Graphics: Novalogic’s premier entry into the world of polygonal engines is a triumphant one. If I didn’t know better, I would never have guessed that Tachyon: The Fringe is only their second title released in the last few years not based on voxel technology; the other being F-22 Lightning 3. Visually, Tachyon: The Fringe is capable of standing toe to toe with any of the products in its genre, but please note that I’m not ready to proclaim Tachyon is better than the likes of Digital Anvil’s recently released StarLancer or Interplay’s dominant Freespace 2. The point is that Tachyon: The Fringe is no slouch in the graphics department.

Tachyon’s most impressive trait is its structures — space stations, docking ports, corporation’s headquarters and military installations. These floating behemoths are without question the biggest and best looking of their type to date. Gaining proper perspective of the scale and size of these gargantuan space stations, as well as the initial visual impact they provide without seeing them first hand is impossible. However, I offer this screenshot, which shows the luxury liner Hesperides about to dock with Hera Station. Luxury liners such as the Hesperides are mammoth ships themselves, equivalent to luxury cruise liners of today’s world. As you can see from the screenshot, the term “massive” is a huge understatement when describing the scale involved in Tachyon. Throughout my entire experience with the game I never became accustomed to the scale of space. Mission after mission the size of ships, stations and distances from one gate to another continued to amaze me.

Though I will admit that from a technical vantage point, Tachyon may not have had as many bells and whistles as the current competition. The engine lacks the ability to render in 32-bit, the atmospheric lighting used to cascade things like a ship’s engine glow or missile trail are pretty basic, and the overall cleanliness of the textures might not sit well with those used to the grittiness associated with most space combat simulations. Also, in order to see most of the higher quality visuals, large structures and high degree of in-game cinematics, you’ll need to play at least half the game. Still, I like the looks of Tachyon, a lot. The fighter ships are neatly designed, and while not completely original in schematics, that flaw is made up for in scale and finite detail. Tachyon’s weapons as well as other ship effects, such as tractor beams, are colorful and quite varied. Explosions are a tad on the simple side, but their after effects are quite nice; which can include such things as flying pieces of electronically charged sheet metal. There’s no doubt, no matter what your graphical wow factor may be, given the chance, Tachyon: The Fringe will impress.

Interface: The interface’s supporting space combat operas are quickly becoming as complex as those of their realistic flight simulation siblings. The good old days that only required you to know how choose between firing single or linked lasers and launching a missile salvo now and then are over. Nowadays, not only are you required to navigate the vastness of space, but also manage things such as power distribution bars — which control shields, weapons, engines and afterburner energy levels. Tachyon, like Freespace 2, has a virtual ton of commands and keystrokes that are required to successfully navigate the Fringe. Regardless of your combat experience and ability to comprehend complex interfaces, expect there to be a learning curve in adapting to Tachyon’s interface. While its default configuration does borrow heavily from the unofficial space combat interface standard, there are enough deviations from it that even veterans of the genre will need to pull out the manual and provided reference card a few times.

But thankfully, the folks at Novalogic have done their homework and their efforts prevent the interface, which is admittedly complex, from becoming complicated. Executing every option and available feature, such as the ability to land on platforms and pick up or deliver cargo, to transporting floating space debris aboard your ship via the tractor beam, makes sense. There’s nothing about the menu system, interface flight navigation or combat system that will cause frustration. Customizing a configuration to your specific liking is also fairly easy, but note that there is no joystick available today that has enough buttons to support all of the actions you’ll want to automate. I played the game using CH Products’ new USB F-16 Combat Stick and Pro Throttle, and appreciated many times the amount of buttons (34) I was able to program. I also tried Tachyon using Microsoft’s Sidewinder Pro Force Feedback, and found that combination to my liking as well. Owning the proper joystick is tantamount to fully appreciating this product.

Aside from combat, a big part of Tachyon’s gameplay deals with ship configuration. The interface provided here is fairly straightforward and won’t present any significant challenges, even for novices. A simple drag and drop paper doll system is used for showing available items for purchase and current ship loadouts. I did become annoyed at having to load each missile independently in multiplayer mode, but aside from that the on-station interface is quite effective.

Gameplay: There’s a lot to be said for a game that successfully emulates the great qualities of titles such as Elite and Privateer. Tachyon: The Fringe combines a strong and well told story with open-ended choices and great action, and while these individual elements may not be the absolute best we’ve ever seen, when brought together the power of their sum is nearly unequalled. Tachyon’s designers obviously borrowed heavily from Origin’s original Privateer, and for those of us that have been playing long enough to make sense of that reference, Tachyon will present a great deal of nostalgia. But even with those similarities, especially considering the small percentage of today’s gamer that’s actually played Privateer, Tachyon’s content comes across as purely original. The classic good-guy rebellion versus evil corporate empire story could have been old and tired, but thanks to lively action, great voice acting and colorful commentary by “Evil Dead’” Bruce Campbell, it’s anything but.

Tachyon’s free-flowing gameplay, allowing players to pick and choose which missions and even storylines they follow is also one of the greatest traits of this offering. Though it is fair to mention, specifically for Elite veterans, that the experience offered here is held in check by an overall plot that players must follow in order to progress. There are freedoms in the sense that at any one time the player will have three to five missions available to him/her, but like Privateer, the overall story dictates the evolution of the game.

