It’s not often that you see a game licensed on a 25 year old TV series. A
good portion of the gaming population has probably never even seen an episode of
the series, especially considering the fact that its never made it into
syndication. However, Hollywood is always looking to milk as much money as they
can out of old TV and movie franchises, and the 25th anniversary of the series
has led to a special edition DVD release and a movie mini-series on the Sci Fi
Channel. The Sci Fi Channel movie is set years before the events in the original
series and it is in this timeframe that the game is set. You’d think that a game
hoping to help revive interest in what was at best an average 70s sci-fi series
would provide some great gaming action in attempt to create a new generation of
Galactica fans and fuel the fires of nostalgia in those who watched the series
in their youth. Alas, this is not the case with the Battlestar Galactica game.
Instead we have a thoroughly mediocre space shooter with some serious design
flaws that provide gamers with more frustration than fun.
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The Vipers certainly look good. |
Battlestar Galactica puts you into the Human Colonies’ versatile Viper
fighter (you’ll get the opportunity to fly other ships in the game, but you’ll
primarily be a Viper jock). The screen serves as your HUD by overlaying your
targeting reticule, target locks, ship IDs, and weapons readouts over your view
of the action. The game is played from a third party perspective, though, so in
the center of your HUD you’ll see your Viper from a chase cam view. The Viper is
equipped with blasters and missiles, with the latter requiring you to keep the
missile button depressed until a target lock is achieved. You can fire the
missiles without getting a target lock, but they’ll simply fly straight off into
space without one.
In addition to the weapons, the Viper comes equipped with a booster and an
afterburner. These both serve to give the Viper a boost of speed when needed,
with the afterburner giving you a greater boost but at a high cost to your
ship’s energy levels. There is also a button that will help you to decelerate
and is useful for slowing down to make tight turns. If you don’t use any of
these keys, you’ll fly through space at a constant rate and will just need to
point yourself in the right direction by using the left stick. In reality, when
the game is not forcing you to use the afterburners to reach your next objective
point you won’t need to make much use of the various speed buttons. Fighter
combat in Battlestar Galactica consists of pointing yourself in the direction of
your next automatic target acquisition, firing, and then pushing the stick in
the direction of the onscreen indicator until your next target appears in your
reticule. This unchallenging and unexciting approach to space combat is made
even less so by the fact that Cylon ships are A) piloted by robot idiots, and B)
made out of balsa wood. Line up an enemy in your sights, watch as the ship does
very little to get out of the way of your blasters, see it explode after a few
hits, repeat. The enemy AI is weak, in fact, that I could fly on a straight
beeline with my blasters blazing without ever worrying about a Cylon jumping on
my tail and eating me up from my six.
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