DS9 - Demo Review
» alien8
As Stallion mentioned in the news the other day, the release of this demo was quite a surprise, as nobody really knew how far into development this game was. Apparently its alot further along than alot of people (myself included) thought.
For those of you who haven't been following the development of DS9:TF, it is an Unreal-engined, third-person-perspective game based on the Star Trek TV series Deep Space Nine, and is being developed by The Collective.
Just as a quick disclaimer, I'm afraid that you'll have to forgive the 'Precaching' note on each of the screenshots. I played the demo in Direct3D, and although no other Unreal-engined games show that on the screenshot, this one does for some reason. Now, onto the show!
 a b o u t
I was quite surprised that the only readme included with the demo release was a rather short HTML document that basically only covers a few troubleshooting tips, as well as the control scheme. It was kind of disappointing compared to the some other demos that have been released lately. Oh well, a quick trip to the official Deep Space Nine: The Fallen site offers a little more insight into the storyline behind the game:
The Pah-wraiths - a race of exiled, all-powerful aliens - are on the verge of returning. The keys to unleashing and harnessing their power are three archaic Red Orbs.
The race to find the Orbs is on between you - playing as either Captain Sisko, Major Kira, or Lt. Commander Worf - and a host of opposing forces that would use the ultimate power to dominate the Alpha Quadrant and all of its inhabitants.
A lot of games might receive flak for a story such as this, but it seems totally natural in the Star Trek universe, so what the heck.
In this two-level demo you play as Captain Benjamin L. Sisko, the man who, well, captains the Deep Space Nine vessel. The beginning of Mission One has you and an ensign just beaming down to the USS Ulysses crash site, ready to find any survivors, and to try and get off the planet. Doesn't sound too bad, hey?
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| Menu overlaying DS9 fly-by
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Beaming Down
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a u d i o / v i d e o
As we've come to expect from any game sporting the Unreal engine, the visuals are quite impressive. One of the things that always impresses me are cool skyboxes, and both of the levels in the demo have great looking night-time skies. There are meteorites burning up in the planet's atmosphere, and once in a while there is even lightning coming blasting down from the heavens. Very cool.
All the models included in the demo seem to be of very high quality, and I couldn't help but compare Captain Sisko's sheer number and quality of animations to Corvus of Heretic II fame. His swimming animations in particular are the best I've seen for any game. Definite kudos go out to the modelers and animators over at The Collective.
The special effects of the weapons included in the demo isn't anything spectacular, but if you watched the TV series, you know that phaser fire is all bidness, and doesn't have fancy-poo effects. The only weapon effect that I thought could have had a little more oomph was the explosions from the grenade launcher. Almost there, but could use a little more bang!
The background music I found to be very compelling, and quite dynamic. You always knew when an enemy had spotted you, or when something big was about to go down. DS9:TF does not use the 'tracks' that were used in Unreal and Unreal Tournament, but rather it makes use of .mp3's. In my opinion, they do not sound any better or any worse, which is still quite a compliment.
I only had one problem on the audio side, and that was I could not hear the Captain and the Ensign's conversation. I could sort of make out the first words of the conversation, but nothing else - strange. It's a good thing that there were subtitles. *Update* Tony Barnes, lead designer for The Collective got in contact with me and let me know the reason there are no voices in the demo. Apparently they have not yet finished all the voice acting and they are contractually obliged to not have any 'stand-ins'. So, for those of you who also do not have voices, don't worry. It's not your fault!
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| DS9's awesome swimming anim's
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Another big mean fish is disintegrated
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g a m e p l a y
Well, its a third person shooter, which can bring all kinds of problems to the table if not dealt with correctly. For example, what happens if you back yourself up against a wall, or into a corner? Suddenly your body is taking up all of the camera, and whatever was chasing you into the wall is helping themselves to you. Thankfully enough this is never the case in DS9:TF. If you do get backed up into a corner, you turn transparent, so as to still be able to look around. It's a nice touch, and can make the difference between utter frustration and enjoyment.
The other touch-and-go aspect of the third person perspective is aiming your weapons. In this case all you have to do is select your weapon and a small crosshair shows up on the screen. If it crosses the path of an enemy it flashes red, and if it crosses the path of a friendly (eg) the ensign that beamed down with you at the beginning of the demo, it turns green and you are unable to fire. Trust me, I tried ;)
I found the weapons to be fairly balanced, although I couldn't figure out why one of your weapon choices are your own fists. I guess at some point in time during the full game, and not just the demo, you need to smack someone/something.
The enemy AI was what can be expected from most shooters nowadays - nothing innovative, but far from stupid, and definitely a challenge. The enemies are also balanced nicely too. The small bats are very fast, but an easy kill, whereas The Four-Legged Beast Things took forever to dispatch, but were not overly aggressive as long as you took cover when they came after you. All in all, a nice touch.
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| Transparency!
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The Ugly Four-Legged Beast.
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a l i e n s a y s
Well, I had a lot of fun playing this demo, and I'm not a big fan of 3rd person games. It would have been nice to have a little more helpful documentation. There are going to be a lot of people playing this demo who will never even think to go the the official site and finding out more there. I especially think of the tricorder in this case. I just found out completely by accident that if you right click while the tricorder is scanning something, you get a detailed readout on it. Cool, but something like that should have been announced in a readme.
This is one game that I'll be waiting to hit the shelves, and here's hoping that it breaks the curse of The Bad Star Trek Game. If everything goes according to the demo, that's a pretty safe bet.
s y s t e m . r e q u i r e m e n t s / f e a t u r e s
System Requirements:
Windows 98/Windows 95
Pentium 233Mhz or higher.
4X CD-ROM drive
64MB RAM
150MB of uncompressed hard drive space
Windows 95 compatible sound card
PCI local bus video card.
(PlanetUnreal recommends a 3d accelerator card as well)
Macintosh System Requirements
200mhz PowerPC 604
64mb RAM
100mb uncompressed hard drive space
OS 8 or higher
4x CD-ROM
Features:
Custom-designed inverse kinematics and bones animation system.
Superior real-time facial animation with automated phoneme recognition.
Advanced 3rd person camera system.
Enhanced particle rendering.
Several outstanding FX modes.
l i n k s
Download the demo!
PlanetUnreal's Interview with The Collective
The Collective
Deep Space Nine: The Fallen official site
The Fallen Messageboard
-alien8
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