Space Simulation Game Reviews

HellbendeR's HUD, ship firing RFL's shooting a Bion space ship. Top right is the mission director compass. Below that is the mission map which you can zoom into or out to see the entire map area. Below the map are (right to left) Weapons Power, Main Ship Power, Shield Power. On the left you see the Hull Condition, Throttle Setting, Turbo Boost power guages. Top left is a status display that switches from status display to weapons display. There is a navigation computer that appears just above the indicators on the bottom left. The navigation computer tells you about your mission objectives. You can not move on to the next level until all objectives are completed on the current level.

HellbendeR by Microsoft is a new generation of space simulation originally based on the concept of Fury 3. Although HellbendeR has the same fast paced action and smooth feel as Fury 3, don't be fooled by the looks, HellbendeR is not the same game as Fury 3. It is based on the same concept of the "Bions" trying to rule the universe and one person (YOU) are the only thing that stands between them and complete domination. While certain things carried over to the new HellbendeR ship other things have been highly modified. No more need to find your "turbo power" or shields because the Hellbender ship generats its own if given enough time. You are also required to transfer the HellbendeR's main power over to either weapons or shields. You can find power boosts for your ship or you can just stay out of harm's way until your ship can generate enough power to do the job.

Turbo boost power is a separate thing which is generated by the HellbendeR's power system.

Even hull damage will eventually be repaired by the HellbendeR if given enough time. There are hull repair robots that you can also find to repair your hull.

You have more weapons than in Fury 3 and since you can transfer some of your main ship power to certain weapons you have one devastating combination of fire-power.

The graphics and the terrain are improved over the Fury 3 graphics. Flying around the mountains, through the clouds and around inside buildings and tunnels are only part of the fun built into this game. Unlike the tunnels in Fury 3 the tunnels in HellbendeR can cover the entire map. Hidden doorways and tunnels exist at every turn causing the player to think and search shafts out time and time again. I have been known to spend hours, even three different days searching out one area of tunnels to be sure I had found everything. Guess what, I had not. There were tunnels and rooms and things I had missed. Each mission is a game in itself. You have the surface world to deal with and the underworld to deal with. Once I start I find it very hard to quit, even my wife and children love this game.

With Fury 3 even on Normal level it was fairly easy to beat but there were those pesky ships that would materialize out of nowhere and come after you time and time again. With HellbendeR I believe that even the best Fury 3 players will find themselves frequently challenged. I was able to play Fury 3 on every difficulty level and play through every mission. With HellbendeR I found myself killed in the fourth mission on normal level. I simply got into a situation over my head and didn't know what to expect. Then again on level seven or eight, so SAVE IT OUT FREQUENTLY so you can try again. HellbendeR has new objectives, rescue missions, escort missions, then right when you think you have it figured out you come to level 9 and realize it's a new ball game folks. New world, new objectives and targets you must not destroy or you will fail the mission. In previous missions you could just wipe out everything with Legion missiles (fires 4 guided missiles at anything) from a distance and get on with it but not on mission 9 because if you do you will end up destroying targets that must not be destroyed. Take your time, fly down the deep ditches, hide behind the buildings, strike quick and run and you can beat them.

On level 15 I found myself among an astroid field in space instead of on a planet, that was something new for the game and the tactics and speed of the fighters were different, once again causing me to rethink my methods. Their ships were now attacking quicker and flying faster than I could at full throtle. I had to use turbos to catch them and most of the time use vipers to shoot them down. Then at the end of the astroid missions there was their top ace pilot that killed me outright 3 or 4 times before I could figure out what needed to be done to shoot him down. A cloaking device can be a powerful thing when full charged and used correctly.

I think it was mission 19 when I found myself in space once again among a bunch of huge space ships that I had to disable.

I counted 23 missions but I may have missed 2 or 3 because some of them do not use jump gates to move on to the next level and it almost appears to be the same mission. The last missions have some real puzzles to figure out and the hidden doors are so hidden they can't be seen until they are open. There are combinations of switches you must use to get them to open and the switches are not in sight of the doors, and may be on the floor or ceiling and they are nearly flat, you must hunt for them.

I have completed Hellbender and I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed Fury 3 and for anyone else who likes fast action space simulation games. People who like flying through tunnels and searching for hidden things will also love this game.

....Bryon

This game is a blast to play. It is the only game we have where my entire family will fight to see who is going to get to play next.

You get a space ship which requires no real training to fly. You fly through several different planets and have 3 missions on each world to rid the worlds of the enemy.

Each world is very different from the others. In some you are on desert worlds, in others it is like a forest, in another a water planet, and in another there are huge cities and buildings to fly around hunting your targets and trying to stay alive.

Player options - you are allowed to set the game play at different dificulty levels from easy to ridiculous, or was that insane? Believe me, if you use the harder levels you will earn your victory.

The graphics and sound effects are very good in this game. Yes and perhaps best of all it only runs in Windows 95 native mode.

There are no multi-player options in this game. There is no mission builder. There is a new add-on disk which you can buy to give you more missions, but I do not have it. Perhaps one of our visitors will tell us more about it.

As for replay-ability, I think after you fly all the missions 3 or 4 times you will be looking for a new mission or a new game. Until then the game is somewhat addictive.

For a more detaled review ... Fury 3.

Very Good Games for the space simulation lover. Puts the player in the cocpit of several different types of "Star Wars" spacecraft designed by the Lucas Arts team. In my opinion these are currently the best of all the space simulation battle games.

There are training missions to help familiarize the player with the controls and different features of each craft. You will need to complete them at least once in order to become good enough to complete all the missions.

Some missions are very hard and will require you to play them several times to find a way to beat them. Sometimes you can beat a mission by "tricking" the mission programer once you understand how the game works. Any of you who have played the games through may all ready know what I mean by that.

Graphics, sound, and game play are much improved in the Tie Fighter missions.

No mission builder or multi-player options in either game.

Review by: Bryon Smith

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BATTLECRUISER 3000AD

From Take 2

This is a game that allows the user to command a "Battle Star" of sorts and explore a number of different star systems. The graphics are very impressive in the opening screen but most of the game graphics themselves are about average for a good space game these days. There is a lot to this game because you are in command of an entire star ship and crew. If you like to just jump into your space ship and blast away at something this may not be the game you are looking for, but if you want to command as well as jump into the cockpit and blast away then you can. Just don't forget you are still in command of a large ship and responsible for many people on your ship. This game combines strategy with action but is going to take you some time to learn all the tricks of the trade.

I found this one on sale at the software store for only $34.99 yesterday 11/02/96. Needless to say I have not had time to really work with it to give it a fair review yet. We had some problems trying to install it on the 150 MHz 6x86 which we also use to test games on. It refused to write out the configuration file. Later I installed it on my Pentium 90 and had no problems with the configuration file. I did have some other problems with it, like lack of documentation. I sent my troops out and couldn't call them back, I didn't know the command. I couldn't control the ship. I set my Joystick up and couldn't get the ship to respond using it either. I checked the manual for some place to get help with the game and found my way to their web site. There I found a rather large list of about 40 different things their patches are intended to correct. From reading their information I am inclined to believe they have intentions of fixing the problems with this game and actually improving on what they have done so far.

This is not intended to be a review for this game. When I get the new upgrade patch they say will be available tomorrow I will work with the game and see what I can learn about it.

More to come.

...By Bryon Smith

Update 11/04/96: The new update patch for this game is to be out today so I called to see where I might find it.

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