37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terminus' Persistant Universe, June 24, 2000
This review is from: Terminus (CD-ROM)
Terminus looks like a simple Space-Sim, but it has several excellently executed features which place it ahead of the competition. It's most noticeable features are the Newtonian Physics model and the ability to configure your ship. Newtonian physics means that if you keep thrusting, you'll keep accelerating. It also allows for some amazing maneuvers to be performed such as sliding and circle-strafe firing patterns. The ships in Terminus are fully configurable, allowing you as a player to decide what weapons and what systems you want on your hull. However, the most impressive features of Terminus are beneath the surface. One is its NPC modeling. The characters you interact with remember your actions and can become staunch allies or bitter enemies. It also has a persist ant universe, meaning that things keep happening in other parts of the game even when you aren't present to see them happen. These two together mean that if you make an enemy early on, he'll remember you and may well come after you later. But if you saved another NPC and she's in the area, there's a chance she'll swoop in and save you. These features are outside of the scripted campaign series that's included. There's also a multi player mode in which you can fly the campaign missions (from any of the factions perspectives), fight in a death match, play space-hockey or just start the universe and let people fly trading missions, pirating runs or mercenary hits. Overall, this game stands out for its excellent play control (once you've got the physics model down), HUD, sound and eye-candy. See www.stationterminus.com for more information on the game and download locations of the demo.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good Concept, Mediocre Implementation, August 2, 2001
This review is from: Terminus (CD-ROM)
Terminus was a brilliant idea. To create a space flight simulator that relies on true Newtonian physics is intriguing; it provides a more realistic experience regarding what piloting a spaceship would actually be like. For a time, it is fascinating to rotate your ship freely without changing your velocity, and use fuel only for acceleration and decelleration. However, after playing it this way for a while, you have to ask yourself: is realism really what you want?
The largest effect of the true physics model is to force you to rely very heavily on your navagation computer and systems. Stopping your ship is now done by touching a key and letting the computer handle it. Docking your ship is similarly computer-controlled. Even in combat, you fight through the computer's guidance systems: it provides a lead line and aiming cursor for you to shoot at, and the position of the enemy ship soon becomes irrelevant. The challenge of fighting becomes your precision in aiming your weapons inside the little circle drawn by the flight computer. Often, you get the impression that your PC would be doing a better job flying the ship without you.
Another much-lauded feature that has mixed results is its persistent, active universe. Events occur whether or not you are presant, and your presence in many battles and missions is not key to their success or failure. Realistic? You bet. Fun? Well, not really. When your actions become unimportant, you play a more minor role in the game, and you experience far less enjoyment. It is more fun to have the thrill of leading the great assault on Battleship XYZ than it is to fire a couple missiles while the computer-controlled ships do all the work.
There is a good side to this openness: the freedom of choice. If you strongly dislike linear games, then Terminus may be ideal for you. You can mine asteroids in a remote section of the Solar System as easily as you can fight for Earth or be a pirate. Your path is up to you. Remember, however, that because each of these paths is so open and unscripted, you will not experience a rich storyline if you take advantage of this freedom. Your adventure is what you make of it, and no more.
Another feature that had the potential to be great was the ship editor. With this interface, you can purchase components and construct your own ship part by part. Unfortunately, the rules for which parts can go in which ship slots are often unclear, and you may find yorself filling slots with unnecessary pieces. Additionally, there are a variety of energy, fuel, and systems components that must be included in our ship designs, but it is easy to forget one because they do not have an easily apparent function on gameplay. The game will simply tell you your ship is not complete, and leave it to you to guess which part needs to be added. The process of testing different combinations of parts in various ship slots is a waste of time (and credits) that could have been avoided through better documentation on how to build a ship.
There is a long manual included, containing more info than most game manuals do today. However, there are so many controls and aspects of Terminus that even a manual of this hefty size is incomplete. As noted above, it leaves out the details on how to build ships, and you will find numerous other game functions and controls that you wished were better-documented in the manual.
Terminus is a multi-platform game, and each box contains everything necessary to get the game running under Windows, Mac, and Linux. However, one way this is done is by making the game's music into standard audio tracks on a separate CD. To play music while you fly through space, you need the music CD in the drive. This means that all game data must be copied to your hard drive to leave the CD drive open for music. This, the minimum install takes up over 700 megabytes of space, an incredible amount of data copied to you disk. The advantage is that you do not need a CD in the drive to play (if you don't want music), which is a rarity among large modern games.
Multiplayer support may be the strength of this title. Wandering around a universe that proceeds, indepedent from your actions, is much more fun when you have companions to wander with you. You can cooperate with other human players to achieve greater results and have a greater affect on your world. Alternately, you can fight with other human players, or one person can become a merchant and the other a pirate.
Interactions with real people become all the more essential due to the flat, lifeless nature of the NPCs. Anyone you talk to in a starbase or elsewhere never once seems alive, or to be really conversing with you. Rather, it is like a series of little speeches that they deliver, and you select the speech you want to hear from a menu of choices desguised as your responses to their words.
The version of the game in the box has a significant number of bugs, but they are almost all addressed by a patch currently availible from Vicarious Vision's web site. Downloading the latest patch at http://www.vvisions.com/terminus/downloads_frame.htm and installing it should deal with most issues you may encounter.
Terminus is an interesting game, with several new features and concepts that are unusual to the genre. There are many controls and you have an interesting flight system. However, when all is taken into account the game is not much fun. It does not really seem like a game. Instead, it seems like an experiment in creating a realistic flight engine and a realistic persistant universe in which the player is mostly irrelevant.
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