Yet another flying game. I have mixed feelings about this game. It is very repetitive. Fly here. Destroy that. Collect this. On the other hand it looks good. Sort of. Certainly it looks different. Smooth as a peach and twice as fast. Star Fighter has wall-to-wall polygons. No scaling sprites here my friends.

The nice parts, well, the completely thought through parts are done well. For example the flight model is unrealistic but unrealistic in a plausible way. Eh? Flight is about thrust, lift, drag and gravity. Star Fighter ignores drag and gravity. The aircraft does move in a fluid way however and while a bit quirky, once you've got a handle on it, it becomes elegant and rewarding.

Once mastered, you can bask in the splendor of your new flying skill by quickly moving to another camera angle and watching your Star Fighter flyby. A nice touch. This game has a lot of 'nice touches'.

The weapons are, while not entirely original, well implemented. The lasers and missiles look the part and offer a credible level of damage to your target. As the game progresses you get a beam weapon that kind of lassos things and a tactical nuclear weapon - which is a joy to behold. The cherry on top is everything can be destroyed. Even so far as strafing a textured hillside with laser fire will scorch the earth. Trees, bushes, everything can be destroyed as can any building you come across. In fact most missions insist on this.

This is where Star Fighter stumbles and trips. You see it is true the graphics engine and the flight mechanics are a joy. Powering up your craft is inspiring and skimming along on the edge of space is serene. It is clear that the Krysalis 3D modellers were at the top their game - gifted, talented and masters of polgon manipulation.

They then made the fatal mistake of taking this blessed game engine to Colin. Colin was part of a Youth Training Scheme. Earning £72.00 per week, he helped out in the script, plot and mission design department at Krysalis. Colin, so it seems, was dropped perhaps once to often on his head as a child. The go there, shoot that, come here, shoot this structure of the game was somewhat, what can I say - "Boring, tedious, dull, wasteful, shockingly uninspired, poor?". You get my point.

It seems such a shame that with such a great game engine they couldn't come up with something better than what they did with this script. It is atrocious. The game engine could even cope - just about - with going into space. So what did the level designer have you do? Go there, shoot that, come here, shoot this. There has to be a circle of Hell dedicated to this kind of small mindedness?

They could have bolted on a trading element. They could have bolted on a free-style mission element. They could have had you choosing sides in a civil war. Using bits perhaps from the grand structure of Elite. Anything would have been better than: Go there, shoot that, come here, shoot this.

A wasted opportunity. Star Fighter is great game engine looking for a game. Sadly it found a mid-90s cliche.

Rare ...ish. Not really.

3DO Kid.

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