DarkStar One (PC)

The Darkstar One

Such a cool ship requires a section of review all to itself, so here it is; this is what makes the vessel so unique compared to the rest of the ships in other games. The Darkstar One is composed of part human and part alien artefact technology, this has given the ship the ability to morph and change as you collect the green alien crystals that are scattered around the various clusters (the map helpfully shows you where) on a galactic power-up treasure hunt.

When you have collected enough of these crystals then the ship will be able to change, you can modify three sections of the vessel and thanks to Ascaron’s helpful game save I was able to see how the modification system works, and I like it (a lot).

The cockpit, wings and engines can all be upgraded to 10 levels; this affects the visual look of the ship as well as various statistics about it. To give you an example, if you pump in 7 levels worth of upgrades to just the nose of the ship where the cockpit is, you’ll find that the hull strength increases, you can mount up to 3 turrets and the visual look of the Darkstar One changes dramatically, it looks sleeker and deadlier somewhat.

Do the same to the wings and you’ll get increased agility, extra front weapon slots and the visual look becomes something like a Kilrathi vessel from the old Wing Commander games.

As you upgrade the Darkstar One though you’ll want to mix and match all 3 sections to provide the best all round vessel you can, or you might want to create an agile beast bristling with wing mounted cannons and so on. If you want a really fast ship then you’re going to have to upgrade the engines. In the end it’s up to you how you use your artefacts.

But that’s not all, the Darkstar One comes equipped with what Ascaron term a Plasma Cannon, but it’s not really a cannon. It could be likened to a special effects module that’s installed on the ship and as you upgrade the Darkstar One you can upgrade this module as well. It has a variety of special abilities that you can mix and match as you upgrade; my personal favourite is a beam of energy that cuts down opponents shields and a special effect that freezes them in time for a short while.

The upgradeable vessel is a nice touch and it makes for a unique feature to the game, rather than just a bit of an add-on, you really notice the difference the upgrades make and eventually you’ll be flying around the clusters in a tweaked out to ‘personal performance’ ship you can truly call your own.

Graphics

The visual look to Darkstar One is colourful; it’s a bright and stylish game with good quality textures and some very nice particle effects. I particularly like the explosions and some of the energy effects for the special weapon are truly nice, the shield booster and weapon overload cover the ship in a glowing crackling energy field.

The game has good quality lighting and sports the usual special effects, glows and bump mapping we’ve come to expect from the new generation of games. That said they are not gob-smacking-awe-inspiring but they do their job and they do it well.

Models

The ship models are varied and of good quality, the Darkstar One steals the show of course as the upgrades transform it from a plain looking fighter to something truly worthy of the space flight/fight genre of ships. There is a good variety in the other models and the actual models of people in the game that stand around and chat in space stations are also well done.