Wednesday 26 September 2018

Review: Star Control: Origins

It’s hard to talk about Star Control: Origins without talking about Star Control 2. SC2 is a game extremely near and dear to me. I originally played it on the Panasonic 3DO, that system nobody owned that cost an arm and a leg, where it had full voice acting. Star Control: Origins, much like SC2, is a space adventure game similar to Starflight. You explore an open galaxy, plunder resources from planets, and spend a lot of time conversing with and fighting other alien races. For its time, it was insanely innovative. Today, large-scale open-world RPGs are the norm, but in the early nineties, it was very impressive.

Star Control: Origins is the first game in the series since the maligned Star Control 3, and its roots are deeply grounded within the mechanics of Star Control 2. Because it is developed by Stardock, and the original creators of Star Control have nothing to do with it, basically none of the story elements, alien races, or ships have made the transition. And really, the biggest appeal apart from the openness of SC2 were its narrative elements -- it told a giant story filled with mystery and humor, and was oozing with personality.

I was nervous going into this one. I owned the original Star Control on the Sega Genesis. I pre-ordered the eventually cancelled StarCon for the PlayStation. I suffered through Star Control 3 and its abysmal puppet characters. And time and time again, I have gone back to Star Control 2 on PC in its current form, the excellent source port The Ur-Quan Masters, which remastered the game and brought to it the voice acting and remixes of the 3DO version. It is one of my favorite games of all time, and I was fully prepared to be disappointed by Star Control: Origins.

But I wasn’t. Thank God for that.

Review: Star Control: Origins screenshot

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