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Colony Wars: Vengeance Review
Noel Brady
00/12/0000
Psygnosis have returned with a sequel to the excellent Colony Wars.
While the original was great, as I have already said, it did have one or two small problems which ruined the overall feel of the game. However, I am happy to say that these have been rectified for Colony Wars: Vengeance.
Colony Wars Vengeance is the kind of game that the PlayStation was made for, and in many ways is the closest PC-style game on the system. It's big, complex, and yet remains extraordinarily easy to start up and play.
In Colony Wars: Vengeance, the changes are enormous, but yet theyâre so subtle, it will take a super fan to notice how well they've been implemented. The ships, as aforementioned, have better and more weapons, which fall into two categories, primary and secondary. In some cases, you'll mine asteroids for crystals, while in other cases you must haul cargo, and your craft is prepared with light-sourced high-tech gadgets to perform the necessary tasks. There are 22 weapons in all.
Psygnosis have listened to many of the criticisms of the original and have made sure that they have been refined. For example, now you don't have to sit through the mission briefing every time you start a new mission just to work out the basic objectives, as they are now flashed up in concise form during loading. You now also have a choice of ships instead of the ship being automatically picked for you. But you must be careful because each ship has it's own weaknesses and strengths and you will have to make a tactical decision which will be vital to your mission. Another feature allows you to tweak a selected ship's powerplant to favour one of four aspects: shields, engines, gyros (handling) and afterburner to your needs.
The overall feeling of the space combat remains much the same but there are one or two changes. The new improved targeting crosshairs have an extra moving element which shows where an energy bolt will land if fired at that point in time, allowing those tricky pre-emptive flip shots to become a lot easier. The shield damaging lilac and red kill lasers remain, as in the previous installment, along with the various intelligent homing missiles and the special drilling tools, but this time there is also a tentacle like grapple arm which can be used to ensnare objects adrift in space and give them a tow. In one mission you must use it to pull unstable radioactive cargo pods away from a friendly space station.
Other cool changes that effect the game occur in the gravity department. First, you'll actually get to battle in areas other than space. That's right, baby. You can battle in heavy gravity areas in alien atmospheres that affect the way you and your enemies move. This adds a whole new dimension to the battles; it's just amazing that it's on PlayStation. The second gravitation effect is spatial anomaly. You may get pulled into an alien sun, or get thrown into a weird orbit because of the various gravitational fields. In either case, you'll need to cope in more clever ways that just hitting the throttle.
In fact the range and variety of the missions thrown at you in Colony Wars: Vengeance more than makes up for the original's weaknesses. The missions range from mining distant asteroids to sawing off the overloading powerplant of a crippled starcruiser! Other mission involve such diverse tasks as escort duties, communications-wrecking, sabotage, ambushing, minesweeping and even downloading a virus into an enemy's computer network. These treats sit alongside the completely new aspect of planet bound conflict where you fight around enormous ranges of mountains and valleys, stalked by some truly frightening war machines.
Some great new FMV's (Full Motion Video) are included which portray the personal story of the character as well as the battle between the League and the Navy which began in the first chapter. Although, of course, you are now on the side of the previous bad guys. The graphics are still really the same as the original which is no bad thing because they look excellent. The game is filled with great neons and brilliant light-sourced objects. Colony Wars was a great looking game, and Vengeance keeps it up there as one of the best. I have to say that because the first was so good, it was clearly a difficult task for Psygnosis to make a much better one. But I think the team did it. It's smarter, and has changed in many subtle ways, and it is still one of the best feeling games around. There is nothing like it (except for the first Colony Wars) that makes you feel so much like floating free in space, or jamming around in complete 3D.
Colony Wars: Vengeance is a great game but I do have one problem with it, G-Police. I think that Psygnosis's other flight sim is still better. It may not have as many options, guns or ships but it's still much more fun to play. Don't get me wrong though Colony Wars: Vengeance is a great game which makes a good game even better. If you have Colony Wars and liked it, you'll need to play the sequel. If you don't have either, buy Colony Wars: Vengeance, it's a masterpiece in videogaming.
