Star Control review - Sega Megadrive

Aaaiiee! The evil Hierarchy is attacking everything the good Alliance holds dear! There's only one thing for it: send out all the Alliance ships for a grand battle to the death!

Star Control is a space combat game played head-to-head against either a human or computer opponent with four selectable intelligence settings.

The basic game is based around a series of dogfights. Each fleet has eight completely different ships and both players simply choose one ship to take into combat. The battle takes place over a single screen. When the combatants are far apart, the game automatically switches to a distant view, with small spaceships. As the players move closer, the game zooms in and the ships get bigger - close up combat is displayed very large so you can see just exactly how much damage your weapons are doing.

The object of the exercise is simply to destroy your opponent by killing off his crew. Each hit sustained bumps off one of his men, and his crew bar diminished accordingly - a completely destroyed bar results in the ship exploding in spectacular fashion.

When a bout is over, the loser chooses a new ship to battle the victor with, and the overall winner of the contest is the person to destroy all the ships in the opponent's fleet.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Star Control is one of the best Megadrive games I've had the pleasure to play - in two-player melee mode. Each ship has its own strengths and weaknesses: one moment the remote fighters of your mighty battleships might be wiping the floor with your opponent, and then he comes up with a ship equipped with superior firepower AND a special laser designed to deal with your fighters! It's the sheer amount of ships that makes Star Control last so long. My favourite ship has to be the Klingon Bird of Prey-alike (it's even got the cloaking device!). In-one one-player mode, a lot of the game is lost, simply because roasting the backside of your pal is such a good laugh. Star Control is one the greatest two-player games you'll ever play, but if you're going to be playing on your lonesome, you'd best give this a miss.

In the two-player head-to-head stakes, this takes first prize. It's brilliant fun taking on another human player and using cunning, skill and tactics to take out his fleet. Many of my lunchtimes (and beyond) have been taken up with very noisy mega-battles with Gary Harrod! Playing it on you just isn't anywhere near as much fun - even the excellent presentation, brilliant sampled sound effects (see how many old b-movie sounds you can identify!) and a weirdo strategy game don't help. I think it's simply because you can't turn to the Megadrive and shout gleefully at it when you've just wiped out its best ship! So think long and hard before you buy this game - if you've always got a second player to kick ass with, it's highly recommended. Solo players just won't get value for money out of the product.

Have your say about this review

Dan - 24 Feb 2009, 17:26 GMT

This was one of the most playable games to have ever graced a console or computer - FACT. The lads slated it for it's lack of one player depth, but in all honestly I thought even with one player it was great, and I dug the stratergy game, to me it really added some depth to the game and how you approached your use of ships. All in all a total and utter classic, defo one of the best games on the MD, and one of the best games ever made.

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