Colony Wars III: Red Sun

"The TRUTH about Colony Wars 3!!"

Yes, that’s right, this is the TRUTH about this horrid game! Read on if you actually want to save your 30 bucks on buying this coaster! I even spell checked this for you guys, but you aren't worth a grammar check! Hah!!

To start off, I wanted to say I really enjoyed the first Colony Wars, and I've never even seen Colony Wars 2 available in my area. Everything was really neat about it. Blah blah...also, I will be comparing this game(lightly, though) to the most fantastic space simulator ever, Descent: Freespace. Although this game is for the PC, who's restrictions are not anywhere near as tight as PSX, the folks who made this game tried their darndest to make a rip off of Freespace, and deserve to be judged accordingly.

GRAPHICS:

Not ridiculously fantastic, but are somewhat good. Large craft's detail levels will abruptly change as you get closer to one, but I suppose that could not be avoided. Effects like lasers aren't to bad either. I suppose overall the graphics are just average. Explosions suck...the opposite of Colony Wars' explosions, which were too fragmenting and blocky, Red Sun uses small bursts to represent explosions, no flaming debris or anything. The capital ship explosions are a bit better, though. Also, the capital ships are way to small, you may be able to fit at most 20 of your ships into the largest capital ship.
That brings me to another bad point, your pilotable ships are so UGLY! If they were larger they would make nice cargo ships, but not fighters. Well, all except one, the
second to the last ship you get looks pretty cool, the final ship accessible when you reach the rank of Grandmaster(the ''secret'' ship looks the worst...) Oh, and the cutscenes are very well done, but very boring, except the shootout between you, your female companion, and a gang of EVIL ALIENS. That was really cool. Valdemar, responding
to the last surviving alien's request--''Wrong answer!'' BAM! It was just cool. However, you can never replay these cutscenes as far as I know.

STORY...and other stuff, too:

Ugh! OK, this is what goes down. Just as in the first Colony Wars titles, the League of Free Worlds is at war with the Empire(their full title I don't even know) until a big bad alien race comes in who's goals are limited to killing all humans. You play as Valdemar(I think) who has been ''chosen'' to fight against these aliens or something like that, it doesn't really matter. The point is that the plot of this game is totally ripped off from the aforementioned Freespace. If you have played Freespace, you have seen the entire plot of Colony Wars 3, I mean beginning, middle, AND end. What is worse is the
way that this plot is delivered......as you progress through the game, multiple missions are offered to you. As your role as a mercenary, you are hired for many things, all mostly ''kill everything'' missions. The problem is that while you are fighting other planets wars, the game never makes it clear how much the main EVIL ALIEN campaign is, so you never really care what happens. What is worse is that you never know anything about who's side you are on, and never will you care. It would be nice to see some kind of
information database that included information(obviously) about the ships and planets and companies you've encountered, also species, too(are they ALL human? who
knows...? Well, I don't think those jellyfish things you encounter are human...) If there was such a thing as this, you could research about a company that wants to hire you to, say, exterminate some rebellion, you could decide against this as you don't like what the company stands for. You choosing missions has absolutely no impact on what will happen to you in the future, and that just plain sucks. What else is stupid is how in one mission you'll be fighting against some group, but in the next you will be hired by the same company you were attacking to kill your former allies. How much sense does that make?? Don’t those guys recognize that YOU were the one that just slaughtered their whole fleet? GGahh!! I'm getting verklempt!!


Difficulty:

One word: Nonexistent. Anyone can breeze through this game in 2 or three evenings. The enemy AI is so horrible, sometimes they literally won't even shoot at you, and if they do, it will just be a few short bursts. Rarely are you accompanied by AI wingmen, but if you do, they will be immediately massacred by not moving to avoid large ship gunfire. It makes no sense...you are usually sent alone to kill dozens of enemy craft...it's not realistic at all. This is balanced out by the fact that your ship is the equivalent of an Omnigear,and you are going against a band of children armed with sticks and clubs. 15 seconds or
so of continuous gunfire will wipe out pretty much ANY large vessel(overheating? They tried to make that an element but failed, as rarely does it happen). At least you can target the turrets on a ship, which can remarkable be destroyed individually without completely destroying the ships shields. However, the tactic of disarming a large ship is used in only one mission(and your IDIOT wingmen attack the ship while your capture ship is EVACUATING the HOSTAGES on board, like they were too cheap to change the ships orders. I had to kill my wingmen to keep the from blowing up that ship, and it was destroyed by the rescue ship seconds after it undocked...)and every other time it is
useless...by the time you get around to disarming a large ship it will be so severely damages a few more shots will do it, and if you miss the turrets and continue to fire the
ship will blow before you are done.

VARIETY:

Actually, pretty good. As you progress you can use bigger and better weaponry and ships. However, due to the ease of the game, unique weapons such as shield and hull
lasers are useless, as by the time you knock out shields and switch to hull lasers, they would have been wasted in seconds with regular hull/shield all purpose lasers. By the
time you actually lock on, fire, and hit a target with Shield missiles, they would have been killed thrice with normal weapons. The variety is welcome but useless in every
way, shape and form. They even tried to throw certain equipment that are useful for maybe one or two missions, and are never useful again, like the decloaker missile. For
mission variety, its not too bad. Sometimes you fight over land, sometimes in space, sometimes in subspace, but mission goals almost always narrowed down to kill everything
except your allies, and after awhile you get so powerful that isn't even fun. There are no suprises that you will find, except for three in-mission ones, neither I will mention, but if you play the game you will recognize them. Never will you find depth or complexity of any mission that require certain unorthodox tactics like in Freespace, making the ride a boring one. Another bad point that goes hand in hand with the fact that, no matter which
or how many missions you choose to accept, it has no effect on what will happen on a later mission or event. This point is that there isn't a branching storyline. Now, some say this is good, and that their tiny, feeble minds can't comprehend the ''complexity'' of the branching mission diagrams that was in the original Colony Wars. I cant believe how many other reviewers agreed with this idiocy! In Colony Wars, you can screw up a mission, but then be introduced to a whole new set of missions you've never encountered before! What is wrong with that variety and gameplay?? I can't BELIEVE the folks who made this game listened to that garbage and made every single mission available without the player having to put out any effort WHATSOEVER. It really makes me want to cry.

SOUND:

Now, the music here is ridiculously good. When you first begin the game you will be amazed how good the music track is, but it is simply too good for some of those missions. The music is something out of Star Wars, with awesome, dramatic, orchestral wonders, but most of the time they are too dramatic to fit the boring mission you are playing. The sound FX aren't too bad, either.

FINALE:

Renting this game will quench your murderous Id's taste for killing for an afternoon or so with it's mindless, pointless explosions, but DO NOT BUY! You will hate yourself forever, unless you are, of course, one of those GOONS who thought the original Colony Wars was so difficult that they couldn't beat it(that game was a bit challenging but not THAT easy! c'mon!!)then buy and play it forever and ever and ever. I hope my newly developed carpal tunnel syndrome I got from typing this is worth it to keep some of the brighter generation from buying this, so they wont have to crumble it and roll it up into a big fat doobie to smoke it, and it doesn't even give you the trip you deserve for having to play it.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/17/00, Updated 07/17/00