Colony Wars

Developer - Psygnosis
Publisher - Psygnosis
Players - 1
Extras - Memory Card

The bit on the box

"Incoming data. Transmission 67/DF.8/6: all units now on full battle alert. Enemy activity increasing. We have an Empire to defeat. Be warned: this is not an exercise. This is a fight for the future."

Graphics

Graphically Colony Wars is what the Wing Commander games should have been. The entire display is done in the Playstation's hi-res mode which makes for some extremely sharp and detailed ships and planets, and the explosions create a real feel for "being there" in the middle of a galactic dogfight. Things feel as they should be from the small space particles flying about creating a momentum feel (unlike Wing Commander's "flat" space), to the bright suns that actually blind your vision when looked directly into (very difficult to follow an enemy if it flies in the line of sight of the sun). Capital ships and space stations look superb and can be flown by with no slow down in the frame rate, which is top notch, but I did notice there were no visible turrets on them, which is a shame, as flying close to a cap ship strafing it's turrets would have been the icing on an already excellent cake.

Sound

The sound is also top-notch with laser fire and explosions sounding exactly as they should be, with vocal communications from various ships around you happening on occasion also. The engine sounds of the fighter that you pilot has the familiar "whoosh" associated with these space shoot em ups, but admittedly I didn't take that much notice of sound effects in general when trying to survive the onslaught of multiple enemies while trying to protect a crippled freighter at the same time. The music in the game is very atmospheric and I never found myself getting annoyed by it and reaching for the volume control, and it keeps in tune with the whole cinematic feel to Colony Wars.

Gameplay

This is the area that Colony Wars falls down on. While the fighters available to you are very easy to fly (at least much easier to control than G-Police) and control is kept to a very arcade simplicity, the missions that you are sent on are incredibly short and have little imagination. I found the story fairly boring, but I put this down to the way it is told from the point of view of the entire League of Free Worlds, and not just one pilot (as were both Wing Commander titles). I prefer the way Origin put across the Wing Commander story as cinematic movies that told of a pilot and the crew of people on his capital ship, that adds characterisation to the wingmen who fly by your side (I never once got overly concerned in Colony Wars when my wingman bit the dust, as he was fairly useless anyway).

I feel a verdict coming on

Overall Colony Wars is better than Wing Commander 3 and 4 because in the long run playability counts, and Colony Wars is easier to play, and the controls are better implemented to the Playstation controller. While this game gets high marks from me it may be because I particularly like this type of game and this is the best of it's kind, but when the inevitable sequel rears it's head I hope that they have changed the way the story is told, and restructured the way the missions pan out. However criticisms aside this is a great game, and along with G-Police show Psygnosis to still be a leader in software development.

Review by D.R.T.Barrett