This game is one of the all time classic games to be released on any platform. Frontier was the much awaited sequel to Elite and it didn't disappoint. With the exception of Railroad Tycoon it is the last game to have been written entirely in assembly language and would be remarkable for this fact alone if it were not for the breadth of game-play afforded by the game engine. The level of detail in the game mechanics is quite astounding when you consider that the game attempts to simulate our entire galaxy, with all of the stars, planets, planetoids and space stations revolving in their respective orbits as well as revolving around their own axis.
This game is one of the all time classic games to be released on any platform. Frontier was the much awaited sequel to Elite and it didn't disappoint. With the exception of Railroad Tycoon it is the last game to have been written entirely in assembly language and would be remarkable for this fact alone if it were not for the breadth of game-play afforded by the game engine. The level of detail in the game mechanics is quite astounding when you consider that the game attempts to simulate our entire galaxy, with all of the stars, planets, planetoids and space stations revolving in their respective orbits as well as revolving around their own axis. It is possible
to sit on a launch pad on earth and watch day turn into night, see the stars move across the sky as they rise and set and watch night turn back into day.
At the introductory level you enter the game with nothing more than a bequeathed ship and a modest ($1000) bank balance; from there the choices are entirely yours. You can strive to become a high ranking officer in either of the two interplanetary systems navies, work tirelessly to build up a vast trading enterprise moving goods around the galaxy or become a mercenary carrying out assassinations or couriering small packages between systems. Whether you choose to operate inside or outside of the law is left up to you and your ethical flexibility.
The graphics, whilst looking very simplistic by today’s standards, where impressive when the game was launched since it used a 3D engine without the benefit of any hardware acceleration. The Amiga release of the game suffered slightly on this front with the more advanced camouflage liveries applied to ships such as the asp and cobra not being available but out scored the PC version on the audio side due to the Amiga’s dedicated sound chip and sample handling abilities.
The game-play, as noted above, is wide open. There are obvious routes of progression that you can choose to embark upon but each of these can be left at any point and returned to later as you decide. The controls take a little while to get used to, particularly in combat but are simple enough to master.
One word of caution however, if you intend to play this game makes sure that you leave yourself a good chunk of time to play. It pulls you in so quickly that what was going to have been "just a quick half hour" turns into "has it really been 3 hours?" as you keep shifting your goalposts. You go from just wanting to get enough credit together to buy that shiny new Mk III cobra to just wanting to give it a couple of quick runs to see how much you can fit in and how far you can go to just wanting to have a stab at some of those navy missions that I couldn't really do before. I love it!
