Tachyon: The Fringe

Herald rating: * * * *

Novalogic

G8

PC $99.95

Review: Peter Eley

Space-combat sims have been dominated by offshoots of screen giants Star Wars and Star Trek, with the former coming out tops in movies and games.

Tachyon challenges that gal-actic supremacy with a solid space game — both single and multiplayer — that is enjoyable and challenging without boldly going where no game has gone before.

It's not a universe-conquering god game but an out-and-out combat game set among the stars.

Tachyon is very much a mid-level game. No need to control multiple galaxies, or learn any complex keyboard skills — it's dead simple to pick up, the ships are easy to fly and it's a lot of fun.

The graphics aren't cutting-edge but are good enough not to spoil the experience. Some of the backgrounds are spectacular, especially the swirling, violet nebulae, beautifully detailed planets and settings such as space stations and giant clusters of wrecked spaceships.

But space in general appears as one great big black hole, and can get quite monotonous. Then again, that's what it may look like, anyway.

And if you don't like it, there's an automatic waypoint button which gets you straight from base to combat without any actual flying.

Ships and characters are nicely modelled, and there's a wide variety of both, and lots of interesting weapons which you can buy with credits earned from completing missions.

The main man is ace pilot Jake Logan, who is framed for a crime he didn't commit and banished to the outlaw world of Tachyon, where he becomes a gun for hire.

Logan gets caught up in the fallout from conflict between two races, the Galspan and the Bora, and from there on follows a linear plot with a predictable storyline.

But as the main focus is flying spaceships and fighting in them, that's not much of a problem.

Logan himself comes across as an interesting character, mainly because of some excellent voiceovers from Bruce Campbell of Xena and Evil Dead fame.

E-mail: peter_eley@herald.co.nz