![]() ![]() Players battle through missions that gradually increase in difficulty, trying to complete bounties that’ll let you add more Imperial ships into your fleet. The only mode currently available to play in Starfighter, dubbed “Last Stand”, provided an excellent slice of what gameplay may be like in the final version of the game. Once you run out of fighters, however, it’s game over. Luckily, if you meet an unfortunate end -which you certainly will – the game pauses and gives you the chance to jump directly into the cockpit of a nearby friendly fighter, which acts as a quasi-respawn system. I really felt the pull to keep taking on just one more mission, even if they all too often ended with me accidentally ramming my interceptor head-on into an enemy frigate. Some of the more teeth-gritting engagements I played were filled with a dozen ships all trying to murder each other with lasers, cannons and missiles. Regardless of the limited ship configurations in the pre-alpha, it can be thrilling to dart around during a dogfight with opposing fighters, or line up bombing runs on a capital ship. One of the two classes of fighters available in the preview build is literally nothing more than a bunch of high-powered guns strapped to an equally high-powered engine, with a few thin sheets of armor bolted to the fuselage, while the other is a more general purpose ship that may be tougher, but doesn’t quite have as much devastating firepower. Your ship controls are straightforward and switching between targets or weapons in your arsenal is a smooth enough process, but once you get into your first sortie, it’s easy to forget that you’re piloting one of the smallest ships in the Imperial fleet. Despite the simplistic setting of the game, you can hardly say the same about the nuances of Starfighter‘s gameplay. There’s not much story behind Enemy Starfighter other than it’s setting: You’re a pilot waging a guerrilla war against the enemies of the Empire jumping from solar system to solar system and blasting as many hostile ships out of the sky as you can. Despite playing a “pre-alpha” build, with many features still under construction or yet to be implemented, the flight hours I logged with Starfighter were both gratifying and punishing to say the least, and left me eager to see what Tipul has planned next. With a visual aesthetic that seems to be inspired by the classic strategy title Homeworld, Enemy Starfighter almost plays like a first-person version of the same game, letting you get right into the action behind the controls of your own starfighter while issuing orders to other ships within your small fleet. This was my first experience with Enemy Starfighter, an upcoming space sim by Marauder Interactive, a one-man game company founded by Mike Tipul, whose credentials include work on The Saboteur and Halo Reach. With my fighter’s formidable weaponry, I’m confident they will be easy pickings, so I hit the accelerator and prepare to engage.Ĭut to about thirty seconds later where, after an intense and unexpected burst of enemy fire, my fighter is spiraling out of control and the screen cuts sharply to black as my ship explodes around me. Once I arrive, I get a clear view of the situation there’s nothing more than a trio of lightly armored Federation corvettes standing guard over a green-hued planet. I pick a starting point, hold down my warp button and, with a loud rumble, I’m thrown at high speed towards my first target. From my vantage point, my HUD displays various blue and orange icons spread out among the system, representing the presence of enemy forces in the system which are in dire need of blowing up. ![]() The only sounds filling my ears are my pilot’s slow rhythmic breathing and the comms chatter of a trainer walking me through the basic controls. I’m floating a hundred or so astronomical units outside a solar system backlit by a glowing orange nebula, at the helm of a nimble House Nuall interceptor.
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