Star Control 3 is one of those classic DOS games that you play for countless hours, then you put it in a drawer or closet, eventually lose it altogether, and then lament its disappearance like the one true love of your life. Some people see Star Control 3 as a letdown after Star Control 1 and 2. Not I! The full game for SC3 has a lot of great characters to interact with. It's the only game that I know of that used puppets for many of its characters.
Star Control 3 is one of those classic DOS games that you play for countless hours, then you put it in a drawer or closet, eventually lose it altogether, and then lament its disappearance like the one true love of your life. Some people see Star Control 3 as a letdown after Star Control 1 and 2. Not I! The full game for SC3 has a lot of great characters to interact with. It's the only game that I know of that used puppets for many of its characters. Puppets! One of the few characters that was computer graphics was the robot-`species'. Ah, yes, the semi-literate Ktang.
You interacted with the characters using multiple choice. The bottom of the screen gave you
three things you could say to the characters, which in turn would steer the plotline. Of course, my pet peeve with a lot of strategy games is that I never get to the end of the story. I remember thinking "When is this game gonna end?" I never did find out how Star Control 3 ends, just like I never found out how Star Control 2 ends. Star Control 1, however, has a much simpler full game, and I think I got just as many hours of fun from that as I did from 2 and 3. Furthermore, the slowly spinning star map of the first game is the best map of all three games.
The melee portion of Star Control 3 was also a real blast. One of the staples of the Star Control franchise is having spaceships with a primary weapon and a unique ability/shield/secondary weapon. By the time the developers were designing the third game, they must have been pretty hard-set to think up some new weapons/abilities. I think they rose to the challenge. My favorite of the new spaceships had a phase-generator, so they could pass through anything like Kitty Pride of the X-Men. All the classic ships from Star Control 1 are here, some of which have been aesthetically tweaked. The Ur-Quan ship now looks less like a moldy Battlestar Galactica. The Spathi ship is now symmetrical. The Earthling ship no longer looks like two Enterprises sandwiched together.
As for the music, Star Control 2 still beats 3. I sometimes wish I could just compile my favorite things about all three Star Controls and make one big Super-Star Control.
So, in conclusion, if someone has painted a bad picture of SC3 for you, maybe you should decide for yourself.
