DSandberg
Posts: 107
Joined: 6/19/2002 From: MN Status: offline
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I did try the STUN:DG demo (I think it was the one that was on my UV CD). And I'm a big fan of this genre of games (MOO, RTFS, even drek like Malkari and Ascendancy). Although I must say that I'm not sure that STUN fits easily into that genre, which was one of my problems with it (see the end of this article for more on that). First off, I didn't care for the real-time nature of STUN. I like these types of games better when they are mainly turn-based. The demo was definitely too short. I tried it about four times, and never saw anything other than the things defending new planets (spiders, storm clouds, etc.) before the demo timed out. No other empires ever appeared ... at the time I assumed it was because the demo didn't allow enough time for me to expand far enough to make contact with any other empires. Either I haven't seen even a fraction of the types of things that can happen in the game, or else the game is too limited for my taste. (At the risk of repeating myself, I have no idea which of these situations is the actual case because of the severely limited demo length.) Also I feel that a game of this type in this day and age does demand at least somewhat more in the way of graphics than what STUN:DG offers. The things defending planets (spiders, storm clouds, etc.) were really pretty cheezy in my book ... I was reminded more of Pac-Man than of Star Wars. Another post in this thread described these graphics as comparable to RFTS, but if they were talking about the version of RFTS from a year or two back rather than the one from the 80's, I think they were being far too generous. I'd rather look at still-frame renders of detailed, impressive, beautiful spaceships than the 2D icon-like graphics I mostly saw in this demo. Finally, and here is the big one ... judging from the demo, STUN:DG felt like a game to me, not a simulation. Most space-based 4X games make some sort of effort to portray a universe that is somewhat scientifically justifiable ... I think that sense of reality, even a pseudo-futuristic made-up reality, is important to the type of people who enjoy games in this genre. The STUN:DG demo felt less like that and more like Pac-Man or Doom to me ... it was just "kill the ever-present, unexplainable planet defender and collect the power-up", and repeat ad infinum. Again, the demo length could be partially to blame for that perception, but I suspect it's true to at least some extent of the game as a whole. So, there's my opinion ... make of it what you will. - David
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