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Loadstar, an interactive
movie from Rocket Science Games, is all about the trials and pitfalls
of interplanetary trucking. It follows the story of one brave king
of the proverbial space road, Tully "Iron Door" Bodine,
as he's looking for one last load to haul across the stars so that
he can retire and settle down with his sweetcheeks. He's approached
by a shady Irishman who gives him a load of cargo that naturally turns
out to be quite illegal, so Tully must make the delivery fast and
escape the law. Now despite all the futuristic talk, and the fact
that it's set on the moon, let's not lose sight of the main idea of
Loadstar:
This is a game
about truck driving.
Few developers
could pull off a game where you drive a space-truck around the moon,
because honest-to-Jeebus, that's all you do. Rocket Science Games
is not one of these developers. It's true that you are chased by the
space-cops the whole time. It is true that you have to show swift
reflexes to attack them and deflect their shots. It is true that you
have to pay attention to where you are going, or else you're treated
to a video of Tully crashing where his skin is comically ripped off
during the explosion, revealing his screaming skeleton. But let's
remember the one challenge, the single goal of Loadstar:
You're driving
a truck and you have to make sure you keep driving in the same direction.
I don't care if it's a moon truck. I don't care that there's stuff
you have to shoot on the way. It's still stupid. The fact that
it's an interactive movie doesn't help either.
Rocket
Science needed some SAG for this little project of theirs, and
two intrepid actors answered the call: Ned Beatty and Barry Primus.
You might remember Ned Beatty from his appearance on "Roseanne"
as Ed Connor. You might not remember Barry Primus, as he's never
done anything worth remembering, including this video game. It's
a shame, as he plays Tully so well that I truly feel sorry for
him. The guy's perfectly old and grizzled for the part, and he
puts his heart into it, so it's sad that this game sucks so bad.
I hope they paid him big. Ned Beatty plays his role as the backwater
moon sheriff as if someone told him clearly to "act like
Boss Hogg on the moon". He knows what a waste of time this
game is and he's not exerting an ounce more effort into his acting
than is absolutely needed. In this case, I can respect that. |
Tully Bodine: Man, Myth, Moon-Trucker.
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The final name
worth mentioning is the designer and storywriter Ron Cobb, NOT to
be confused the Hollywood concept artist. This Ron works for Rocket
Science and has no credentials. This is the kind of story he thought
up on the crapper, and shame on Rocket Science for supporting it.
Double shame on him for making it and subjecting the world to it.
I hope he chokes on a bag of cocks.
"Ahhm
shurah you Duke boyahs arr up ta no good!"
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Graphically,
this game is a tour-de-farce. The irrepressible John Mastin summed
up the visuals of this game susinctly when he first reviewed it
for Just Games print: "This game looks like a load in someone's
trousers." This was made on the razor's bleeding edge of
video compression technology, and it shows. Video is horribly
grainy, and you'll be able to see the pixels on every scene. Hey
remember dot matrix printers? If the pictures they printed out
could move, they'd look like this. RealPlayer streaming video
is better. The actual game looks like it was shot in a miniature
model and then compressed the same way, so it looks like it could
be real and believable if you could see through the mess, making
the pixelation all the more annoying. Though to its credit, you
can usually tell what everything on the screen is supposed to
be (except Beatty's face - all I saw was a pink/white blob). But
even back when it was first released, compared to even VHS, this
video quality was not impressive a'tall. |
Sounds aren't entirely on the ball. The effects are decent enough,
and the voices on the movies were recorded cleanly, but sometimes
the audio is not synchronized with the movement of the actors' lips.
The music is standard MIDI-style fare that adds nothing to the
experience.
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Controlling
the Loadstar isn't much of a chore, though aiming its weapons
definitely is. The game has three sections, and in every one
you're driving the ship along the moon's extensive magnetic
rail system. Well, the ship more or less drives itself, but
you need to steer it for track changes. These come fast - usually
you're barrelling down on the scene of an accident and have
a second to make the detour. The D-pad controls the cursor,
and moving the cursor to the edge of the screen when a turn
is available makes the turn. The cursor also targets enemies,
who also appear on the edges of the screen, so expect a LOT
of accidental turns as you're trying to target a foe. These
foes are robot cops who threaten you with citations before crashing
into you and causing damage. You must target and shoot them
with C, or target the shots they fire and deflect them with
B. This means the screen gets hectic fast, and the cursor is
pretty slow for such a challenge. Combinations of buttons will
activate super shields and a screen clearing attack, and these
are pretty easy to pull off. Still, the unnecessary confusion
with targeting an enemy and turning instead happens so often
that it makes the controls overly frustrating. It would have
made so much more sense to have a separate button activate the
turns.
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The game itself
is completely about driving around the rails, avoiding blocked tracks,
and trying to use your compass and landmarks to get to your next destination
on time. Throw in defending your ship, and that's it. It seems intentionally
a lot like Sewer Shark, but more hectic and less enjoyable. The movies
are barely interesting, and the story is bland and clearly only serves
as a thin excuse for the lackluster gameplay. At least the idea of
interstellar trucking as shown seems believable, but if there was
anything interesting in the world Cobb created, it didn't get fully
translated into this game. Thankfully, someone else in power agreed
as this is the first and last episode in the "epic story of Tully
Bodine".
-reviewed 1/10/03 - game copyright 1994 Rocket Science Games

Primus acts admirably, even as a character named "Iron Door."

Thin plot tries to support a flimsy game, technical problems abound.


MobyGames - Loadstar
Loadstar Pong mini-game cheat
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