The Let's Play Archive

Colony Wars Trilogy

by Lunethex

Part 16: Colony Wars Red Sun Episode 1 - Magenta System

Update 16 - New Kids on the Block


Colony Wars Red Sun Episode 1 - Magenta System
Valdemar, a hapless nobody and former miner is contacted by a man utilizing some kind of alien tech and is told to track down the Red Sun, a starship that would decide the fate of the human race better than the war between the League and the Navy could. He quits his job and joins a mercenary guild, taking on military contracts for money to support himself in the search for truth and the objectives given by his phantom general...

This game does a lot of things I do not like. It changes the scope and scale we've been used too drastically and while it's kind of cute, gameplay-wise, the change from the war story aspect is ultimately what had me say this game was no good back in the day. What I definitely didn't remember was how piss easy this game was. When I say I camp the spawn points in almost every mission from now on, that flares and regular missiles are useless, I meant it. I like the idea of maintaining your ship, buying new ships, buying new weapons, and of course having my combat rating tracked, but you can tell there were some blanket changes made just after the first hub. The big thing is that you don't even have to worry about heat management after getting the first new ship, and that's with three lasers (I'M GONNA KEEP SAYING IT )and a lot of missions require you to be way too fast to screw with missiles or locking on when I can just hit X about 20 times really fast and kill an entire field of dudes and their puny "capital" ships.

The loss of proportion and scale is also a huge issue for me. All the fleet ships are tiny and the fighter craft are all over the place, each one like 1/5th or 1/3rd the scale of the fleet craft which should be looming over them. Oh well. At least I don't have to worry about any Navy or League status in this game and can just shoot whoever I want.

At least, for the most part