, in which the objective is to have the highest number of kills. I was undefeated. This could be spiced up by the presence of torrents on asteroids, or by items that can be collected in play field, like extra missiles.

Two other modes of play that stand out in my mind were vampire and tag (I might be off on the exact names of these modes of play). In vampire, one person was cloaked, but had no shields. You could only score points if you made a kill while being the vampire. You could only be the vampire of you kill the vampire. In tag, there's a bomb. To pass the bomb to another person, you need to shoot them. Whoever has the bomb when the timer expires, dies. Whoever passed the bomb gets the point.

Unfortunately, there were never that many people who played StarLancer, but for a while there were usually a couple games with eight people in them at any given time. In the end I would just create a room and sit for 10 minutes until someone else joined. Eventually, no one else ever came.

Even without the online component, StarLancer is an amazing game. It's fun, interesting, there's a challenge, and it looks great. Thanks be to the Roberts brothers (creators of Wing Commander), and Digital Anvil for creating this game. I loved it, and I still do.

Here's a video showcasing a combat scene. The player's view is from behind his ship (I preferred the cockpit view).