September 28, 2007 - Back in 1990’s, free roaming space shooters were much more popular than they are today. Games like Descent Freespace and the Wing Commander series proved that you could have satisfying outer space flying action with a deep and fulfilling story. While space shooters are still common, most don’t have the depth of gameplay that these titles offered. Does Square Enix’s new offering change that trend and give Wing Commander fans the game they’ve been waiting nearly a decade for? Almost.

First off is the story, which is actually quite intriguing. You play the game as Katana, a hot shot rookie pilot battling along side the Terrans in the farthest reaches of space in a conflict hundreds of years in the future. The enemy is not aliens threatening humanity’s survival, but rather, unsatisfied dissidents that no longer want to be under Terran rule. These individuals, known as AKON, are a group of rebels bent on ending the Terran rule on the outer rim planets. To make the story a little bit deeper, Katana went to flight school with a gentleman named Margras, who is now fighting on the AKON side. What’s a little interstellar war between friends?

What’s interesting about the storyline is that it has shades of real world conflicts such as the American Revolution, or if you prefer the sci-fi reference, Star Wars. However, Project Sylpheed turns the tables by having you play as the oppressors rather than the rebels. I particularly enjoyed the change of pace and taking out some rebel scum. The Brits and the Empire don’t get enough credit in most media, and its fun to play the role of oppressive juggernaut.

Unfortunately, the storyline is rather betrayed by a liberal application of anime cheese, especially during the many cutscenes. The game can’t seem to decide whether to be serious or light-hearted, and therefore the story-line becomes an odd mish-mash of the two. This problem causes some identity issues for the game, and it doesn’t help that this game has some of the most annoying voice acting I’ve heard yet on the 360. The actor’s range seems to be between perky to excitable to imperiled, and never varies anywhere between these three. Making matters worse is that during gameplay, no one ever shuts up and just lets you blast things. People are always sending you messages, and commonly will be talking over one another. It didn’t take long for me to mute the voices entirely and just keep an eye on the text in the corner instead.

Of course, the bigger question is how does the game play? The answer is pretty well, but it’s not with out its foibles. Starting with what the game gets right, the game perfectly captures the all out insanity of an outer-space dogfight. You can fly in any direction, any time, and shoot anything you want. A typical mission will feature dozens of fighter planes and a few destroyers, and it’s completely up to you how you want to tackle a particular mission. Every ship in the game leaves behind a coloured trail, which goes a long way to indicating just how crowded these battlefields are. It’s undeniably fun to jump into a spacecraft and blast away at a few enemies.

It’s also a lot of fun to upgrade your ship and add news weapons. Towards the end of the game, my ship was packed to the gills with multiple lock-on missiles, slow moving destroyer missiles, a rail gun, and a beam rifle that could singe the hair off a kitten’s back. The more enemies you take out in the missions, the more points you get to research and develop new weapons and upgrades for your ship. It’s not the deepest upgrade system in the world, but it is fun in its simplicity.

What’s not simple is the extremely crowded HUD interface during the game. There are gauges up the wazoo indicating ship temperature, weapon temperature, shields, armor, distance to targets, voice messages, speed, four ammunition counters, lock on crosshairs, two radars, mission time, kill counters, objectives left and tons of arrows pointing you to your many objectives in each mission. It can be daunting and confusing, especially at the game’s outset.