Monday 24-Nov-2003 3:28 PM Released in Europe this Friday, here's movies, screens, and our considered impressions of this eighties TV show spin-off What are we to make of this space oddity? Battlestar Galactica is most notable for being mentioned by pub-quiz geeks (like us) as the film and TV show where Dirk Benedict cut his professional teeth before turning up as the supposedly suave one in The A Team.
Under the circumstances, you could be forgiven for harbouring low expectations, but as it is Battlestar Galactica actually seems to be a sturdy enough game. Probably not the mightiest compliment developer Warthog was hoping for, but our reservation is that while there's much here to enjoy, we were never really blown away by the game.
Set 40 years before the happenings of the TV show, you play some bright-eyed young hayseed of an ensign called William Adama, who spends most of his time aiming photon death at the repellant hordes of despicable space vermin otherwise known as the Cylons. Which, let's face it, isn't a bad way to spend your time.
The aforementioned Benedict actually crops up doing voice work, along with his A Team mate Dwight Schultz, the cut price Jim Carrey type who played Murdoch in the show.
Also present on voice-over duties are Richard Hatch (Apollo in the original movie) and that Kristanna Loken missy who attempted to out-terminate Arnie this summer in Rise of the Machines.
The action begins with your mothership - the eponymous Battlestar Galactica - under attack from dreaded 'Lons. So you nip around in your nifty little craft - there's a total of five spaceships to pilot as the game unfolds - shooting six kinds of buggery out of those lousy intergalactic scum before repairing for a well deserved mug of space cocoa, and it's all rather fun.
This is a straightforward sci-fi flavoured dog-fight of the sort you've probably seen a fair few times before, and it's all done proficiently enough here. The crackle of Cylons speaking their indecipherable mechanical language is a nice touch, and the action is well paced enough so that you have time to come to grips with the controls before the bad guys start really kicking ass.
Capturing an enemy craft in your sights and consigning the boorish fellow to a laser-based end is satisfying enough, but there are also various missiles to do the job with.
If you take too much damage, lay off the lasers for a while and your ship's energy source will gradually rebuild your shields. And there are also some clever manoeuvres that will serve to get you out of trouble, such as the quick about face turn.
The design of the Galactica ships doesn't have the impact of those found in the Star Wars universe, and in many ways Battlestar Galactica reminds us of a less spectacular Rogue Leader.
Quite how excited a generation of Xbox and PS2 gamers are going to be about a videogame based on a dodgy TV show that ended before some of them were born is, of course, another matter entirely. Course, what we're really waiting for is an updated version of Blake's 7...
Battlestar Galactica is set to blast off in Europe on Xbox and PS2 from November 28.
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