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Old November 29th, 2003, 01:39 PM   #7
Drake113
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Join Date: Nov 2003
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I agree, this is a great game. I'm only on the 5th mission, but it's pretty spectacular. Graphics are incredible (I hear even better on the X-Box, dangit) and the cut scenes are beautiful (The one at the end of the battle between the Atlantia and the Basestar is nothing short of stunning). Sound effects sound as if they were lifted from the DVD (which they probably were), and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the effects were in surround sound. The new Cylon ships look very nice and follow a logical evolution from the classic Raider that we all know and love. I have to give the designers props for walking such a tightrope between the original series look and feel and the mini's, ahem, reimagining of it-- I have to admit, I had no idea how they were going to make this game a prequel for both the series and the mini, but thusfar, they've done a much better job of it that I would have expected (apparently, humans *still* made the Cylons in this one, though. Sigh). Voice acting is great and the talent list is amazing-- everyone knows that Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict are in it, but so is Kristanna Loken (T3), Robin Atkin Downes (Byron from B5), and even Dwight Shultz (With him AND Dirk on the project, there's just gotta be an A-Team reference or Easter egg somewhere in the game). There are a bunch of nice extras in the game also- original series concept art, stills from the series, and some absolutely amazing renders of scenes for the game (I'm not kidding-- this is "Make that my wallpaper now" good). Even the music, which I rarely listen to in a game, is great. While they could have gone the easy route and just taken Stu Phillips’ original score and called it a day, they went the extra mile and expanded on the original soundtrack, so what you end up with is something that sounds like the classic Galactica soundtrack, but with a lot more added to it.
The downside (and you knew there had to be one) is that the game is hard. Really, really hard. If you're a 30 something like myself and your days of dazzling the people in the arcades with your lightning-fast reflexes are long behind you, it becomes throw the controller down on the ground, curse at the TV and storm out of the room hard. There's just two difficulty settings- Normal (which is totally kicking my kiester) and Expert, which I imagine is just a cut scene of your Viper blowing up. Worse, there's no tutorial level so you can get acquainted with the nuances of Viper piloting before being dropped into the middle of a full-on Cylon furball, which is too bad because there’s heck of a lot of nuances. Also, the missions are usually multi-part (e.g.: Kill X amount of Cylons, then destroy this thing here, now stop this other thing from escaping) which is great-- EXCEPT that if you die or fail an objective you have to start back at the beginning of the mission instead of at your last completed objective, which can be especially irritating.
Overall, though, this would be a great game even if it wasn't BSG related, but with the addition of the series' rich history and background, it's a fantastic game. As I see it, $50 (or even $230 if you don't have a console) is a pretty small amount of money to pay to live out the childhood dream of flying a Viper.
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