Battlestar Galactica

Out of nostalgia an curiosity, I decided to rent Vivendi Universal’s
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA for original Xbox system. I had wondered which way
they would’ve gone. Go classic with the late 70’s / early 80’s version
or go modern with the more human-like cylons. Instead, and
unfortunately, they didn’t go either way. They went somewhere in
between. In addition to that, there’s two major issues I have with this
game. The first issue is the game play. Right of the bat you’re thrown
into combat to defend the Battlestar with your fellow Viper pilots.
Unlike most modern games, you’re not given any missions that teach you
the controls. Instead, they have a pause menu controls section labeled
Flight Manual. Within that, there are about 5 categories, each with
about 5 or 6 screens of controls. This is where it seems the game has
an identity crisis. Given the amount of controls and energy management
involved in flying the Viper, at a quick glance it seems they were
going to a futuristic flight simulator. After about 5 minutes of battle
with the cylons, it looks like they’re going for a BG version of Rogue
Squadron. Another part of the game-play that was annoying was the
targeting. While going after a cylon, if you’re in range of the ship
you’re chasing, a small circle will appear for you to target. For the
inexperienced, this is so that you can shoot ahead of the ship, so your
lasers hit the target. The problem is that there were many times where
l saw it automatically send your lasers toward the target, if even
you’re not shooting at the circle. The best way to describe it was like
an forced yet seemingly random auto-aim. If you don’t want to use your
lasers, your other choice are your missiles. The odd thing is that,
with all the simulation like controls, your missiles are almost
unlimited. Instead of having a finite number of physical missiles
loaded into your ship, when ever you fire a missile it sucks power from
your weapons energy, nearly at the same rate the lasers use up energy.
The second issue are the missions. They are way too linear & there
aren’t enough save points. Each mission has pretty much three parts
(rule of 3’s). The problem is that you are forced to start at the
beginning of the entire misison if you die during the 2nd or 3rd part.
If this doesn’t annoy you, the unbalanced or “rubber-band” AI will
annoy the crap out of you. I believe it’s the 2nd mission that you go
up against a BaseStar (cylon base ship). During this mission you must
defend the Battlestar Atlantis against the Basestar. The logical
strategy would be to take out the BaseStar’s guns while your fellow
pilots take care of the cylon ships. The problem is that if you don’t
take out the fighters first, it won’t let you progress thru the
mission. Not only, if you try this, it seems as if all the cylons
ignore your wing-men and go after you only. Every time I thought of a
better or different way to complete the objective(s), you get punished
by the AI. What started out as a journey of nostalgia, turned into the
rental of annoyance. The graphics are on par with Xbox graphics and the
cut scenes are okay, but the game-play really brings down the game.