Yager Demo

Futuristic flight simulators are not exactly a successful sub-genre in the industry, given the fact that there are very few of them and not a lot of diversity to begin with. However, if you expand the definition by a little bit, it may be also possible to integrate titles like Freelancer, or the Freespace saga, which make the genre carry some weight all of a sudden.

Yager is a curious contraption that attempts to mix intense aerial dogfights, arcade flight mechanics, and the usual corporate war that has reached global proportions. However, the game manages to do of these things and stay fun at the same time, by coating the entire experience in a layer of humor and making it very easy to handle for everyone, beginner or not.

As far as the plot is concerned, there are two big corporations that hold domain over most of the territories around the world, even if countries and borders haven’t existed for quite some time. Proteus and DST are bitter rivals, which means that they are constantly battling for various reasons. As it happens you play the role of Magnus Tide, a mercenary hired by the Proteus to help them repel DST’s attacks.

When you first find yourself up in the air and among enemy ships, your first thought is probably going to go to the control layout, because it is highly intuitive and you can learn how to steer the ship in a matter of seconds. The controls are responsive and immediate, while the machine itself still respects some basic inertia and gravity laws, just barely.

Lastly, it must be mentioned that the game impressed everyone with its graphics quality at the time of its release, especially when it comes to the open environments and the highly-detailed ships. The rest of the technical aspect is refined as well, with professional voice acting done for the characters and a nice soundtrack to maintain the atmosphere at a steady pace throughout the game.

In the end, Yager may not have sold too many copies when it was first released, but that certainly wasn’t because it didn’t deserve it. The gameplay is nice, the visuals are top-notch, and on top of that, the futuristic setup makes it that much easier to get on board with the whole arcade approach to the flight model.