The original Starshatter game was released in 1997 by Destroyer Studios which managed to gather a small but long-living community of fans and in 2004 the aforementioned developer delivered a sequel - Starshatter: The Gathering Storm of which we did a gameplay and a short review.
This classic game has everything a cosmic strategy needs: deep space, free market and even spaceship battles (as shown in our video above). The Gathering Storm has a neat control system that may be a bit hard to get into in the very beginning but as soon as you adjust it becomes quite an engaging experience. If you have a joystick connected to your PC the gameplay becomes even better.
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What about real-time strategy elements? Well, honestly they could’ve been better. Of course, after going through a long and successful career build-up you will be allowed to command a huge fleet of space fighters without leaving your “cozy” bridge. But in the beginning all the different and sometimes completely puzzling strategic elements do nothing but frustrate and it’ll take a lot of time before you understand what to do exactly which may get annoying, especially to non-fans.
If you simply want to lay back and enjoy an exciting game you don’t want to be distracted by all the unnecessary experiments where instead of an actual gameplay you’ll have to be involved in everything but the game. Unfortunately, not everybody can make a hybrid out of a game and make all the different elements work under one roof.
Generally speaking, the history of computer games knows more than one attempt of combining strategic and simulation elements. Undoubtedly the saddest example is the project “Hostile Waters” which was released in 2001 and delivered an amazing design and storyline. There was only one major problem – it was absolutely impossible to enjoy the gameplay. Starshatter: The Gathering Storm has the same set of problems.
What do you think about Starshatter: The Gathering Storm? Please, leave your comments in the section below.
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