I can’t help but think of that Douglas Adams quote. “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” It’s true. Space is unfathomable. Traveling to Mars alone can take anywhere up to a year, let alone leaving the solar system. That’s why a lot of sci-fi media, DarkStar One included, put in hyperspace drives or Stargates. Otherwise playing one would be a second job.
The danger there is that you go a little too far in the other direction. Compressing Space down into tiny pockets, which you spend about five minutes in before moving on. Unfortunately, DarkStar One leans a little on that side. It’s balanced out somewhat by some buttery smooth controls and entry-level space combat, but the teeny-tiny space pockets cause it to fall into a bit of a repetitive loop.
Ground Control To DarkStar One
I should probably clear up what DarkStar One actually refers to. It’s a special, top-secret ship with ‘organic components’, which is gifted to our protagonist, Kayron. I had to look that up and apparently it is a real name. Apologies to all Kayrons out there for giggling at your sci-fi name. Anyway, Kayron’s father passed away before Kayron had finished his training, but once he graduated he was given a bit of unpleasant news: his father’s death was more sinister than it appeared. That kicks off a race to track down the truth.
As plots go, it’s not the best. That might be something of a biased statement because the voice acting is awful. Given that this is a re-release of a game developed by a fairly small – and now defunct – German developer, I can understand why it’s not the best, but it was rather grating. The plot also isn’t structured well. The one goal of finding the truth about our Dad gets constantly strung along, as we get pulled into doing favours for everyone under the sun.
But we’re not hear to listen to plot; we’re here to fly spaceships and go ‘pew pew pew’. The flying controls feel great. It’s quite basic – an entry-level space sim perhaps – which suits me fine. One stick handles the camera while the other handles propulsion and strafing. For combat, you lock on with a button press and twirl around each other, desperately hammering the ‘fire lasers’ button. Combat lock-on indicates where to fire, but you need to lead shots, use reverse thrust sensibly and match your opponents moves. I found it quite exhilirating, and it fits the Switch controls well.
Pew Pew Pew
Which is good, because ninety percent of activities in DarkStar One end in combat. To be fair though, there’s quite a few different things you can do before that. There are set contracts at trade stations, which are usually hunting pirates or transporting cargo. I liked the transporting bit, being a closet trucking sim fan, though the hyperspace rended it a little uneventful. You can also trade goods, do some piracy yourself or engage in smuggling. As you do each task, you gain reputation which nets you a bonus at the end. The main missions spice things up at times as well, occasionally taking you down to planets to do some canyon fightin’.
The problem is that DarkStar One very quickly falls into a pattern. To progress in the story, you need to upgrade your hyperspace drive and weapons. You do this by acquiring upgrade artifacts, and then spending cash to upgrade your gear. So the loop is thus: hit story roadblock, acquire upgrades, do petty jobs for cash, buy upgrades and repeat. The flow of the game constantly coming to a complete halt does get repetitive, especially when you hit a tech level where basic enemies are completely trivial.
It does try to spice it up by adding in lore and alien races, though contact is mainly limited to quick communicator exchanges. The races I encountered weren’t too bad, but they feel a little stock. Like they’re cut out of the beginners guide to sci-fi races. So we have races like the Mortok, which are all about honour and battle. Or the Raptors, who are snake-fish people who roll their s’s and have a million Gods. They feel like one-trick ponies and rarely get any screen time. Instead, we’re stuck with Kayron and partner Eona, who mostly just discuss the plot.
DarkStar One – An Intriguing Relic
Still, I found myself strangely sucked into DarkStar One. Part of it is probably the easy flying, but there’s this sense of a lot of things going on. As I approach stations, I have to actually open communications with them to land. Sometimes police will approach me and scan me for illegal goods, meaning I have to rely on my jammer if I am, indeed, carrying something I shouldn’t be. While these mechanics might be shallow individually, they amount to something that feels a lot deeper.
What I haven’t really touched on yet is that DarkStar One is a re-release. It originally came in 2006 for the PC and it does carry that kind of feel to it. There’s a sort of janky charm to the cutscenes, for example. Honestly, though, the fact that it was a re-release kind of slipped out of my head after a while. Could be because I’d never even heard of it before, but it also could be because it kind of holds up. It may be teaspoon-shallow when divided into parts, but when assembled into a whole: DarkStar One is pretty dang fun.
