Star Crusader (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

That's one ugly-ass title screen.

It is the future.

A lousy prerendered animated sequence plays. Asteroids glide past the camera. A ship wobbles up and down on the spot like it's dangling from a string.

In this particular space future, a race of humans called the Gorenes are trying to expand their empire into a 'newly discovered sector of space' called the Ascalon Rift.

Unfortunately for those in their path, the Gorene method of expansion is to stomp into unexplored space and subjugate the local population into observing Gorene culture. If anybody disagrees...

POW.

Lines and triangles slowly smearing all over the place everywhere.

"Return to base immediately, the war has begun."

I think this music is supposed to sound like a dramatic, chaotic opening theme played by a full orchestra augmented by a slew of creative percussion instruments.

Sounds like a pile of shit, frankly.

EGADS.

These are fully voiced and awfully over-acted cutscenes!

And I haven't missed out a bunch of animation frames for comedic effect, they really do look like this (YouTube link).

I'm sure these... people are saying things but it's so difficult to concentrate. I'm being bombarded with these images, these voices, this atrocious music.

I'm the guy on the left, Roman Alexandria. The guy on the right is my best buddy and pal Blois Fulcher. We're kick-ass Gorene spacefighter pilots and, whaddya know, we've just been assigned to the Ascalon Rift.

The native alien races of the Rift have put aside centuries of religious war and formed an alliance to oppose the Gorenes. It's our mission to mosey on over there and offer them an alternative point of view. With lasers.

That's right! We're the bad guys! WOO!

This is Roman's new home, a Gorene base in the Ascalon Rift. The interface here is needlessly cryptic. (As usual, I'm bamboozled by the identical domes). One of these is the information computer, another is the briefing room... somewhere around here I can load and save my game, I think.

And here's the briefing room at last.

Blois (looking miles better for not having a RENDERED FACE) is now the underboss of the Gorene assault force. He goes on at length about how us Gorenes are 'benevolent liberators and educators' before telling us exactly when and how we're going to blow the aliens up because we don't like them.

I was taken to this computer room automatically at the end of the briefing. There are lots of options here, such as craft selection and wingman assignments, but I can't use any of them except the encyclopedia because I'm not a command level officer. Boo!

I suppose that means I play a command level officer at some point? Either Blois gets blasted and I take his place, or Roman gets blasted in a MEGA TRIPLE TWIST (which I just kinda spoiled, if so) and I then play as Blois who it turns out is the real main character.

How do I get out of this damned room? Do I have to be an officer to do that, too?

Oh, I had to move my mouse to the right edge of the screen to make the option to begin the mission.

Okie dokie, it's a space game. I remember them. You pick a target, drive up to it, keep spinning around trying to get the big blob in the centre of the radar screen, then you shoot it with lasers until it explodes. It's not rocket science.

That terrible music is back again. It was alright in the Gorene base because it had a sort of melody to it. Out here, it's broken synthesizers all over.

One ship down! Some more ships to go!

This is the mostly useless outside view! There's a whole bunch of useless outside views.

One has the camera centred on the target, which means you don't know which way your ship is pointing, and another shows the POV of the target with the camera centred on you. There's a chase cam view but you can't see your ships instrumentation when you use it which makes tracking targets impossible.

Ugh... that's an ugly ship. The shape, the colour, the wingedy things... it's ghastly.

That's my ship, by the way.

Mission one complete. Hooray! Mission two.

It's a stealth mission. In space.

I have to sneak up on a satellite and then scan it at very close range. All made possible by a top-secret science stealth machine!

The stealth mission is actually rather straightforward:

I turn on the stealth drive, I go to the satellite, I press the button, it takes ages, I win, I press warp, it ends.

Barely interactive, not at all exciting. Let's do something else.

This is the map of the Ascalon Rift. Like all space in the future, it's flat.

I can read about the different installations each faction has, but it's not a mission select or base building screen. From the complexity of it, it looks like I might be able to do some strategic actions here in the future, but not while Blois is in charge. (Note to self: destroy Blois.)

There's tons of establishing dialogue amongst the characters in the cutscenes and briefing room sequences between missions. There's a clash of personalities between the almost offensively calm and polite Space Canadian Roman Alexandria, and the rest of the Gold Squadron, voiced by a bunch of somewhat grumpy average Joes who were woken up a bit too early. It's sort of like Due South, except here the magnanimous Mountie joins an evil space empire.

Next mission!

For injuries sustained in combat, you have been awarded the Lion Heart.

Whoops... I kinda accidentally hyperjumped back to base immediately after starting that one. I hope I didn't miss anything important!

Probably shouldn't do that very often. I can still continue the game though, so what the hey! Next!

This is the alien frigate Kuntow. We're supposed to be destroying its escorts so that we can kidnap the leaders of the alien alliance and arrange terms for an amicable not-quite-surrender-but-you-have-to-do-exactly-what-the-Gorenes-say.

I'm flicking through all of the many pages of controls, trying to find the communications button. I swear I've got the right button, but it's not doing anything.

Oh snap...

I crashed into it.

It's one way to send a message... but not the way I was looking for.

"Damage capacity has been exceeded. Destruction is imminent."

Oh.

Oh again.

Well, we can't leave it there can we? We were so close to peace!

