Starshatter - Ultimate Space Combat Demo

Space may be vast and somewhat infinite, but it is never enough for those who nurture hatred for their enemies. Hence, war extends outside the planets as well, or at least it does in science fiction novels, movies and video games. To accommodate the conditions of outer space, the ships must be equipped to resist extreme temperatures and close encounters with small asteroids, but they also need to stay in one piece after being hit by an enemy vessel.

Starshatter – Ultimate Space Combat is a flight simulator that concerns itself with the combat aspect, rather than accurate flight models or believable aerodynamics. Thus, it all revolves around your ability to destroy the enemy ships and walk away from the fight intact, using every weapon at your disposal to do so. Hence, even if space is massive, you do not get to explore it too much, nor marvel at its beauties in-between dogfights.

The game features quite the large selection of spaceships, some of which are quite big and difficult to put down, unless you take them by surprise and disable their defenses before they get a chance to retaliate. Beside frigates, which are rather light and mobile, you can also stumble into destroyers, cruisers or carriers, which are significantly larger and they pack a mean punch.

Whenever you decide to start a mission, the game puts a wide amount of information at your disposal regarding the objectives and the enemies that you should be prepared to face along the way. You also get to see the ship you will be using and various data about it, although you can only make sense of it after you get on board and turn the wheel a few times to get a read on the handling.

As you might expect, the aerodynamic aspect of flight is almost entirely neglected, in the case of the missions that take place in the atmosphere, where the air should put a bit of a fight. However, everything gets better once you get into space, since that's where the laser battles belong and where most of the scenarios take you. Moreover, there's also a bit of RTS to talk about, since you sometimes get to control an entire fleet at once and direct every ship in the desired location.

In the end, Starshatter – Ultimate Space Combat can be a fun experience, as long as you enjoy space skirmishes and you do not really mind the lack of realism involved in them. The graphics are quite nice and there's plenty to admire along the way.