Shooter: Starfighter Sanvein

"The only problem is it's too short!"

I picked up this game a couple of years ago now for about AU$20 as a budget release, and it's the most value for money I think I've ever gotten out of a game.

The plot isn't really important to the game, but you get the main thrust of it from the pretty cool intro video and short text in the manual; A long time ago, a bunch of people created a new space colony, St Shutz, to be a perfect place to live. Now, years later, you are part of a group trying to escape from the oppression of St Shutz. Whether this oppression comes from a bad guy or some sentient computer is unclear, but like I said, it doesn't really matter.

Graphics
Well, the graphics aren't anything to write home about. They're quite competent for the Playstation, and I've seen full-price titles with worse graphics, but don't expect anything super flashy.

Sound
The sounds are OK, but again, nothing too special. They're fairly repetitive, but you're usually too busy to notice. As for music, well there's hardly any music at all, except for the intro video, which has a tense and thumping dance track behind it, and after defeating bosses, when you get a kind of ambient drumming. However, the lack of music only helps to make you feel more isolated and tense. In a good way.

Gameplay
This game doesn't play quite like anything else I've seen. The colony is broken up into areas called, ''Floors'', and each floor consists of many hexagonal ''rooms''. There are two kinds of rooms in Sanvein; Normal rooms and Boss rooms.

Selecting which rooms you clear, and in which order, requires some strategy. In Sanvein, you don't have energy or lives, but a countdown timer. Fighting enemies naturally takes time, and getting hit also decreases your clock by 90 seconds on normal difficulty. Run out of time, and it's game over. Time is added to your timer when you clear Boss rooms and Floor Bosses.

To finish a floor, it is only necessary to clear all of the Boss rooms, which leads to a showdown with the Floor Boss. You can only move into a room from a previously cleared room, so you can't just clear only the Boss rooms, you must make your way across the map from your entry point through the normal rooms, which are ranked from 1-6 depending on the difficulty of the enemies they contain.

So why would you bother to clear any normal rooms except to get around the floor to the Boss rooms? Because that's how you powerup your ship! You start the game with one of three primary weapons, and one of three secondary weapons, which cover the usual spread/strength tradeoffs that shoot-'em-up fans will know well. However, you do not collect powerups during the game - the strength of your weapons in any given room depends on how many of the surrounding rooms you have cleared. So is it worth the precious seconds to clear one more room next to that Boss room, or should you just go straight in now?

As for combat within the rooms, the ships handle well (Your ship's speed is linked to your primary weapon), and when shooting your ship is pushed back, which makes it a little hard to move and fire simultaneously at first, but can be turned to your advantage once you get the hang of it. Combat takes place on a 2D plane, shown by a kind of heads-up computer display overlaid onto the level background. There aren't any strafe buttons, but I didn't miss them. In fact, the game would probably be less enjoyable with strafe buttons.

Replayability
I still pull this game out and play it from time to time, but frankly, it's replayability is fairly low unless you really love the concept of a strategy-fighter mix like this (I do). The secret ''extra'' options are only modifiers for how much time bonus you get for defeating bosses and the colour of explosions, things like that. There may be a semi-hidden ending sequence, as it feels like there should be one, but I have yet to finish the game on Normal difficulty.

Buy or rent? I think you'd be unlikely to find this for rent anywhere. With only five floors, and despite a fairly steep learning curve (but not overly so), this is probably not a game that you will be playing for more than a week to finish for the first time. But considering the price, in my opinion it's definitely worth buying, just to show your friends the best Playstation game that no-one has ever heard of.

Now, if you threw in a bit more story, an adventure/exploration slant, made it a bit longer... that would be a really kickass game. Where's Sanvein Saga for PS2? ;)

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/03, Updated 06/03/03