Reviews

Review by Kaitlyn all reviews by Kaitlyn

ArchMageZeratul\'s Lord of the Stars, a space shooter roughly based after the events and characters from the Lord of the Ring movie / book series, is easily the most polished game of Tins \'05. In fact, one can hardly believe such a game was made in a single weekend. However, despite a pretty finish, deep down this game suffers from its own design flaws.

As soon as the player starts Lord of the Stars, they will be absolutely blown away by the presentation of this game. Starting from the main menu straight out of star trek, to the game play with professional looking sprites, this game seems extremely well put together for a single weekend.

The music and sound are also crafted well. However, the music, the Lord of the Rings theme, seems to fit the menu well, but not the actual game play. The rhythm of this piece seems too slow for space combat. However, despite the questionable choice for a musical score, the graphics and sounds are simply amazing.

Unfortunately, good graphics and sound don\'t necessarily make a game great. The two biggest problems with Lord of the Stars are its controls and difficulty.

When the player starts the game, they are greeted with a keyboard-driven menu. This will confuse most players since the main game is designed to use the mouse. Without reading the readme, I never would have known that the mouse was enabled in the game.

Over complexity is another problem with the controls. Although the game implements moving the ship up and down perfectly, the shooting system is complicated and frustrating. The game assigns each enemy a color, and the player must match that color via scrolling around a bar-shaped color wheel. The main problem arises from the game being too fast pace and the color selection system too slow. ArchMageZeratul could have fixed this problem in one of two ways: either by simplifying the enemies to two or three colors that are easily switchable, or by implementing a bullet-time feature in which the player can easily pause or slow down the game while selecting a new color.

The difficulty also requires more tweaking. Although levels one through three are challenging enough, most players will not be able to pass levels four through nine. Of course, this could be due simply lacking the time to properly play-test the game.

The game itself is a parody of Lord of the Rings. More specifically, the game focuses on the characters from the movie and exaggerates their portrayals and motivations. Even the stats of the very ships they pilot are somewhat related to their personalities. ArchMageZeratul should be applauded for his transposition of fictional characters into the inanimate specifications of star ships.

The entire game\'s overall feel is a mix between Gradius, Star Trek, and Tron. Based in space, the game alludes to a future of cyber pop-culture and fantasy. ArchMageZeratul uses the absurdity of the dialog between the characters to explore and critique not only Lord of the Rings, but also human communications in general. All the characters relate to each other in a completely different manor in an effort to explore the way language effects perception and vice versa.

The game sort of meets all the requirements for Tins \'05. ArchMageZeratul included four unlockable ships, implemented a sine wave blaster, and made the game a parody of Lord of the Rings among other things. However, his ?troll ships? look more like beetles than trolls. Besides, a ship that looks like a troll is not actually a troll anyways. However, at the very least, an effort was made to include trolls within the game, and bad art aside, it\'s close enough.

In the end, players will enjoy Lord of the Stars for its polished graphics and sound, and the game experience as a whole. However, a few design flaws keep Lord of the Stars from showing its true potential. If nothing else, this is a stunning example of what can be done in a single weekend.

Scores: Overall 3 Artistical 5 Technical 4 Genre 4