"Hot-headed PHD tries to achieve the impossible with frustrating results."

Game: Battle Cruiser 3000 AD

Creator: Derek Smart, 3000 AD

System Recommendations: 300mhz PII will keep things running smooth even during large battles. 64 megs should be enough ram.

Price: $12 dollars at the EB.

In A Nutshell: Quantity alone never equals quality. Unfortunetly for BC3K, quantity is just about the only thing this game has. And if the information overload doesn't kill you, the horrible interface and pointless gameplay will.

Presentation: 4
Nice box. The packaged manual is nothing more then an overgrown reference card. The real manual is on the CD, but you'll be doing alot of printing (about 170 pages worth) because there is no on-line help in the game. Also, the manual on the CD hasn't been updated since earlier versions of the game, so it gives you some false information (like how you can orbit a planet by selecting it and hitting the ''o'' key).

Introduction: 3
Confusing, and ultimately pointless (like the game itself). Opens with what looks like a Battle Cruiser flying through an asteroid belt whilest a really pissed off guy sings (or rather screams) about how he's going to ''blow you away,'' and ''take you away,'' and ''fill you with holes,'' and ''burn your soul.'' It does have nice beat, though.
The movie ends with a nuke being armed, a pilot screaming as his fighter crashes into a space station, and then the credits begin to roll.
Fascinating...

Graphics: 6 (7 with 3dfx)
Rather primitive, but on the flip side of that they keep the game's system requirements down low. Still, you'll want to play this on nothing less then a 200mhz PII. BC3K looks pretty good with 3dfx, and cruising around space stations and planets in a fighter is a pretty awe inspiring experience (atleast for the first 10 minutes). Ship designs vary from creative and/or practical (like your Battle Cruiser), to unimaginative and/or impractical. The ''talking heads'' for the characters (pilots, bridge crew, aliens, etc.) look horrible. You can literaly count the pixels on their faces. They must be left overs from the games development at Take 2.

Music: 2
Almost non-existant. You can barely hear it, and what you can hear sounds horrible.

Sound: 4
Bland. The voices of your crew quickly become annoying. They sound more like programers and accountants then real officers. Other sounds, like the firing of lasers and the launching of missles are also lifeless and mundane.

Story/Setting: 2
There is no story. You're the captain of a Battle Cruiser. You can be nice, or you can be bad. You can choose to fly a campaign, but the missions are boring, and there doesn't seem to be any real point to them. While playing the game you'll be introduced to some of the most uninspired and cliche' alien races ever to grace your hard drive. The evil Gamulons, for example, look as if they were beamed straight out of a 1950's B movie, complete with red skin, glowing yellow eyes, and (!) two horns on the top of their heads
(BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!)
No explanation is given for why they're so hostile, other then that they hail from a very ''cruel and aggresive'' culture. Oh! How original!

Gameplay: 3 (7 if you're a hard-core Sci-Fi fan with too much time on your hands)
Where to begin? There's so much wrong with this game. I'm at a loss as to where to start. It's so big that I'll have to split it up.

Interface: 2
Any one who has read anything about this game (besides what Mr. Smart has written about it) knows that the interface for BC3K is, in a word, ''crappy.'' Crappy as in illogical placement of commands. Crappy as in there are menus within menus within menus. Crappy as in it takes you 15 minutes just to figure out how to teleport a guy onto a planet, and then another 15 minutes to figure how to teleport him back up (actually, my first attempt at teleportation ended with an entire team of marines dieing in the cold depths of space because I couldn't figure out how to get them back aboard my ship).

Combat: 6
Confusing (although it has at times gotten my adreniline pumping). So many things happening at once. So little
time to sort them all out before you're dead. Unless you're God or Derek Smart you'll basicly launch your fighters, turn on your battle cruiser's turrets, and hope that the ship you're firing missles at is an enemy. Combat is difficult to enjoy because you rarely see what you're killing. The fact that your huge battle cruiser handles just like a regular fighter is absurd. When you see a kilometer long capital ship dogfighting with a 20 meter long light fighter you know there's something very wrong with the games realism. Still, after a few hours of dieing you'll get the hang of it, and combat does eventually become somewhat exciting.
The enemy AI is formidable, and thankfully your battle cruiser isn't the be all and end all of warships. It has
it's weaknesses, and it's quite easy to bite off more then you can chew. Strategy and patience are required to win a battle against an equal or superior foe. This is one of the few parts of the game that I like.

Everything in Between: 5
A mixed bag. The universe truely is huge, but there's no real point in exploring it because you don't get anything out of it (except for a smoldering battle cruiser if you get too deep into enemy territory). This truely is a program
designed by a PHD. You admire Mr. Smart's technichal skillz (and his seemingly endless dedication to what is quite literaly his lifes work), and hate the actual game.
Your crew is lifeless, without personality. The majority of them are nothing more then blips on your personnel screen.
Even the officers and pilots with their ugly character portraits are nothing more then code in a .dat file. Of course everything in everygame is really nothing more then code, but other games cover up for this by giving these lines of code ''real'' character traits. Desires. Ambitions. Quirks. None of your crew have any of these desperately needed traits. Being the commander of your battle cruiser quickly becomes a very lonely job, despite the fact that you have 150 subordinates buzzing around.

Conclusion:
In the end, BC3K demands too much time to be enjoyed. It takes 8 real-world hours for a mining drone to fill up completely. Who the hell has time for something like that!? More importantly, who the hell would want to spend their time on something like that!?
I can only recommend this game to people who, quite frankly, have no life. Battle Cruiser is a technological wonder, folks. It is NOT a game. It is something to be looked at. Studied. Admired for it's brilliance--and the brilliance of the intelligent, egotistical jerk who made it. But I won't be responsible for the consequences if you actually try to play it.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/01/00, Updated 06/01/00