Verdict: Good combat action, but a bland and uninspiring plot.
The space-shooter genre used to be very popular, with the likes of Freespace, StarLancer, Wing Commander and the many Star Wars games regularly topping the charts. However, recently there's been a dearth of interest in the genre. Developer Quazar is hoping to reverse this trend by releasing Tarr Chronicles, a space shooter that pits humanity against an alien scourge in a classic battle for survival.
Naturally, you play the elite fighter pilot tasked with the job of saving humanity from destruction, which involves battling an alien race called the De'Khete for control of powerful ancient artefacts recently discovered in a lost city.
Unlike some space-based RPGs such as X3: Reunion, you aren't given a freeform universe to explore; instead you're taken through nine different linear missions, each of which involves a variety of tasks, including protecting a container ship and obliterating a squad of enemy vessels.
As you progress through the game, you're given better equipment with which to continue the fight. However, obsolete items can be recycled into their component parts - tech alloys, condensers, electronics and so on - which can then be rebuilt into additional modules that confer a bonus to your ship, such as improved weapon damage or better shields. The bigger the bonus, the greater the number of resources required to perform the upgrade. There are over 100 different upgrades on offer (and more than 150 different pieces of kit), which means that there are plenty of options for customising your ship.
Since this is a space shooter, combat is pretty important and Tarr Chronicles scores well on this front, with fast and exciting battles. It looks good too, with nicely modelled ships and good special effects, although you don't really feel that the battles are taking place in the vastness of space, which was an aspect that games such as X3, for example, managed well. The graphical effects also lack variety; ships always explode in the same way, for example, which is unrealistic and quickly becomes boring.
The dialogue and radio chatter is also rather bland and repetitive, and the storyline, such as it is, doesn't really work. A good plot should suck you in and have you eager to find out more; the plot of Tarr Chronicles simply leaves you baffled and indifferent.
If your idea of fun is fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants relentless combat then Tarr Chronicles delivers in spades. However, it's a fairly shallow game with nothing much else going for it, and the lack of freeform play means that fans of true space exploration games will find its linear gameplay almost claustrophobic. Still, there's little else to choose from in this genre at the moment, so it's still worth a look.
