It is decidedly the Age of the Remake.  Many game companies, faced with an ever-expanding audience of potential gamers, are choosing to tap into their IP vaults to create something new out of something very, very old.  Some titles, such as Capcom’s 8-bit Megaman sequels, survived the test of time intact – remaining a lot of fun to play.  Others, such as Incinerator Games’ remake of classic Atari space combat simulator Star Raiders, do not fare quite so well.

Game: Star Raiders
Publisher: Atari
Developer: Incinerator Games
Genre: Space Combat
Price: 800 MSP
Verdict: A half-baked space combat shooter that shows some promise.  Upgrading the ship is fun.
Cons: Small text on menus, uninspired combat.

Acquired via Publisher

Star Raiders is a third-person space combat simulator that has the player in the role of Talon, a member of the Star Raiders team tasked with defeating the Zylon Armada by piloting a shape-changing spacecraft through a variety of missions.  These missions are further divided into several tasks, all of which must be complete before moving on to the next mission. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of variety in the mission structure, so the gameplay gets stale rather quickly.  Many of the missions consist simply of destroying a certain number of enemies at a particular location, and then returning back to base.  There are a few notable departures from this formula – including a rather cool infiltration/escape mission at the end of the game – but they are placed so few and far between that a casual player will probably get bored long before seeing everything Star Raiders has to offer.  Getting killed in the game carries no real threat outside of strictly timed missions, as the penalty is limited to a short respawn timer.

Even though the spacecraft can shift between three different modes (with different weapons available in each mode), even the most maneuverable of the three still feels like attempting to steer a tank.  The ones used most by the player will inevitably be the Attack mode (for flying from location to location) and the Assault mode (for picking off enemy craft).  The third mode, Turret Mode, isn’t needed much as its awesome firepower does not make up for its severe lack of mobility.  The look of the game is reminiscent of classics such as Colony Wars, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – though sparse visuals in many of the game’s missions don’t do it any favors.  The text in the mission status screens is so small that it is actually difficult to read, even on a large television.  This is the first time I’ve ever run into a problem like this, but it appears the developers felt the need to pack a lot of information into a small amount of screen “real estate”, having to shrink the text to barely-legible levels in the process.

There are plenty of ship/android/weapon upgrades available for the player to purchase using salvage credits mined from asteroids (or received as rewards from completing missions), and it is admittedly quite fun to collect them all.  These upgrades can do everything from bolstering shields and energy to improving the weaponry available to each ship configuration provided to the player.  In the early missions, it pays to upgrade the homing missile as much as possible because early dogfights can be an exercise in frustration with the default weaponry provided to the player.  Later missions provide different types of enemies, but the gameplay doesn’t change nearly enough to accommodate this.

There are certainly glimmers of good design here, but the entire package feels disappointingly half-baked.  There are a lot of weapon upgrades to purchase, and the graphics are decent (save the eye-strain inducing menus and their microscopic text), but the gameplay is decidedly uninspired. The developers do give the user a chance to select between several different missions to complete in any order throughout the game, but most of the missions play so similarly that it doesn’t really matter.  A shame, because with a little extra time in production, Star Raiders could have been a great title in a decidedly underpopulated genre.  Instead, like outer space, it feels empty and lifeless.

GrE Grade: C-

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