Master Of Orion 3: Review

For months now, I've been aching for a sprawling space empire game. Thousands of planets, thousands of stars, and a whole shitload of ships. Managing a galaxy is tricky business, but sometimes the need is strong. So, I patiently waited for the release of Master Of Orion 3. Widely heralded as equivalent to the Second Coming - or, uh the Third.. - MOO3 was anticipated to be the best turn based strategy game since sliced bread. Legions of hardcore fans camped outside of Infogrames in small tent cities, cooking wieners and squirrels over open fires, eagerly waiting to be the first people to hijack the shipping trucks for the game. But alas, when the U-hauls were pried open with shovels and pitchforks, the sweet scent of seraphim did not meet the rabid fans. Instead to was the putrid stench of foul decay.

MOO3 sucks. Personally, I had never played a MOO game before, so I had no lofty expectations. I had no idea what the standard was that people expected the game to live up to. I was simply hoping for, say, Civilization III in space. So when I booted the game, I was able to quell my unease with the reassurance that I didn't know anything about the franchise, and that the shitty 3D intro movie I was watching couldn't be representative of the game quality. I justified the poor rendering and sloppy animation by convincing myself that the developers had spent more time on the actual game, leaving frivolous things like intro videos to be completed at a lower quality. Little did I know the poor animation was a harbinger of foul things to come.

After the video and horrible voiceover came to an abrupt end, I was greeted with the game's menu system. I'll say this now, if they had skipped the video, and the first thing to meet my eyes had been the menu, I may not have had growing reservations about the game's quality. While outdated, and in perpetual low resolution, the menu system was simple, relatively slick and easy to use. Which is diametrically opposite to the interface of the actual game. Before I go on about that, I just want to back up and explain what I meant by "perpetual low resolution". In the year 2003 we gamers are blessed with hardware TnL, resolutions of 1600x1200 and up, 64 bits of beautiful colour, and video cards that can render millions of polygons in realtime. Now, I understand that a game doesn't have to be 3D to look good, or be a good game. I really understand that, and I love -many- 2D games. I also know that a game doesn't have to look splendid to be fun (Shadowbane). But on the flipside of that coin, a game doesn't have to look like ass these days. There's really no excuse. And there -certainly- is NO justification for coding a game that can't go beyond 800x600. Especially a SPACE EMPIRE GAME.

Space is generally considered to be very big and, uh, spacious. Planets and stars are also fairly large, with starships coming in last for size, but still at a respectable girth. In 800x600, any mundane menu in the game monopolizes the screen. Personally, I think the utter inefficiency of the screen use is one of the reasons the interface is so.. bad. If you have to compare information in two different menus (Say your finances and your diplomatic relations), you can't simply open two menus and take a look. The process requires you to go on a long, boring journey through the games shoddy interface. Some section of managing your empire can only be found after digging through 3 or 4 levels of menu until you find that skulking button that allows you to complete a simple task. It enough by itself to make you close the game.

If the interface wasn't bad enough, the actual game design is the big nail in this coffin. While you'll find yourself flooded with information, and the illusion that you have mounds of activities to micromanage, you'll rapidly come to understand that your main purpose as the player is to tell a task force (of ships) to go somewhere and do something, and press the 'end turn' button. If you're in a situation where all your task forces are in transit, you'll find yourself pressing the end turn button every minute or so, as you simply spend your actual turn reading situation reports, and engaging in a diplomatic farce (diplomacy is a joke in the game). I'm fully convinced it's possible to win the game simply by pressing the 'end turn' button for a few hours. You aren't really needed for anything. Even diplomacy is unpredictable, and feels automated, as nothing I did seemed to have any impact on what was going to happen. No war that was started against me was because of anything I said, or did. It was simply random. Neither was the end of any war cause by anything I said or did. When someone first declared war on me, I frantically tried to figure out if I had offended them, or invaded their space. After about 50 turns, and 20 concluded wars (In which no ships were engaged), I realized the system was a pile of crap.

I can't review the actual combat in the game, as I was so disappointed with it, I haven't played long enough to get into a fight. But from what I've read in reviews around the 'net, it's nothing special, and follows the same quality level as the rest of the game: "Poor".

I generally don't give really bad reviews of games I buy, because I tend to buy games I know are good. I bought MOO3 based on buzz, slavering fans and a passed reputation for excellence. I never will again. My recommendation: Don't buy this game. Wait for Galactic Civilizations. While it may not be excellent, it really can't be worse than MOO3.

-Landslide

If you have a game that you want reviewed in an honest, no bullshit manner, drop me a line at landslide@warcry.com