Battlestar Galactica
A hot pilot doesn’t need all that electronic felgercarb!
Tags: Battlestar Galactica Categories: Reviews, Xbox Reviews
Posted by Jeff Shedden on May 6th, 2004
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Battlestar Galactica (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Space Combat | No | ||
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Battlestar Galactica is one-third of the hardcore old school nerd trinity. First there was Star Trek, Then along came Star Wars, and then Starbuck and crew came along shortly afterwards (Firefly doesn’t count yet, give it a few years). In fact, Battlestar Galactica came along so soon after Star Wars that George Lucas sued the creators. He lost, and the galaxy was at peace. At least until budget constraints made it too expensive to keep producing the well rated show.
In a nutshell, Battlestar Galactica is a tale of mankind versus a hostile race of robots, known as the Cylons. Once man’s creation, they turned on their masters in a wild fury. The twelve colonies of man were demolished by the Cylon menace, leaving only the Battlestar Galactica as the remaining ship in the human’s fleet. In the show, the Galactica was helmed by Commander Adama.
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But the game… Oh, boy, you get to play as a certain ENSIGN Adama! That’s right, it takes place years before the TV series and focuses on the early days of the Cylon conflict. Before playing it, I was EXTREMELY skeptical of how this would work. I mean, a prequel? The new Battlestar Galactica takes place years after the original series, and while I still haven’t seen it (thanks, Dan), I hear good things. Well, the game doesn’t disappoint either. Nothing to fear. Oh, and classic Cylons! Hooray!
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To put it bluntly, Battlestar Galactica is a Wing Commander clone. It plays nearly identical to the classic Origin series. Not to say this is a bad thing, considering the odds of us running into the Kilrathi ever again are about as likely as Freddie Prinze Jr. putting out a movie that isn’t pure crap. And since he was in the Wing Commander movie… you can draw your own conclusions. Besides, as much as I love Wing Commander’s big kitties, the Cylons are closer to my heart.
And when I say a Wing Commander clone, I mean that in every literal sense. It controls just like WC. Your accelleration, deceleration, flying tricks, etc, are all lifted straight out of Wing Commander. Targeting is exactly the same in that a little blue circle appears to show you where you need to fire at, leading the enemy ship, rather than trying to shoot at it directly.
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Targetting is a little annoying, because most of the time it will auto target an enemy that you don’t want or need to focus on, but a few taps of the black or white button manually targets whatever you want, so it’s not a big nuisance. Besides, if you ever lose sight of your main objective, you just hold down Y and the view will instantly center on the primary goal, allowing you to reorient yourself.
I don’t own an Xbox flightstick, and I’ve always played space shooters with one, so I can’t say at the moment how well this would effect the gameplay. I’d actually like to see a PC version of this, allowing me to get right back into my old flightstick plus keyboard method of playing space shooters, but alas. In the meantime, you have to make do with the Xbox controls. And for a game of this scope, it means that most buttons serve multiple functions. For example, the right trigger is your accellerator, but double pulling the trigger acts as your afterburner. Pressing the X button fires a missle in dumb fire mode, but holding it down will fire it in heat seeking mode.
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The graphics are pretty good, but they don’t really push the envelope in terms of technical brilliance. I assume this is because of the PS2 port. Still, it looks good. I hate to bring up Wing Commander again, but considering I still have yet to see a game with as nice explosions as Prophecy had, it’s a little sad that the game that could be considered the spiritual successor doesn’t have better explosions. The FMV in the game isn’t that great, however. It’s rendered nicely and everything, but it’s grainy and full of artifacts. Oh, and no subtitles, which is a bummer.
The audio is also a mixed bag. On the one hand, the music and voice acting are top notch, including some familiar voices that will truly bring a smile to your face. On the other hand, the lack of Dolby 5.1 means that there’s no chance to be properly immersed in battle. It’d be nice to be able to hear an incoming Cylon zooming in from behind, but once again, I think we got a little hosed by the PS2 port.
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There’s a lot of unlockables and cheats to be found in the game, but most of the good stuff can only be gotten by playing through on the hard difficulty. However, for those that managed to catch the new Battlestar Galactica movie on the Sci Fi Channel, there were a few codes given out that unlock some pictures and stuff. Unlocking stuff is not really a good reason to go back and play through the game again. Space shooters have never been the type of game one can immediately go back to upon completion. I haven’t unlocked a whole heck of a lot of the cheats and stuff, because I’m in no hurry to go back and finish it on the hard difficulty.
I had been frothing at the mouth for a game like this for a few years now. With the Wing Commander series’ ultra-pickiness at being played on newer machines, I thought I was going to have to keep wishing that EA would grow a pair and give me a new Wing Commander. Well thankfully, Vivendi Universal gave me the next best thing. It’s not Wing Commander, but I’d rather blast the felgercarb out of Cylons any day.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
The gameplay you love. It's true to the feel of Battlestar Galactica FELGERCARB!!! |
8.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
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IT does suffer a little from the simul-port to the PS2 The sound could be better |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Thank you, VU. This almost makes up for that piece of felgercarb that was the Futurama game. Gimme more, please. | |
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Tags: Battlestar Galactica
Posted by Jeff Shedden on May 6th, 2004 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
