"A truely under recognized classic"

Darklight Conflict is a good space shooter released in 1997 by EA. It didn't sell well or get much attention, despite glowing reviews by magazines like PCGamer and boot. It's hard to come by through the legal channels now, and it's a DOS game, meaning no go for Windows 2k or XP users unless you have VMWare running Windows 98.

The basic story is that you're a human fighter pilot abducted in modern times by aliens called the Reptons to fight their war with the Ovons in the distant future. No, it's not the best storyline, but there's not enough of it to really detract from blowing things up, and that's the real fun here.

The game's controls are very simple. So simple, in fact, that i hesitate to call it a sim. This is more of an action shooter. Pitch and yaw are on the arrow keys, holding control changes them to roll and afterburner (neither of which I used very often). Throttle is handled by control+up/down arrows or the number keys (which I also didn't use much). Other than that, spacebar fires one of up to three primary weapons and alt fires your rather pitiful secondary weapon. If you're in a situation where you need the secondary weapon, though, you're pretty well dead already.

As for the weapons, there isn't very many of them, but they run quite a range. There's all the standards: Fast firing lasers, the slower but more powerful plasma cannon, very powerful but hard-to-use fragmentation grenades (these can take out five or six enemy fighters if you hit it right, but if you get it wrong, they can take out a capitol ship you're supposed to defend in one blast), dumbfire and heat seeking missiles, and a small variety of bombs.

One downside is that the game isn't really one for balance. All of the various ships you get to pilot can carry all the weapons (although the missions usually limit you to the ones that make sense, and leave out the ones you really want), and they're not all that different. There are several fighters, all of which handle almost exactly the same, and a bomber which is a bit harder to turn and easier to get hit. Other than that, however, it fires four with primary weapons as opposed to the two that most fighters shoot. This effectively makes the bomber more of a heavy fighter. It also has an auto-firing turret with its own laser cannon, so it has some staying power in a dogfight - something most sim fans may not be comfortable with in a bomber. The only ship that does handle differently is during missions where you're placed in a stationary gun turret. These things can't move, and turn differently than regular ships. It can be a real pain to fight in one of these, especially since they can only fire through one hemisphere of rotation.

The gameplay varies by each mission. Most of them are the standard "destroy everything that isn't marked in green on radar." This is very easy, since the HUD has three arrows on it. One of them always points to the nearest enemy, one to the nearest ally, and one to the nearest objective point (a large ship you have to destroy, protect, or a subspce portal to fly through). All objects in the battle are also have targeting marks on them with the same colors, and have a lead indicator even if they aren't the unit targeted. This is a bit nicer than, for example, Freespace 2, where you can easily loose track of enemy and allied units when both sides have the same types of ships, as only the currently targeted object has these indicators in the HUD.

Other missions include defending capitol ships, bombing capitol ships, and a very unique mission where you have to deflect comets that are on a collision course with your captiol ship. There's also in infiltration mission where you take an enemy fighter on a spy mission, but your cover gets blown before you even get there, and it turns into a "blow up everything" mission very quickly.

Another point where balance is off is capitol ships. You defend several of them in the game. Repton capitol ships and space stations are small, spindly things with lots of parts that break off in a stiff breeze. The flagship, Wardrum, reminds me more of something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey than a high-tech sci-fi space ship. They have a nice big gun, and a few small turrets (which tend to get shot off in the first two minutes of a fight), but they don't have any staying power in a fight. The good thing about these ships is that a lot of attention to detail went into them. All of them have multiple parts that can be destroyed independent of the ship itself: radar dishes, solar panels, gun turrets, etc. On the downside, destroying them doesn't really accomplish much, and you can usually just drop a few missiles on their engines and kill the whole thing faster than you can kill their guns. There is one time when you get to defend a large and powerful space station, but it should be noted that it's owned by a neutral race, and really only serves to emphasize the fact that you're probably not on the most advanced side of this war.

On the other end of the spectrum are the enemy capitol ships. These things are big, sleek, and powerful. A fighter doesn't have a hope to destroy one alone, and although a bomber can take one out in one or two passes, it'll have a hard time surviving their many powerful guns. Their space stations are even bigger, sleeker, have even more guns, and usually have capitol ships inconveniently close at hand.

The graphics and sound are quite good by 1997 standards. All the ships are fully 3D and textured, and they explode very nicely. Rather than the 2D pre-rendered explosions that were standard in most games in 1997, Darklight Conflict uses particle effects. They look much more like real fire than the older explosion effects, but they also weren't quite spectacular enough. Large ships don't go out with a blaze of glory, but more of a gentle fizzle of mediocrity.

If you like action-based shooters, but don't go in for the complexity of a sim, this game is definitely for you. If you're more into realism and balance, then pass this one up for one of the Wing Commander games or Freespace 2.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/04