Dark Horizon is the prequel to 2007’s Tarr Chronicles and a much welcomed foray into the nearly forgotten genre of simulated space combat. Past series such as Wing Commander, Freespace and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter have been successful within the genre by blending strong story elements with furious combat and ship customization options.  While Dark Horizon blends all three of these key ingredients, the resulting game fails to deliver a cohesive overall experience.

  You start the game as a rookie pilot who must help defend against a mysterious force known simply as The Mirk – a black anomaly that devours star systems and leaves only darkness and suffering in its wake. In your pilot’s log you can delve into a vast array of documentation that provides back-story regarding the various alien races, history and star systems involved in the conflict, but there is little motivation to read the endless scores of information as it is rather overwhelming and convoluted in nature. There are some moody and dark cinematics that help to set the stage for combat before your missions, but everything feels sort of lifeless. You will never get a sense that you are ‘fighting the good fight’ or defending what is just – your character is positioned as mere automaton, thrust into combat with little sense of purpose beyond survival. Contributing to your overall sense of apathy is an annoying alien mechanic who speaks to you via intercom. Throughout your training and progression within the campaign he constantly insults and berates you, which will lead you to wonder why you don’t just help the Mirk instead.

  Before your mission begins, the game allows you to customize the vessel you will take into combat. There are an extensive variety of hulls, shields, power units and weaponry to select from, each with their associated advantages and disadvantages. At first only a select number of parts are available, but as you complete missions your mechanic will provide you with many more options. You can choose to create ships that are fast and lightly armored or bulkier with larger weapon sets, but most often you will probably find yourself simply trying to find the sweet spot between sufficient weaponry and armor. This is not always an easy thing to do, as the interface forces you into a trial and error approach with your setups. Want to add that sweet new laser gun? Oops, your ship is now too heavy to take off, try using a lighter power generator. Nope, now you don’t have enough power to use that missile system. Try something else…

  If you are willing to take the time to fine tune all of your options, it is certainly possible to develop a ship you will be happy with, but ultimately all of the tweaking bears little consequence to your overall satisfaction once your reach the combat phase of the mission. Your play style in combat will unfold in a fairly similar fashion regardless of the armament you select, so all of the customization feels like a waste of time since you can complete any mission using one of the ready-made setup options made available to you.

  Once you deploy for a mission the first thing you will notice is the beautiful color palettes and satisfying lighting effects in this game. It comes as somewhat of a surprise since the interface and all of the cutscenes are in black and white for some reason. Unfortunately the graphical strengths of Dark Horizon are undercut by a very cluttered and ugly HUD system that attempts to provide you with more information than you really need.  You can choose a chase camera or cockpit view, but neither are exempt from the chaotic information overlay that deters from the immersive experience that space combat should have.

  The missions unfold as you would expect for space combat. You will find yourself performing recon sorties, defending escorts and bases and attempting to destroy enemy motherships. You have three teammates who you fight with - each pops up in your overlay to provide you with objectives and keep you updated between skirmishes. You can issue some basic commands: attack my target, spread out, attack my pursuer, etc. but when you are engaged in full scale combat with swarms of enemy ships, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether your commands really make much of a difference on the outcome. Your comrades don’t verbally acknowledge your orders and don’t provide any sort of combat chatter or coordination commands.

  As for your opponent, you will be squared off against a range of small, medium and large class ships. The enemy AI makes targeting ships difficult – they dart around unpredictably and will come up on your 6 unexpectedly. There is however an annoying tendency for enemies to fly directly into you from straight on, ramming you and instantly crippling your shields giving you significant damage. This can be exceedingly frustrating as it can be difficult to complete a mission once this happens.

  On a positive note, you do have some options as to how you wish you approach combat. Your ship has a Shadow mode and Corter mode – Shadow mode makes your ship slower and your guns fire more slowly, but you gain the benefit of stealth. Corter mode juices up your weapons and speed at the expense of your shields. You may find yourself switching between these depending on your current circumstances within the mission.

  Overall the space flight and combat experience feels very arcade-like. You will find yourself selecting and destroying enemy targets one by one while your teammates are engaged haphazardly. Don’t expect your teammates to be able to systematically destroy targets in the same way that you can. Another shortcoming in combat is that your ship and its weapons simply don’t elicit a powerful feeling. The sound effects of your guns are weak and there isn’t much of a sense of speed when tracking your enemies. Destroying an enemy ship is satisfying the first few times, but the explosions lack significant impact. When you destroy the larger enemy ships there is a brilliant flash of light and then the hull simply disappears. While the combat is certainly the most engaging part of the game, as it should be, it is not sustaining enough to make the story and customization options worthwhile enough to invest yourself in.

  In conclusion, Dark Horizon is a game that feels unpolished and will leave you wanting more. The combat gameplay itself is decent, but not enough to salvage all of the game’s shortcomings. There are no multiplayer or combat skirmish modes, which could have added variety and you may also experience random crashes between loading screens. In several instances the game may crash when you try to load a saved game, forcing you to go back to an earlier mission. Dark Horizon attempts to provide an engaging and deep storyline, vast ship customization and fast arcade style combat but despite offering some redeeming qualities in each category, the total package falls short.

4 out of 10