Reader Review: Star Wolves 3

Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Simon does, as he wonders whether anyone can hear you snore in space.

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Simon Jackson. If you’ve played Star Wolves (and I bet you haven’t!), or just want to ask Simon more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Star Wolves 3 (PC)

The awaited release to the third installment of a series you’ve never heard of, Star Wolves 3 returns the player to a life of a mercenary in an unforgiving universe. With a massive open galaxy to explore and a small squadron of ships at your command could this game be the space sim that people have been waiting for?

Loved

Combat: Despite a clunky interface, combat is a delightful mix of Eve Online’s point-and-click commands combined with old school party-based RPGs with combat pause. The game is centred around your mothership, which stores all your gear, and up to five smaller fighters which can be deployed and controlled the same way the mothership is controlled. As the game progresses, more fighter pilots can be recruited and gain learning points as they fight, which can be spent in a skill tree similar to what you would see in an action-RPG.

Previous Games Not Important: Usually when a series of games gets to its third installment, the developers assume that their target audience already know what’s going on and jump right on into it leaving new players behind. This isn’t the case in Star Wolves. While the universe’s history and factions remain the same, there are no recurring characters telling you stories from previous gamea and acting like you’ve always known them. The ability to jump right into this new installment of the series without ever looking at the other titles of the series serves it well in not scaring off potential newcomers.

Hated

Visuals: Graphically this game isn’t very impressive; as you would expect space is empty, very empty. Each star system you visit has only a couple places of interest and most of those are locked off to the player and are mostly there for show. The ships and stations themselves look somewhat decent and look like something that would actually work in outer space rather than the over the top stuff usually encountered in sci-fi.

Difficulty: This may actually be a good thing to some people but a warning to players who are new to this series of games: Star Wolves 3 is hard. Not hard as in it will challenge the average player hard, but hard as in Gothic 3 hard. Starting a game on normal difficulty and expecting it to be not much of a challenge is how most people would play but it soon becomes apparent that perhaps restarting them game on easy wouldn’t be a bad idea. Though even with foresight, easier difficulty and a better understanding of the game mechanics, this game still isn’t going to hold your hand.

As much as I really enjoy playing this game there really isn’t much to it, there is no epic adventure story that has me on the edge of my seat, no memorable characters and the open world gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Star Wolves 3 definitely isn’t a bad game but there is also nothing special about it that makes it a must purchase for anyone other than returning fans of the series.

Reviewed by: Simon Jackson

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 500 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

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