Welcome to StarFight VI: Gatekeepers, the next installment in a long line of StarFight games. Similar to its predecessors, it is an intergalactic space adventure game by J.P. Production.
Similar to previous games in the StarFight series, Gatekeepers revolves around the life of Captain Simon Miller, the captain of the MicroSpace Iron Curtain, a transport ship. Once a promising starship captain, Miller was reduced to transport in order to camouflage the incompetence of the higher-ups. Simon turned to gambling and alcoholism as recourse to his problems, and now works the transport routes to pay for the debt of one habit and continue to support the other.
Two huge conglomerate factions, The Order of Light and the ANB are now pitted against one another and Captain Miller is in the middle of the warring parties. Hired by ANB, Captain Miller is set to pilot the CTR Micro Space Iron Curtain to delightful loading station in orbit around Hell’s Gate III.
StarFight VI is a truly unique game in that it effectively combines elements of both adventure and spaceflight, and does both portions very well. Space combat is challenging and realistic, showing excellent graphics, especially for its day. The enemy cruisers and tomcats are very well drawn and each enemy ship has its own individual design and flight pattern. The combat controls take some getting used to, as they are fairly
in depth and clunky using a keyboard, but that obstacle can be overcome with practice to make for a great space challenge. In the adventure mode, the screen will switch to Captain Simon’s first person perspective to undertake dialogue with other people and solve puzzles. While the puzzles are not terribly difficult, they are at least logical and the solutions make sense the lack of which being one of the key flaws in other adventure games.
In summary, Gatekeepers combines space flight, space combat and standard puzzle solving into a brilliant mixture that offers something for just about any type of gamer. The graphics are very well done, the sound effects do their job and the game play itself is fun. With the exception of the initially difficult game controls, Gatekeepers is a great game and well worth a download.
