Star Raiders from the developers of Incinerator Studios is an attempt of reviving an old Atari 800 classic and for the most part, they have done a great job in bringing it into the world of HD.
So the main story line? You are a cadet in the Star Raiders, an intergalactic space force who are locked in a war with a race called Zylons. The Zylons have been waging war now for a few months, but as the war unfolds the human forces find blueprints to an ancient weapon called The Rapture which they hope will bring an end to the war.
Game Play is what you would expect from a space combat sim but there a few surprises in store for you when you start playing, the first major one is that your space fighter can transform into 3 different modes. The first one is the default form, which is your space fighter, which looks like something from Macross (this is a Manga Film for those not down wiv da kidz). In this mode you can fly at high speed, which is good for tracking down enemies. You also you carry homing missiles, then with a click of a button your ship transforms into a more stable hybrid version, which has more precise attacks. This form is better designed for attacking frigates. The final form is a turret like form which has very slow movement and is packed with an EMP beam and a rail-gun.
There are some great options in the nav menu to upgrade your ship; such as new powerful machine guns, rocket launchers, and robot A.I. You can purchase these upgrades by destroying enemies and collecting the salvage that is dropped from the wreckage, or by shooting glowing asteroids. If you find that you have the wrong upgrades for the mission you can pause the game and swap them out, there and then.
Like most games there are some downsides to this game, I found that the missions are repetitive. You seem to basically do the same mission just with a few extras things to destroy. After a while playing becomes more of a chore than enjoyment. I would have liked to see more mission variation, also it would have been a nice touch, if, once you have completed the game you could have got to play the original game? There is one massive problem that I found with the game, and that is that there is no multiplayer, which in a modern remake, to me, should have been a priority in this day and age.
Overall Star Raiders carries a retail price of 800 Microsoft Points (£7.19/€8.99) which for what you get is not bad. I just feel that all the right parts are here but it just fails to reach that game that I think everyone wanted it to be. But nevertheless for 800 points it’s good to add to your collection if you’re looking for something to fill some time while you’re in between games.
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