In short, Demonstar is an inadequate game, even though it is a bargain-priced title. And while there is a two-player mode that lets you and a buddy take on the evil empire at once, the box falsely advertises some sort of "Internet play." Sorry, it ain't in my version - but I doubt that TCP/IP support could have helped this game much. There's a major trade-off: Demonstar always runs in a window, even if you're playing in the so-called "full screen" mode (which simply crops out your desktop background with metallic textures). While Raptor ran in low-res VGA to keep the frame rate smooth on 486s, Demonstar ups the ante by running in SVGA. But instead of challenging your reflexes, Demonstar tests your patience - chances are good that you'll be voluntarily pressing Alt-F4 to quit long before you run out of ships. You won't have to worry about death - thanks to a whopping 18 continues, even the most joystick-impaired player can succeed admirably. It would have been nice to trade in points to beef up your ship as in Raptor, but no go - you're stuck pounding through from start to finish (without any save-game feature to boot). The sound effects are nothing to write home about, and the music is repetitive and dull. Aside from some stunning explosions, the graphics are amateurish at best, with little diversity over the course of the 18 levels. Chances are pretty good that you've played this type of game before, and you won't experience anything new here.īut the biggest disappointment about Demonstar is how it can't even come close to equaling the original Raptor. As you progress through the 20-odd levels, the action escalates in its intensity, with faster enemies and projectiles spewing all over the place. Wiping out these enemies yields helpful power-ups that enable bombs, phalanx lasers, and other destructive options. As your tiny ship blasts through scrolling starfields, dozens of nasties fly towards you on a collision course. But when you fire up Demonstar, it may leave you asking, "Is this it?"ĭemonstar is the most simplistic shooter you could ask for. This game is basically a one-man show - both the programming and art come from Raptor's lead designer, and the audio portion was performed by Bobby Prince, Apogee's pet composer. Now, Raptor's core team has returned to bring us Demonstar. However, Raptor's graphics and gameplay took the shooter genre to a whole new level, and by allowing you to trade in cash for powerful new weapons, injected some strategy as well. Before Raptor's release, PCs were snubbed as too "underpowered" to handle graphically intense shooters, and console gamers took great pleasure in rubbing our noses in games like Keio Flying Squadron and Super Turrican. While the game runs in both windowed and full-screen mode, at high resolutions (I run my desktop at 1024 by 768 pixels), the full-screen mode makes visuals much easier to see.When Apogee released Raptor: Call of the Shadows in 1993, it was universally heralded as a genre-busting action game. The "boss" enemies at the end of each level reflect beautiful artwork and enormous creativity. The backgrounds of the levels are quite varied and are also very nicely done. The explosions are simply gorgeous to behold. The vehicles are displayed in a more crisp, detailed, and textured manner than any of the earlier 2D shooters. Graphicsĭespite the absence of 3D hardware acceleration, the graphics in this game are excellent. The 18 levels of the game get progressively more difficult, but contain distinctive innovations that keep the excitement relentless. While there is no multiplayer networked capability, two players can play at once, and the action never seems to get boring or repetitive. The enemies' artificial intelligence seems quite effective in providing a challenge at any level of difficulty. Fortunately, there are difficulty choices ranging from easy to insane to cover a wide spectrum of user abilities. You are frequently shot not only from above, but also from the side or below, and to say that you must have good hand-eye coordination to win is an understatement. All the motion is very fluid and not at all jerky. The play itself is fast and furious, more frenetic than in any other shooter I have seen. All the controls are extremely intuitive, and there are not a lot of complicated buttons to remember to play the game.
You can control the gameplay in DemonStar with either a keyboard or a joystick (not a mouse), but it is the Microsoft Sidewinder Gamepad (for which there is special built-in support) that seems to be the best input device. This enemy has built a DemonStar empire that attacks anything in sight, and you must destroy it or die. You play a test pilot flying the RaptorX spaceship for the Quizar in fighting the evil Xidus Armada (who first surfaced in Galactix). The story in DemonStar is quite straightforward, as is typical of this game genre.
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