The same lines are thrown out time after time, again using the same voices and different portraits. Enemies aren't any better with their insults either. Things got so bad at one point, I actually had a female portrait talking to me in a male voice telling me what five other pilots had said to me already throughout the last 20 minutes. I can see that the developers wanted their systems to feel inhabited, and not devoid of all life except for the player, but this idea completely backfired as the same "conversations" play over and over and over and over again using the exact same voice acting, though with different character portraits depending on the cluster you're currently in. Character design clearly took a backseat to the spaceflight action, which would actually be fine with me if they didn't use cutscenes to tell the story!Īdding to the bad taste left in my mouth by this game is the fact that when you enter systems you will sometimes be subjected to "overheard" communications between ships. The story is told through horribly voice acted, terribly animated, eye-hurtingly blurry, and just plain ugly cutscenes, however. Trade stations, planets, stars in the background, and all the other ships flying around the galaxy are, for the most part, graphically pleasing in the game. All of the game's spaceflight is viewed through the cockpit of the Darkstar One. To the game's credit, these five or six variations on solar systems look graphically pretty good.
No wonder we stopped funding a space program. Who knew the universe was filled with identical, boring solar systems. Every solar system has a trade station which looks different depending on what specie's territory you are in, but other than that, you can expect the exact same thing in every cluster.
I mean, you have your asteroid fields, ice fields, crystal fields, blue planets, green planets, red planets, but these themes just keep repeating over and over in slightly different variations. Sure, there is some variety to the systems. That sounds like a lot of opportunities for exploration, right? Well, not really once you realize that every single system is just like the last one you visited. Seriously, this is the ugliest star fighter I have ever seen.Īcross the Milky Way there are a total of 23 clusters and a total of 331 solar systems that Kayron can visit. It's too bad that, as the ship's power nears being maxed out, it begins to resemble a mix between a flying cube and a tree frog rather than something sexier. Players are attached to the Darkstar One for the entire game, so it's nice that the ship visually changes to reflect its growth in power. Upgrades can be given to the hull, wings, or engine of the ship, and upgrading each area improves specifics such as the number of weapons that can be equipped to the ship and the level of the ship's armor. Strewn throughout the galaxy are 100 organic artifacts which, when collected, give the player access to upgrades for the Darkstar One. The Darkstar One is a unique vessel as it is partially organic and can physically grow into a more powerful ship. I can never tell if I'm upside down in these games, or if everything else is! Kayron's journey to find his father's murderer unavoidably pulls him into this greater conflict and he must work to alleviate this growing political tension to avoid all out war between the species which inhabit the Milky Way, as well as to investigate his father's death. These attacks are blamed on a reclusive race of aliens and set the Milky Way's political climate on edge across all species in the galaxy. Meanwhile, groups of strange ships have been randomly coming out of hyperspace and attacking colonies across the Milky Way. Armed with this information, Kayron sets off to track down his father's killer. Robert then explains to Kayron that he has a lead on his father's murderer. Upon graduation, Kayron is contacted by his recently deceased father's business partner, Robert, and is given a special ship - the Darkstar One - which was designed by his dad. Unfortunately the game turned out to be less of a "hidden gem" and more of a piece of space-junk that rips-off elements from nearly every popular Sci-Fi series.ĭarkstar One: Broken Alliance takes place across multiple solar systems within our Milky Way Galaxy and follows protagonist Kayron Jarvis, a recent graduate from space-flight training school. There is a noticeable lack of this genre on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, so I was excited to see this game recommended by fans of the genre.
DARKSTAR ONE BROKEN ALLIANCE RELEASE DATE PC
Darkstar One: Broken Alliance is a Space Flight, Combat, and Trade Simulation game released on the Xbox 360 in 2010 after developer Kalypso Media upgraded 2006's PC release of the game with higher definition graphics and improved gameplay.
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