At first blush, Starfighter Origins should absolutely, 100% have been right up my alley; all the way up in there, so deep that I should be coughing laser blasts and sneezing proton torpedoes.As far back as I can remember my number one, go-to genre of gaming has been the space combat simulator. From the sit-in Star Wars arcade machines in the 80s, through early sims like X-Wing and Wing Commander in the 90s to later titles such as Freespace 2, Freelancer and Colony Wars and into the modern resurgence with and Star Citizen, I have been, and always will be, in love with space combat simulators.So when I heard that Mad About Games Studios was releasing something that promised a return to the 90s-style space combat greatness, inspired by games that I spent so much of my childhood wrapped up in, I was understandably excited to have a go. Unfortunately, one of the first trips down memory lane that I experienced with Starfighter Origins was one of hours spent painstakingly trying to calibrate a joystick on my mate’s Acorn. While the Steam store page boasts controller and HOTAS support, I can unequivocally – as far as at least two hours spent in the menu is concerned – state that Starfighter Origins has neither.I tried using a standard Xbox controller with the game’s default setup and found that the majority of the controls didn’t seem to be mapped properly and, where they were, the input felt laggy and largely unresponsive.
Jan 16, 2017 Some gameplay (PC Version) from the instant action mode in Starfighter Origins. Website: www.starfighterorigins.com.
But it was the HOTAS setup that had me wrapped in menu-based hell for the majority of my first night with the game. There are no presets available so I tried, in vain, to program things myself. Happily, Starfighter Origins has a test flight button right there in the control setup screen so I didn’t need to launch a mission to test things out, but testing seemed to be a moot point when almost everything I tried resulted in total failure. My being unable to stop the throttle controls working in reverse was the last straw and I settled in for some thrilling keyboard and mouse-controlled action (though, more than seven hours later, I still have yet to successfully fire a secondary weapon).When I eventually got to play the game, I did get some good nostalgic tingles.
The graphics are in-line with some of the games from the late 90s (make of that what you will) and boast the same realistic cockpit design philosophy: all blinking lights, switches and physical elements that contain the HUD and swap positions based on the ship you’re flying. Starfighter Origins’ ships themselves are interesting, and again, are bang on if we’re shooting for designs and ideas that are now over 20 years old in some cases.