Game Info
- Developer Psygnosis
- Platform PS1/WILL WORK ON PS2
- Released 1997
- Cost £5.00 on Ebay

Colony Wars is an arcade space shooter for the PS1 that takes place over 70 missions of an 18 act,
branching storyline with 6 different ending.3 good and 3 bad.You play the part a fighter pilot for the
The League of Free Worlds fighting against the Czar and the Empire's Colonial Navy fleet.in an epic tale that takes
place over 5 systems in the year 3095AD

After the cut sceen with the James Earl Jones sound alike,you find your self on the main menu with the option to log on,Going into the log on menu gives you the option to begin/continue campaign,pilot statistcs,craft/system database and training missions.The craft and system database contains a huge amount of information on the universe of Colony Wars,all of which is spoken to the player,although none of seem to have any effect on the game itself.

The mission are themselves divided up into 18 acts with between 1-5 missions per act,failing any mission will
not end the game.But failing an act will take you towards one of the bad ending.Most of the mission tend to be just the normal fight every thing or protect every thing with a number objective like destroy all fighter,then
give cover to the Frigate ect.You do get some special objectives which require the use of the grapple/mole missile.And you will usally have some co pilots on the missions,which do what they normal do (get themself killed)
Each mission is preceded by an audio briefing,then a launch animation to hide the loading of the level.

Once you are in space you can switch between 2 different cockpits and one outside 3rd person view,all three views give information on shields weapons temp,speed,target shields ect the graphic are nicly done with planets,moons,suns and nebula in the backgound.The space craft/stations are all well designed particluar the captail ship of both sides,the Colonial navy ships resembling Star Trek ships in design and the Leagues taking after Star Wars.One nice point about the graphics is that the Empires ships engine flare is orange where as the League is blue.which helps inidentifieing which side the ships belong to.The radar is the rotating ball type with your ship in the centre and friendy ships are green dots enermy ships are blue dots and any thing else yellow,but its impossible to tell weather the ship are above or below your ship as there is no stalks on the ship dots.

Combat is based on the arcade model,there is a basic simulation of Newtonian physics in the game where you can thrustin one direction while turning to fire in another,but in practice its of no use as you just slow down to a crawl.
you have the number of different types of laser,missiles,torpedos and a mine which is used as a anti missile
weapon,as well as a couple of special ones,the grapple gun used as a tractor beam and the mole missile to tag a ship.
Some of the ship also have rear laser as well.Missiles have to be selected and targeted to achive lock on,while
torpedos have to be charged up before you can fire them,You will also need to cycle through your primary laser
weapons to chose the right one as some of the ships require the use of the anti-shield laser first.Your target
reticule in the centre of the screen has an arrow on it that will point to the nearest enemy craft
Firing on you own side will get you a verbal warning,continue to do it and the game will end by your ship self
destructing some times you are giving a cut sceen showing your escape pod being taking to a League prision planet

The sound effect are well done but nothing you wont have heard before,and the music is suitable epic.You also get a number of comment from you co pilots and League command will remind you of your odjectives.

Ive ejoyed playing around with the game,but I would agree with the moby reviewer in that some of mission
are just too hard to complete without the cheats.Also during combat it is very easy to become disoriented and
as there is no stalks on the radar it can hard to tell if the ememy ships are above or below which means you can waste time trying to find them again and by the time you do find them you may have failed the mission,which bring me onto the save feature.You can only save at the end of each chapter although there is a password for each mission,it works but it isclumbersome to use.Also I found I spent a lot of time cycleing through the laser and missiles trying to find the right ones.I played the game on a PS2 with the duelshock joypad and found it very easy to move the ship about with left stick,coupleof things I did miss was that there is no advanced target reticule or match speed to the ememies ship and no afterburners.

All in all I would say that a pretty good game,it may lack some of the more advanced features of the Pc games of the time,and some will say that it is just a J.A.S.S game.But does have a good story with some twist and turns and lot and lot of missions and if you still have the hardware it worth picking a copy up.

Moby Review.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation/colony-wars

Cheats

http://uk.gamespot.com/ps/action/colonywars/hints.html

Colony wars review