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With
a lot of media attention surrounding the releases of both Independence War and Wing
Commander Secret Ops, we’ve had no lack of high end space combat sims.
Both of these games not only have great gameplay but awesome graphics,
something that is very much expected from a game company nowadays.
With
these two beautiful sims just hitting the market I think Imagine Studios has made a mistake
placing Ares on the market at the same time. Not only do the graphics in
this game fall short in immersing the gamer but there is really little originality to make this game stick with you.
The
storyline follows you as the main character, a space mercenary named Marlowe,
down on your luck with nowhere to turn. Finally making a contact
in the suspicious character Helena, you’re offered both a home (which she
reminds you can be just as quickly taken away as given) and a steady source
of income. You desperately need both, so you accept and are placed
in the rather precarious position of carrying out missions for one Radivic
Karedescu, ruler of the IPEC. He somewhat seems to be modeled after fictional
OPEC chiefs, but with an even more heinous goal.
There
has been a discovery of an alien artifiact called an Omicron Device,
a source of power unseen before in the galaxy. The precarious question is: do you help Karedescu recover the artifact for
his nefarious ends or do you go against him and protect the sovereignty
of the galaxy?
Your
first assignment upon reaching your asteroid home is to complete two training
missions called Competency Threshold Runs, or CTR’s. These are two very basic and
easy missions that have you flying through a series of gates in a flight
proving ground much the same as the X-Wing training missions. You will also do some basic gunnery against both unarmed and armed
targets. Once completed you will begin your storyline mission tree. Each
mission is quite unique and the game doesn’t become boring.
The
missions are a combination of scripted and randomly generated missions,
which is a nice way to keep the game from becoming stale. Here Imagine
has done very well to keep the gamer from becoming complacent in flying
his missions. But where the missions succeed the graphics fail miserably.
Needs More Than a Facelift
Although
the screen shots would have you believing otherwise, the graphics here
are way below par for 1998. Possibly I’ve become jaded after looking at
beautifully rendered sims such as I-War and WC Prophecy and even the latest
Descent:Freespace, which was quite a shocker to me. But Ares is more than
a step back in time in the graphics department: it's like the ugly sister
no one wants to talk about. Perhaps the E! Channel could do a fashion makeover
because this one has a serious Fashion Emergency!
The
cockpit is very static, and not in the least as dynamic and involving as
WC Prophecy’s or any of the others for that matter. It’s actually the only
space sim in which I ALWAYS turned off the cockpit- it was that much of
an eyesore and served little purpose. In most similar sims I keep the cockpit
onscreen (personal preference) in keeping with the ‘spirit of
the game’. But with Ares I always turn it off.
Gamers expect higher
end graphics nowadays and to not supply them is selling your own
game short. While the ships look nice, the supporting graphics are not
up to par.
2D Sprites Galore
Planets
are 2D sprites missing that nice ozone layer aura around them, replaced
instead with a drab purplish colored perimeter that looks more like a poorly
drawn border than atmospheric cover. Space dust is the same and the only
truly beautiful rendering is of the nebulae, which is something straight
out of any of the other major league space sims on the market.
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Space
flight is dark, as it is supposed to be, but almost to the point of distracting
you, forcing you to rely solely on your weapons instruments to track and
ID a target. No chance of visuals or of the typical WWII dogfighting we
have become accustomed to in space sims without difficulty in seeing your
targets. Weapons fire is done in similar 2D sprites and is not the least
bit exciting, leaving the gamer to feel less than thrilled with the game.
I’ve
since found out the graphics libraries used for Ares were from Charybdis
and their pitiful M1 armor sim, so that explains the graphics quality or lack thereof. In the sound department there’s
not much here either, and the music is reminiscent
of the early WC games.
As a result, the game lacks immersion, save for the storyline and the pretty decent AI.
AI Done Well
Your
enemy and wingmen AI are both rather well done, which could be foundation on which Imagine can build for their future releases (they
plan this to be a 3 part series). Hopefully they can learn from their
mistakes on the first attempt and capitalize on the positives in the succeeding
attempts.
Space
flight can be done within either of two modes: arcade or inertial. In inertial
mode you’re supposedly flying in “true” spaceflight form. This inertial
mode reminds me of the early arcade game Lunar Lander and is not very realistic
nor as flexible as flight in Independence War.
The arcade mode is the one space
simmers are most used to and know best, and is done in much the same way
but still seems to be very sluggish. I felt like I was piloting the space
shuttle and not a fighter most of the time, not having any real feel for
being in a high tech space faring vessel.
The
game does come with multiplayer capabilities, which I've been unable to
test at this time. Imagine is currently trying to get this sim supported
on online gaming networks so online opponents will be easier to find. For
now you are limited to finding a player on your own through
the Ares players forum at aresrising.com.
One of the greatest things that Imagine did with Ares is that
your multiplayer characters are constant and continue to grow with each
multiplayer battle. This is a great idea and is something I'd like to see
from other game companies.
I
had high hopes for Ares, possibly too high. There were comparisons to the
old game Elite, which every space simmer loved back in that day, as well
as to Privateer. Open ended games are a much needed and sorely missed style
of play and I’d hoped that Ares would fill the gap. I could even overlook
dated graphics if the gameplay and enjoyment factor was high.
But Ares
hasn’t really done any of that for me, which is a shame. Let’s hope that Imagine gets right back on the horse and does it better next
time, building on their good AI foundation and to bring us a much better
sim next time around.
COMBATSIM RATING:73
Core Rating : 70
Gameplay : 80
Graphics : 60
Sound : 70
Intelligence/AI : 85
User Interface/Mission Planner : 75
Fun Factor : 70
Learning Curve (in hours) : 1/2 - 1hour
Overall Rating : 73
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