Let's try again!

Gotta love the in-flight speech clips from the wingmen. One of them keeps slipping into a daft Brooklyn accent. I'm calling 'bingo' if he starts his next communication with "'Eeeeey!" and ends it with calling me "ya big palooka".

I'm having a go at using the mouse instead of the cursor keys to fly the ship. It works well enough. You move the mouse toward the sides of the screen to tilt the ship in that direction, but the lasers always fire at the centre of the screen.

Yes! Comm screen.

This is a tricky situation. If Alexandria is to convince the Tancreds that we're not here to blow them up he's going to have to draw on all of the negotiating skill he has. Not that he would necessarily have any because he's a pilot.

But Roman doesn't need lasers or missiles. He's got the deadliest weapon of them all:

An impenetrable wall of empty polemic.

It worked! They trust me!

A surprising new order? We've all got to wear funny hats? That would be pretty surprising.

Oh jeez. They're going to start talking again, aren't they?

"ATTACK THE KUNTOW ARE YOU SERIOUS."

Okay, Gorene super-boss Ferrand is ordering Blois to order our Roman to destroy the Kuntow! Right after he delivered an Amazing Speech expressing how merciful and respectful the Gorenes can be!

Blois is a little shocked that Ferrand would even consider the possibility.

I love Ferrand's voice.

He's doing a magnificent English theatre ham actor voice, and there's no better way to say things like "Insubordination!" and "I am your superior officer. Remember that." I wish I could take a screenshot of his voice.

I know what's going on here. The Gorenes are a whole race of Space Dudes!

Anyway, Gold Squadron murder the alien guy and Roman is sad.

"IT'S WRONG, BLOIS."

Alexandria doesn't like the fact that he's been made to look like a homicidal, genocidal liar. Poor chap doesn't realise he's been working for an evil (well, more like pathologically intolerant) space empire his whole life. Shooting at aliens who can shoot back and are just-fine-without-the-subjugation-right-now-thanks has been quite a shock for the man.

And back at AR-1, things have taken a turn for the worse as Blois Fulcher is been relieved of duty. The pilots suspect he's being held in a top secret black prison, but there's nothing they can do about it right now. All they can do is follow orders from their new commander and hope everything turns out alright.

And who is the new commander?

"If I didn't need you as a pilot, I'D LOCK YOU AWAY FOR EVER, ALEXANDRIA!"

I don't care if he's going to lead the Gorenes into ruination or not, Ferrand's the best commander ever!

Man, I'm bored. Dogfighting isn't particularly thrilling. I just chase 'em around, try to get them centred, shoot them a bit and they explode. I can't do much dodging or fancy shooting in a spaceship that only flies and fires forwards.

Apart from the controls being as alien to me as they are numerous, everything in this game just works. I've got lasers, special weapons, the whole nine yards. I can ask my wingmen to do things. It's just... space dogfighting.

Maybe the music ruins it. It's hard to be a fascist anti-hero when all I can hear is a half-dozen busted old Casio keyboards playing the Devil's own Demo Mode right into my ears.

(It sounds somewhat better if you enter SETUP and set the music card to Roland LAPC-I, which DOSBox can emulate fine.)

Here's my ship this time. Sorta bland, but it's a spacefighter, not a sportscar.

Tum-te-tum, I've totally lost track of what my mission objective is.

"We're doomed! Flee the base!"

Well, that puts paid to the Gorene invasion of the Ascalon Rift. It was fun while it lasted. Maybe. Some parts of it must've been.

It probably didn't help that I was throwing every mission because I wanted the game to just be over.

Can you really blame me? Star Crusader has a proper branching plot which changes based on how well you do in the missions! If there's one thing I like more than a magnificent success, it's a spectacular failure.

As the Gorene war machine crumbles to dust under the ridiculous villain Ferrand, Blois Fulcher appears out of nowhere. Ever the hero, Blois used his many connections in the ranks to escape the secret prison, and then headed to AR-1 to assume command and try and save who he could.

I did my part. I fired on my wingmen and sped off into the distance until I ran out of fuel.

Now all the Gorene outposts in the Rift are in ruins, thousands are dead on both sides. Only one thing concerns Roman and Blois. Vengeance!

Rendered Roman walks up to Ferrand like a robot, calmly asking him to surrender. And then the lights go out!

One of the characters lazily narrates "watch out he has a laser pistol" and Roman is shot in the chest and gently rotates onto the ground.

Blois desperately tries to reassure Roman, help is on the way... but it's too late.

What a shame.

I wouldn't say that's a 'bad end' at all. Roman got exactly what he wanted: an end to the fighting in the Ascalon Rift. After Roman died and Ferrand spaced himself, Blois went into full 'being space conquerors is bad, guys' mode and single-handedly turned the Gorenes around.

I won!

Star Crusader is a completely serviceable space game. The controls all work, the in-game graphics aren't that shabby when you get to see them. The plot's obviously going somewhere, there's plenty of characters that actually discuss things amongst themselves in briefings and debriefings so you know what's going on, and there's a huge amount of fully voiced dialogue throughout.

If you've got hours to spare and have a desperate need to play an old fashioned space game with a branching plot, lots of controls and cutscenes that look like that, here you go.