Along with a solid audiovisual presentation,
StarLancer offers a whole lot of enjoyable gameplay. It’s perhaps a little
too much for the poor Dreamcast controller -- although it’s certainly manageable -- but those of you with
Panther DCs and those willing to take on the steep learning curve of the standard controller will find a solid space combat sim here.
You’re... whatever you pick your name to be, a rookie in a wing of rookies. There’s a war brewing, between the Alliance (that’s us) and the Coalition (that’s them). The plot is generic starfighter fare, nothing you haven’t seen before and nothing you won’t see again. Of course, that’s not why you play these sorts of games. You play them to blow stuff up.
StarLancer offers the usual bevy of mission types that you’ve seen in every space combat sim since the first Wing Commander or so. Destroy this, escort that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There’s nothing new here, but what is here is quite fun.
You start with a selection of four different ships, and this selection grows as the game progresses. Along with picking your ship, you can pick the load-outs of the missile bays. Although the defaults are usually solid choices, it’s often advantageous to alter your load if you have an idea of what’s coming at you. There are missiles that are good against small craft, ones that are good against large craft, and ones that you just fire like a madman and hope they hit. Depending on the type of mission you’re embarking on, different missiles may be appropriate.
Not that the type of mission you’re doing ever stays static. As typical in games of this genre, your objective will change rapidly and often as you play the game. Don’t be surprised if a simple search-and-rescue mission turns into a wild goose chase, or a narrowly-escaped death trap. This sort of variability keeps you on your toes, and is one of StarLancer‘s strengths.
There are a whole lot of commands to learn in the game, and all of them are useful in the right circumstances. Make sure you read the instructions and keep them handy -- they are key to learning all of the controls of the ship. Once you have them down, it’s solid space combat all the way. Swooping around between raining plasma death, throwing some chaff out the rear to keep the missiles off your tail, and generally having a good time is what you’ll experience in StarLancer. It’s not particularly original, but it sure is fun.
There’s no training mode per se, which is something of a bummer, but you can opt to go for Instant Action instead of the storyline. This pits you against enemies with no real plot -- just blow them up. And when you tire of the single-player game, you can hop online and play StarLancer with your friends. There are a ton of gameplay modes, power-ups, and lots of action to be had when playing StarLancer over a modem, and it’s certain to keep the game interesting after you beat the single-player campaign.
