Graphonic

As Pretty As Two-Face

ORB’s graphical experience is one with severe ups and downs. Several facets of ORB’s creation definitely deserve praise. The FMV is spectacular. While it lacks the detail of a Final Fantasy game or the colorfulness of a Blizzard presentation, it’s incredible what sort of job the artists do with just black, red, and blue. The ships have an otherworldly, gothic look similar to Event Horizon, with bizarre, yet aesthetically pleasing contours. This leads to an utter disappointment when you get into the actual game itself. Many of the ships, rather than being the brooding, hulking behemoths in the FMV, have some of the lowest polygon counts I’ve seen in a 3D game in years and textures that look like they’re straight out of Quake. Hoping to find Corvette-like curves on your fighter ships? You’re not going to find them in ORB’s in-game experience. Legos would probably be a more appropriate metaphor. In the age of 2-3GHz monster PCs, GeForce 4s and Radeon 9000s, I’m sure Strategy First could’ve offered a more inspired effort. Conversely, there’s hardly any graphical slowdown at all, and it was uncommon to encounter framerate loss at 800x600, highest graphical details, on a 1GHz GeForce2 system.

A Rich Treasure

3D Niftyness

Sabotage

The lush backdrops manage to salvage ORB’s graphical experience somewhat. The static, swirling nebulae that compose most of ORB’s backgrounds are some of the best artwork I’ve ever seen in a game. This panoply of colors offers to the first real argument I’ve seen for 64-bit color in a game, as even on 32-bit, you can still catch distinct, pixilated color progressions. The explosions, laser beams, and ‘smoke trails’ are all standard fare and get the job done. Finally, it’s worth noting the atrocious load times. The initial startup and the load time in between missions often provoked prolonged absences from the computer. It’s a bit perplexing how a game that looks like it was from Half-Life’s era has a load time rivaling, if not surpassing, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Medal of Honor.

Disproportionate Scaling

Quite possibly the greatest graphical irritation of ORB is its scale. The map is easily large enough to put games such as Tribes 2 to shame. Consequently, in most dogfights, you aren’t going to get the close-up visuals that grace ORB’s website and release photos. Indeed, zooming in close enough to admire the pretty models a good way to get yourself killed, as it’s virtually impossible to even see 5% of the entire fight from that sort of perspective. Most of the time, you’re going to be zoomed out far enough that almost everything looks either like a green or a red dot, where the tracer and beam fire is about as interesting as drawing lines in MS Paint. Of course, you can opt for the 2D, top-down map, in which case things get even uglier, as you’re unable to enjoy the backgrounds anymore. The 2D map may be functionally efficient, but I’m convinced you can combine visual aesthetics with practicality. The original Dune II, with its slow-moving green and red dot units was more interesting. Another problem is when you have numerous ships in a small region. It’s almost impossible to pick out individuals ships due to so many overlapping (and identical looking) dots, and you’re forced to either navigate the cumbersome fleet window or run the pointer over every ship manually until you find what you want.

Visually Descriptive, Really

Luminesence

Mine That Sucker

Gets The Job Done

ORB’s musical score, while nothing to write home about, accompanies the game appropriately. Much like a technically well-composed movie soundtrack, you don’t really notice it while it’s there, but you do notice it when it’s not. The composition is your typical orchestral work that accompanies space-epics, heavy on the brass and percussion. It ebbs and flows with what’s transpiring within the game at the time; during an encounter with hostile forces, the music will peak, while during peaceful lulls of resource gathering and research, the soundtrack will be much more muted and unobtrusive. Sound-effects are what you’d expect from battling spacecraft and vocal unit acknowledgements are accompanied by an oddly satisfying static crackle, much like walkie-talkie noise. On the other hand, the presentations of briefings in between missions are less than satisfying. The narrators speak in a complete monotone, most likely trying to simulate a computer-generated voice. Coupled with the dry storyline, this lack of vocal enthusiasm doesn’t do a whole lot for inspiring the player from one mission to the next.