Space Interceptor: Project Freedom Review

Space Interceptor: Project Freedom is a space sim budget title. You can stop cringing now. After all, the world of budget titles has given us such gems as Serious Sam. Space Interceptor is not quite in the same league as Serious Sam, but it’s definitely better than the usual horrors that inhabit the budget shelf. The question is whether or not you’ll feel that you got your money’s worth after playing through Space Interceptor, which is a question that you’ll have to answer for yourself after I let you know what your Jackson gets you.

In Space Interceptor you’re an ace pilot who leads a squadron of fighters for Project Freedom – which as far as I can figure are the good guys, but I’m not sure of much beyond that. The future is full of evil corporations bent on shooting up Project Freedom. You know, if it’s not those dang aliens causing trouble it’s those pesky evil corporations stirring things up. There’s sort of a loose, pseudo-plot tying this all together, but basically it all boils down to shoot the guys that are shooting at you and don’t bother asking any questions.

As expected, your view of things is from the cockpit of your fighter. The cockpit displays are pretty much for show, and onscreen HUD indicators let you know such vitals as your speed, hull strength, and the relative direction of enemy and friendly ships. Control of your ship is pretty straightforward. The mouse is used to steer by moving an onscreen reticule and the mouse buttons fire your missiles and lasers. Speed is controlled by the mouse wheel, but can’t throttle your ship completely down. There’s no stopping in space. The control scheme takes a little getting used to as the ship will keep turning if the reticule is off-center as opposed to trying to point its nose in that direction. This will lead to a far amount of over-steering and pilot induced oscillation in the beginning, but you’ll eventually figure out how to compensate for this.

Your ship is armed with lasers and homing missiles, but I found the lasers to be pretty ineffectual for the most part. Combat success in Space Interceptor is a matter of keeping the enemy close enough to your sight and watching for ever so tiny lock indicators to appear around the target. Once you’re locked on you can fire the missiles, although it seems that at longer ranges the missiles have a little trouble maintaining their lock. To compensate for this you can keep your ship aimed at the target after the missiles are away even though this makes the whole “fire and forget” feature of the homing missiles moot.

The game is played as a series of missions whose goals include destroying enemy attackers, escorting friendlies, and occasionally shooting at ground targets or capital ships. Each mission really boils down to surviving each wave of enemy attackers. Attacking a capital ship does not provide the extra excitement that you’d think it would as these ships are basically flying segmented caterpillars and you just need to methodically knock down the health of each segment to zero in turn. Space Interceptor is really more space shooter than space sim. It can be fun systematically chasing down each enemy in turn and blowing them to smithereens, but don’t expect any more depth beyond this.

You’re not flying solo in the missions as you will be accompanied by your squadron, but you may as well be. I can’t say that I ever noticed a squadron mate recording a kill. Their job, it seems, is to fly around in circles and repeat themselves endlessly every time you destroy an enemy. Expect to hear an endless stream of “nice shot” and “right between the eyes” each time you go into combat.

For a budget title Space Interceptor has surprisingly good visuals. The ships look pretty good during the cutscenes and the surrounding space is feature-rich, which helps distract you from the oddly animated people. Space looks pretty good when you’re in battle, with asteroids, planets, nebula, and everything else that you’d expect to see in space in full color and with nice textures. The ships look nice enough although they lack a bit in detail and the designs aren’t particularly imaginative.

That’s pretty much it for the gameplay - Space Interceptor will never be labeled as a deep or complex sim. You move through a series of 21 missions and once you’re done, that’s it. There’s no space to explore, multiplayer option, ship customization, mission ratings … and not much to motivate you to go back and replay completed missions. So here we get to the question you have to ask yourself – do 21 missions of straightforward space shooting make the game worth the money to you?

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 70%.  Surprisingly enjoyable and pretty good-looking for a budget title, but its simple space shooter gameplay will not appeal to everyone.

System Requirements:  Pentium III 700 MHz; 256 MB RAM;  32 MB Video RAM; 8x CD-ROM;  650 MB Hard Drive Space;  Mouse.