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Abe Sargent · 09-06-2009, 11:34 PM

Review of The Ur-Quan Masters

I mentioned earlier that if I had already played a free d/l game, I would go ahead and give you a review. I have played this thing through like four or five times in the past three years.

The Ur-Quan Masters - Downloads

The UQM is done and complete. The Ur-Quan Masters is, for those not in the know, a virtually identical version of Star Control 2, one of the biggest classics from the 1990s PC era of dominance.

The game designers released the code from SC2, and a build was made quickly by fans. Today, UQM is complete, with only a few cosmetic changes (like music). You even have to use keyboard keys instead of a mouse as an input device.

How do I start to talk about SC2/UQM? If you;ve played it, then go d/l the new version and play it to death. Love it. If you haven;t where do I start?

I could start by stating that SC2 is awesome. It's not a game that is too much like anything else. It's really its own thing. I loves it! I could say is has the best and most fleshed out alien races of any sci-fi game ever, period.

Earth has been enslaved by the Ur-Quan.

So, what I decided to do was cut and paste from my review from my Top 100 games countdown.

Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well.

You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow.

You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station.

After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other.

In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls.

If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time.

Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions.

Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship:

If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game.

You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel.

StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter.

Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations.

Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage.

The game has multiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game.

The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away.

There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them:

StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik.

The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive.

The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz).

StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game.

Overall: 3.5 stars outta 5 for today, because the graphics are dated a bit, but it's still a great game.

09-06-2009, 11:34 PM	#26
Abe Sargent Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Catonsville, MD	Review of The Ur-Quan Masters I mentioned earlier that if I had already played a free d/l game, I would go ahead and give you a review. I have played this thing through like four or five times in the past three years. The Ur-Quan Masters - Downloads The UQM is done and complete. The Ur-Quan Masters is, for those not in the know, a virtually identical version of Star Control 2, one of the biggest classics from the 1990s PC era of dominance. The game designers released the code from SC2, and a build was made quickly by fans. Today, UQM is complete, with only a few cosmetic changes (like music). You even have to use keyboard keys instead of a mouse as an input device. How do I start to talk about SC2/UQM? If you;ve played it, then go d/l the new version and play it to death. Love it. If you haven;t where do I start? I could start by stating that SC2 is awesome. It's not a game that is too much like anything else. It's really its own thing. I loves it! I could say is has the best and most fleshed out alien races of any sci-fi game ever, period. Earth has been enslaved by the Ur-Quan. So, what I decided to do was cut and paste from my review from my Top 100 games countdown. Star Control 2 takes up where the original left off. The nasty Ur-Quan and their Heirarchy of Battle Thralls have destroyed the Alliance of Free Stars and imprisoned all of the races on their homeworlds unless they chose to be Battle Thralls as well. You begin the game as the child of a deep space research team that was never found by the Ur-Quan. The research team discovered an old Precursor factory that built the framework of a spaceship, but there were not enough materials on the planet to build the whole vessel. You strike out for Earth with your only Earth Cruiser they had in tow. You arrive to find Earth under a slave shield and the entire human race under it, except fora few hundred that man an Ur-Quan space station around the planet that the Ur-Quan and their Battle Thralls use as a refulling and resupply station. After you convince the commander to join your quest to restablish the Alliance. You have to seek out your own allies and find what happened. You'll discover new allies. You'll find that some of your own enemies can be friends, some of yoru own friends can be enemies, and some races will switch from, one to the other. In the meantime, you will also discover that an Ur-Quan splinter group called the Kohr-Ah are fighting with the main group, the Kzer-Za, and the winner will control the Ur-Quan destiny. The Kohr-Ah want to destroy all non-Ur-Quan life making them worse than your old enemies, the Kzer-Za Ur-Quand, who at least want you as fallow slaves or battle thralls. If the game is allowed to go on too long, the Kohr-Ah will win the Doctrinal War and then begin annililating every race in existance. Therefore, you have a clock, but you don't know when the clock ends. There are few things you can do to extend the clock, but you will have a limited amount of time. Meanwhile, you'll need to be collecting minerals. You'll be ssearching star systems for various mineral deposits and taking them back to the space station where you can swap them for fuel, crew, escort ships and modules. Your ship, as a framework, is modular and can be configured for different missions. Here is the shipyard with a lot of escort vessels already for the ship: If you lose your precursor vessel, you lose the game. If the Kohr-Ah exterminate life, you lose the game. You can also shoot down monsters on some planets for biological data. There are a race of interstellar traders, the Melnorme, that will trade for your biological data and in return will give you fuel, tips, and upgrades for your precursor vessel. StarCon2 is an amazing synergy of various games, all rolled into one. In addition to the resource gathering, and in addition to the political simulation, when ships get into combat you have to fight it out in a real time arcade style shooter. Many people thought that this was a real attraction to the StarCon series. The developers took serious pride in balancing all of the ships. Every ship has two attacks, and each is different. All of the ships are balanced and useful in some situations. Here, a Chenjesu ship and a Mycon ship are locked in combat. Sometimes there is a planet which acts realistically. You can whip around it for a speed increase or fall into its gravity well and hit the planet for serious damage. The game has multiple paths to victory and multiple ways to screw up. Based on how and when you do things, various ending can occur. For example, a friendly people called the Pkunk will start heading towards their warlike and battle thrall distant cousins. Two times you can arrive and deadly their journey, but by the third time they head off to join their cousins, if you haven't started a civil war in their cousin's society, the Pkunk will be slaughtered and eradicated. Of course, you can win the game with or without the Pkunk, but that;s the beauty of the game. The game has a serious sense of humor to it. The Spathi, who are a cowardly race, have created one of the fast ships in the galaxy. It fires B.ackwards U.tilizing T.racking T.orpedoes behind it. Yes, that's right, it fires BUTT missiles at enemies as it runs away. There are several other reasons why I love StarCon2 so much. Let me list some of them: StarCon has the most beleivable, realistic, fully fleshed out space faring races I have ever enountered in any game, period. Every race is fully fleshed out, from the evil and loving it Ilwrath to my favorite, the Spathi, to the f'ed up Orz and the tri-race, the ZotFoqPik. The VUX are these disgusting slimey tentacled race-things, but talk to them about why they hate humans and listen to them go on and on about how humans are so ugly. It's amazing. The way they describe our physical appearance actually makes me understand why they would find us so repulsive. The simple fact is that each race is balanced in its ships and its personalities (or not balanced , in the case of the Orz). StarCon2 blends humor, politics, amazingly fleshed out races, resource gathering and real time combat and combines all of that on a "do-it-yourself" go out there and figure it all out game. It's truly a marvelous game. Overall: 3.5 stars outta 5 for today, because the graphics are dated a bit, but it's still a great game. __________________ Check out my two current weekly Magic columns! https://www.coolstuffinc.com/a/?action=search&page=1&author[]=Abe%20Sargent Last edited by Abe Sargent : 09-06-2009 at 11:36 PM.