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.
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| Space in Space Interceptor looks pretty good. |
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.
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