CLASSIC GAMING
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters
Developer:  Toys for Bob
Publisher:  Accolade
Genre:  RPG
Year:  1990
System:  PC/3DO

Since many have apparently been disappointed by Spore all except for the Space stage, here's a game to make you have nothing BUT the Space Stage of Spore, except not only with a full story, but more variable and addictive and not for casual gamers.  It's time to boldly go beyond the casual gaming where more gamers should have gone before.

Story - During the last part of the war between The Alliance of Free Stars (the good guys) and The Hierarchy of Battle Thralls (the bad guys), an Earthling ship discovered an ancient Precursor settlement deep in the caves of the Vela System.  A secret scientific survey was made but help did not come when the Hierarchy's offensives forced them away, and even though the Hierarchy never found this secret area, help never came.  So the colonists worked to activate the Precursor's ancient systems, thanks to a genius child born among them, discovering that it was a starship.  You play as that genius child now grown up and the only one able to pilot the ship, even able to choose your name and the name of your starship.
Now you are in command of an eons-old starship of great power and returning to your species' place of birth, Earth, in order to find out if the war had ended.
It had, but unfortunately the bad guys won, and you are intercepted a transmissions from the Ur-Quan, the most powerful creatures in the universe who plan to either destroy or enslave the entire universe.  Your mission is to battle the Ur-Quan with a new free alliance to save the universe from enslavement.
You might want to make a written log on your computer while you play this game so you don't forget, because the universe is that vast and the game is arduously long, but it even has a time limit before a REAL threat comes and you will DIE from this even more powerful threat than the Ur-Quan themselves.


Gameplay - You will always be doing one of three things in this game.  Meeting aliens, fighting aliens or mining planets, all of which are entertaining in themselves for various reasons.  The main objective in the game is that you must create an alliance of various aliens to battle against the ruthless Ur-Quan, and you do this by uncovering missions from all kinds of characters ranging from charting a mysterious planet to destroying their enemies.  When meeting an alien race diplomacy is key with a selection of topics to talk on as well as choices of phrases ranging from polite to arrogant.  There is also the fact you may have to do missions for them which range from defeating enemies to finding minerals to helping their allies, all of which will either make them your friends, or turn them away from you should you fail.  It's not a question of when they'll be your friend like any usual game would, but more a question of IF they'll be your friend.

Fighting aliens is total old-school starship battling.  While difficult to control, you must guide your ship in various directions blasting at the enemy's ship until all of the crew is dead or until all of your crew is dead.  You can make yourself more stronger by upgrading your ship with either more crew compartments, more fuel capacity, more speed, or more weaponry, all of which can be bought and built by the Earthling space station orbiting Earth, and which can be bought by selling various materials you find around the universe such as minerals from planet excavating.  You can also add other alien ships to your fleet as allies, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses, so it almost becomes a strategy game at this point.


Excavating, while less interactive than that of Spore, is far more dangerous a task.  Not only are you dealing with the universe we all know and live in, but you also must deal with its planetary dangers, such as the the poisonous heated atmosphere of Venus or the scorching plans of Mercury.  All planets have either atmospheric disturbances, lava, hostile wild creatures or lightning.  And you have to brave all of this while in a space lander with its own fuel capacity and crew members (which act as the health of the vehicle, same with your starship).
The game itself is nothing but these three tasks of meeting, fighting and excavating but what makes this different from the more repetitive rewardless Spore, is the depth of the game.  Every alien race in the game has their different quirks, musical theme, voice characteristics, and agendas, as well as the actual planets of the actual galaxies we live in to a certain extent.


Graphics - Being as it is a DOS game from 1990 that only ever got a port to the horrendously overpriced 3DO, the graphics in this game are simplistic enough on the field, but the meeting of aliens is another matter.  Every alien race looks fantastically imaginative and has a range of styles from the darkly serious Ur-Quan to the classic space babes of the Syreen to the comical Pkunk.  The planets are impressive when seen in 3D spinning away before landing on their wide single plain to uncover whatever minerals lie within.  Overall this game feels it's not pushing any boundaries with its graphics but the variety of worlds and creatures it has makes up for it.  The game's strengths lie in its atmosphere which is upheld by its music.

Music/Sound - Undergoing many transitions since its original release, the music of Star Control 2 is one of the most variable game soundtracks ever, with a wide range of themes for every single species in the universe each with their own summing up of their personalities accurately so.  The original game had no voice acting but later updates of it however have given you the choice of having voices or turning them off.  The voices are actually pretty good and again give a wonderful impression of each species' personality from the gravelly arrogant tones of the Ilwrath to the strangely Scottish squeaky voices of the Yehat.  The game excels in its atmosphere.


So for all of you who were whining on and on about Spore, shut up and go play this because it's like the Space stage of Spore except fuckloads more interesting, with creatures you actually CARE about that didn't just fall out of the randomizer.  You have no excuse not to as it is absolutely free of charge to play and is always being updated by the incredibly nice original creators themselves with remixes of songs and so forth over at http://sc2.sourceforge.net/.  This is NOT for the casual gamer, this game is long, this game is deep, this game is hard, and this game is very fulfilling.
But then maybe you shouldn't hang out too long with the Syreen or something else will be long, deep, hard and fulfilling.  This game may not have a LOT to do in variability, but what it does have you doing will take a long long time.

Fun and Innovation - 3
Replayability - 2
Gameplay - 4
Presentation - 4