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Title: StarDrive
Publisher:
Iceberg Interactive
Developer: Zero
Sum Games
Type: Real
Time Strategy (x4)
Release Date: April 26, 2013
Release Price: 29.99
USD
Review Written by: TJ “Daggaroth” Connolly
Reviewing organization: New Eden Radio
Deceivingly complex, StarDrive is a welcome
addition to the genre of Strategy games. StarDrive is heavily influenced by
great science fiction such as Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Andromeda,
Stargate, Serenity, Battlestar Galactica, lost in space, Doctor Who, and many
more and as an avid science fiction fan myself I was pleasantly surprised to
discover some of these references and made me want to delve deeper into the
game and find many more.
Graphics
The Graphics of StarDrive are remarkably detailed
and a nice mixture of art styles, those used in the weapons are surprisingly
vivid and detailed and make you feel like you are right in the middle of a
major space battle. One very pleasant
discovery during reviewing this game came when playing as the Humans, and
starting out on the home planet of Earth, when zoomed in you can easily
distinguish between the land masses and oceans and to this point in time, I
have yet to come across another planet which shared that same model which leads
me to believe there is a great variety in the planet models. The Ships themselves seem very impressive
and accurate based on their size and roles, although the largest ships, the titans,
had the room to fit enough weaponry on them to seem like they were projecting
an energy beam the size of the front of their ship against enemies which seems
a bit unrealistic but hey.. It’s a science fiction game.
Sounds
The music of StarDrive compliments the game quite
nicely. It has a good broad selection of
tracks that keep you from becoming tired of the soundtrack during long gameplay
and during combat the music helps increase the feel of you watching an epic
fight in the depths of space.
The effects of the weapons are simply great, they
sound like weapons should: Big, loud, and powerful. When a ship let loose a volley of energy
beams it was a very satisfying experience.
Gameplay
The Gameplay at the time leading up to writing
this review was flawed but enjoyable. The
ability to model and create your own ships was very rewarding and a good
portion of playing the game for this review was spent creating various ship
configurations and seeing how they would do against my enemies. The ship combat
was fluid and quite wonderful to watch, I believe my favorite moment in
reviewing this game was warping a fleet of ships I had appropriately named
“Warhawks” into the path of an enemy fleet and spending the next 10 minutes
watching the two fleets clash. The
planet management system was where I saw the greatest room for improvement,
with the controls and the AI for governors needing some serious attention. there were multiple bugs that had an impact
on gameplay but that is not surprising from a new release that are sure to be
eliminated with time and refinement.
Replay
Ability
The desire to replay StarDrive is very pronounced
and healthy. The amount of customizable
aspects, from the ships to the races and various ways to play means that you
can spend days if not weeks playing a single game or spend an afternoon in
multiple, fast paced games or simply experimenting with a new ship type that
you were inspired to create.
Overall
StarDrive is certainly a great addition to the
family of Science Fiction Strategy games that are currently on the market. Its
vast customizability combined with fluid and fun gameplay will make it a
welcome part of any gamer’s library.
StarDrive is available on Steam at the time of this review for
29.99 $ USD
Graphics (7.5/10)
Sound (8.5/10)
Gameplay (7/10)
Replay ability (9/10)
Difficulty (8/10)
Overall (8/10)
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