I would have liked Novalogic to incorporate more freedom, especially as it related to interstellar travel, and while this does exist, Novalogic has regulated it more than I would have liked. The availability of new ships, weapons and mounts was also a point of concern for me, as I thought that the way they introduced new technology had no relevance on the overall story. For a good portion of the game, Tachyon limits you to one ship and only a few mounts, for no apparent reason. The way they’ve handled it accomplishes their objective of balancing gameplay, I however would have liked the freedom, as I did in Privateer, to spend countless hours and days on meaningless non-story driven missions in order to build up a better ship and then take on the story, as opposed to being limited to the designer’s choices. Regardless of my desires, Tachyon still delivers far beyond anything we’ve seen from this sub-genre since the original Privateer. There is a mega-ton of gameplay here that spans across two completely different storylines. As the player you’re given the opportunity to play on both sides of the battlefield, and each experience is well worth playing. Tachyon includes some of the best and most massive space combat warfare ever witnessed on the PC, and it offers it with a style and flair unique to this genre.

From a multiplayer perspective, Tachyon: The Fringe continues its parade of well deserved pats on the back from yours truly. Two styles of online play are provided, Arena battle and Base Wars. Arena mode is your standard deathmatch, and like the first person variety there are multiple levels that offer distinct experiences as well as power-ups that do things such as restore shields and weapons’ stores. While Arena mode is pretty fun, Tachyon’s true calling comes in the form of Base Wars. Here, two teams comprised of forces from GalSpan and Bora, compete through ten levels of technology, each trying to gain the upper hand and destroy the other’s base. Here Novalogic has definitely taken a page from Sierra’s Tribes book, and provided mammoth installations aligned to each team that are equipped with hundreds of turrets, space cannons and defensive shielding that must be destroyed in order to claim victory. Each team collects crystals that exist in common space which in turn improves base defenses and opens weapons and ammunition stores for the appropriate team. The battles waged in Base Wars are fierce and the competition and challenge offered by this design provides some of the best multiplayer gameplay going. Coupled with Novalogic’s free NovaWorld service which almost guarantees you’ll have enough people to play with anytime you get the itch, and you’ve got reason enough alone to own Tachyon: The Fringe. I do hope however, that Novalogic releases more multiplayer maps like Roid City, as there are too few levels that ship with the retail release.

Sound FX: There are two aspects of sound effects in Tachyon — voice acting and actual sound effects; both are excellent. As mentioned previously, Bruce Campbell provides the voice for the player-hero Jake Logan, and Campbell does an excellent job in every regard. From comical anecdotes to serious trash talking, his repertoire of one-liners needs to be documented for future generations. The other voice acting is also top notch, and thankfully never gets repetitive or annoying, as is commonplace for games in this genre. As for the sound effects, while they’re not quite as powerful as the voice acting, they’re nonetheless great. Each projectile has a powerful sound that quickly becomes familiar to the player, and the positional audio used for when a large carrier rumbles through space is awesome.

Musical Score: While nothing about the music stands out as revolutionary at this point, I do recall many times thinking that the music was very appropriate for the action taking place on screen. There are scenes which depicted dramatic and eerie themes as you entered each new area of wonder. Every note, every murmur of music is crafted with care, making sure never to dominate a scene, but instead add to the tension or humor that it provides.

Intelligence & Difficulty: Interplay did an interesting thing with Freespace 2 in order to manage difficulty. They input a feature that allows the player to skip a mission after he/she has failed it fives times. While I praised that option in my review of Freespace 2, I now see the error of my ways. Tachyon: The Fringe, while different in many regards, manages to provide a similar style of gameplay and still maintains a challenge without having to include such an option. So how have they done it you ask? For starters Novalogic has done an excellent job with play balance. While there are those missions, albeit few, that will require repeat efforts in order to complete, overall I found the difficulty of each mission was near perfect for the stage of the story. Having the ability to pick and choose your own weapons and ships based upon personal choices certainly has an impact on this, but nonetheless much credit is deserved for making Tachyon a challenging, but rarely frustrating experience.

The artificial intelligence of Tachyon however, isn’t as good as I would have hoped, especially considering the high quality of all the other features. Enemy pilots rarely gang up on you and they almost never call for backup amongst one another. There is a fair amount of scripting involved that makes up for some of the mental deficiencies of the computer controlled pilots, but even so the game would have benefitted from a smarter enemy.

Overall: Finally, someone made a game worthy of the Privateer name. Novalogic’s entry into the mercenary for-hire space combat simulation is one of the best titles released so far this year. It’s powered by an engine capable of wondrous large scale structures that will amaze you from the
opening cinematic to the final mission. The open-ended, branching storyline is determined by the player’s choices, which are thankfully made in-game and not while having drinks back on the station. While I would have preferred Tachyon to push the envelope of freedom based, non-story centric gameplay, I am nonetheless happy with what I’ve got. The addition of Hollywood style voice acting is right on queue, and the over-the-top
multiplayer mode Base Wars ensures Tachyon: The Fringe of a Avault’s Reviewer’s Choice Award. From and end to end experience, Tachyon is a wonderful product that will provide months and months of enjoyment. Its flight model is basic enough that arcade action junkies will adore the fast-paced ship to ship combat, and its map designs and overall size and scale will cause simulation fans to appreciate its depth. And for those old fogies like myself, hoping to rekindle their obsession of freedom-based, story driven gameplay, hope is alive. If you’re still suffering from nostalgic dreams of Elite and Privateer, wake up and go buy this game. I’ll see you in the Fringe!