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Introduction
This is where you join the story in Vicarious Visions latest release, Terminus. A space combat/role playing adventure, Terminus uses a complex story line to expand upon your experiences and to create unique plot lines that vary as you proceed with the game. But what makes this game unique is not the role playing and story line, which are both pretty good, nor the space battles, which are very realistic, but its Artificial Intelligence. The AI, primarily interfaces with you in the Heads Up Display (HUD) of your ship. This makes the game a dream to play with very realistic physics. The AI also interfaces with you in every other aspect of the game, from the continually running story line, to your interaction with various characters and systems panels.
The Full Package Terminus comes on 3 CDs. The first is the installation CD which loads the game onto your hard drive. The second contains the video clips which are accessed during gameplay. The third has the sound track. Both the second and third CDs are required to be mounted for the full cinematic effect, so it is necessary to have two CD drives or a willingness to install one or both of the CDs contents onto your hard drive. This follows the rest of Terminus' resource intensive requirements. The game is designed for both single player and multiplayer network mode. Multiplayer mode requires a speedy connection to the internet. Since the game comes in three versions, Mac, Windows and Linux, there will likely be plenty of people to play online with. Game Ranger is the suggested Mac tool for finding opponents to play with over the internet.
The Story
Currently, space travel is confined to the solar system. Transportation requires the use of "jump gates," which eliminate the distance between objects in normal space. Although using the jump gates keeps travel time extremely low (we're talking light minutes here), it may be necessary to use several to get to your final destination. For moving about, there are five kinds of ships supplied to you. Each is configurable and can be outfitted with a few kinds of environmental units, thrusters, computers, cargo systems, and weapons. If you join the Earth or Mars Space Force, the game is relatively easy to play. You begin with a well equipped ship and are given objectives to achieve. Examples of those objectives are patrolling, providing escort, reconnaissance, or battle missions. You are graded on how well you do in these missions. Your advancement depends on your performance. If you choose to become a pirate or mercenary the game is more difficult. You must earn income from completing any job or contract offered you. You use your profits to pay for provisions, such as to re-supply, repair, or re-fit your privately owned ship. You fly your missions or dock at a space station in Terminus. The story continues to play around you no matter what you do. Your actions can change parts of the story, and can change the price of equipment for your ship, if you play in the story mode. There are five game styles in Terminus:
The campaign mode is very well done and the manual helps tremendously with this game style. You have four career paths to choose from: a pilot for Mars, a pilot for Earth, a Mercenary, or Pirate. The career path you choose will dictate which scenarios you come upon, and of course, how you react and perform will adjust the storyline as well. Free play mode is the most fun in my mind. While there is no end or objective to this part of the game, you can get rich and have the best ship while being a mercenary or a pirate.
Gameplay
Once you have destroyed another ship you retrieve some of its cargo to sell or use on your own ship, provided you bought a scoop. But when you are hit, various systems can fail. Failure in one system soon overloads other systems, so it is helpful to know all your panels and controls. In the heat of battle, you need to react quickly, or your character will die. Your normal view of space is through the transparent Heads Up Display, the HUD. You also have available several adequate panels for navigation, communication and ship's engineering. The interface is easy to get started on and in really helps to know your displays once you are in the heat of battle. Contracts are constantly evaluated by the game's AI. Your rating within the game and with the various factions depends on how well you do in every mission. If you are a pirate carrying drugs and you loose your cargo, it is harder to get another job. Some contracts also require you to be at a certain level before you can have them. Your reputation can grow with every contract you make good on. If you play the Story mode the missions you fly move the story forward. Your outcome on the mission alters the story. This is where the AI shines, because every time you play the same scenario, the ships and the sequence of events can be different, and thus your outcome can change as well. When you complete a contract, you return to base. All docking is handled by the AI and there is no way to skip this part of the game. After you dock, your performance is evaluated and scored. You can then refit, repair or upgrade your ship, and you begin again.
Miscellaneous: The Neat Stuff Besides being a game that can be played on three different platforms Terminus has amazing Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is at the heart of the game. This means that the game or the story will continue to play, just as real life continues to happen, even when you walk away from the computer. As long as the game is on, it will continue to develop the story line, and the artificial players will continue to do their thing. When you return to the game, it's best to read up on the news panel to see what happened. If you play the story line, it is engaging enough to keep you playing. You will want to finish so that you can see the ending. It is the only part of the game that has a conclusion. Flying and fighting can be fast and fun with many other craft around. Although the game tends to slow somewhat if there are too many craft, your motion through space is true to life. When you are moving, you can point the nose of your ship anywhere while you continue on your trajectory which gives you great options for battle. The Heads Up Display (HUD) in the craft is exceptional and intuitive, and in my opinion, better than any other game you can get for the Mac. You will always get the same exact display regardless of your ship. This is great for quickly learning the HUD. Color coding in the HUD base color helps you know what ship you are flying: Earth Force is blue, Martians red, Pirates green, and Mercenaries yellow. The HUD shines because of the AI, alerting you about the position and heading of other craft in your part of space, warning of collisions, and generally acts like a well mannered friend in clueing you about your flight path, the attitude of your craft, and weapons and systems status. The best part is that after a while you can use the HUD without thinking, which is as it should be for any interface.
Miscellaneous: The Not-So-Neat Stuff
You cannot land on any planet, nor explore things which are not in range of the jump gates, which are called Vortexes. Nor can you board and occupy another craft. As mentioned before, there is no feature that allows you to skip the landing sequence, which is not a video clip at all, but a live, low polygon rendering on the fly. Your ship can come in from any angle to the docking bay, and AI will render the scene of your landing accurately. There is just no way to avoid this procedure, which gets old after a while. The same is true for taking off, and for navigating the jump gate. Out of boredom, we tried blowing up the station with our ship's weapons. No effect. Since each space station has the same markings as all the others. Therefore, this sequence looks the same each time you land or take off. If the developers of the game wanted to approximate real life in space, which is mostly filled with boredom, they did a good job on this part. In the main area of flying and fighting, you are only allowed five configurations of ships, and a limited number of equipment and weapons for any of these. This is meager compared to other games. When you are playing, you might wish to try a "what if" to see what your ship can do. However, with almost anything you try, the AI will tell you that you only have certain options for flying and fighting. The standard options are all the game will allow you to use for the present. If you are going to play this game on the Mac, get a good joystick. Like most flying games, you are just about dead without one. Using the keyboard is doable, but slow. You will not be able to adequately defend your ship against the AI generated enemies or live opponents with the keyboard alone. Although the HUD is excellent, the other panels for power, engineering, navigation, communication and base messages are hard to use and figure out. Most of the time you are alone in your ship and flying between points, so you have time to figure these things out. You better use this time well, because in a battle when a system goes out, you have to fix it in a hurry. Too bad these interfaces could not be as beautifully designed as the HUD. The rest graphics are just adequate, but not exceptional. They soon can get downright boring after playing for a while. Also there is no way to automate the travel you are doing between the stations in this game, nor is there a way to skip this part to get on with it. These deficiencies probably made the programming of the game to a deadline less of a chore in some respects, but when compared to other games, Terminus is sometimes like playing in an empty universe. There are many ship configurations and missions to fly, however. Better stick to flying those missions when you are playing this game.
Conclusion
If you want to play against an intelligent computer adversary, you will like the AI of Terminus. Even playing the same roles or the story again and again, no two games will be alike. It is for all of these reasons, that Terminus has earned the highest rating of 5 smileys I'd like to thank Chris Born, the other half of the review team for helping in development of this article.
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