Battlestar Galactica is a wildly popular TV show that has really taken off since the initial miniseries that debuted on the Sci-Fi Channel several years ago. It’s no surprise that eventually a successful science fiction show would spawn a video game, but I was surprised by how lame this game turned out to be. It’s basically just a generic space shooting Asteroids-style game with ships that look like the ones from the show. It’s available for Windows PC, and also as an Xbox Live download. It was released by Sierra.
My overall impression of this game is that Sierra made a generic space shooter, then at the last minute convinced the network to let them brand it as Battlestar Galactica. I say that because you could change the ships to look like something else and you’d never even known this game was based on the show. Basically, it’s just an arcade space shooter with familiar branding.
The game is presented using an overhead view where you pilot a Viper around in a really cramped map and take on Cyclons. I found the controls to be very frustrating because the ship never wants to stop moving. It reminded me a lot of the old Atari game Asteroids. The problem I constantly encountered was that the Cylon ships flew circles around me and I found it almost impossible to target just one ship. Combine that with a bunch of obstructions (asteroids, for example) that you can’t blow up or move, and you get a game that simply isn’t much fun to play. The difficulty of the game is due to poor design and not clever programming.
Graphically, the game looks OK for a space shooter. The ships do all look just like the ones from the show, but they are pretty small on screen there wasn’t much need for a lot of detail. When the action gets frantic and there’s lot of explosions and rockets flying across the battlefield, the screen can get pretty busy. The overall presentation is good for the genre, but this type of game just doesn’t cut it these days. It works for a cheap Xbox Live download, but as a PC game that debuted with a $19.99 price tag, I think gamers would have expected a lot more depth out of it.
In the end, Battlestar Galactica is a bust for the Windows PC. Not only is it too simplistic, but the frustrating control system and general lack of cool stuff to do just makes it not worth playing. I’m hoping somewhere down the line a more complicated game will be developed to better carry the name of the great science fiction show upon which it is based.