When a game is a long time in production, the feelings around the time of its release are fairly mixed. On the one hand there's the excitement that it's finally going to arrive, but this is tinged with apprehension and reservations on whether it has been worth the wait. Ocean's long-awaited (over two years in fact) space battle saga, Epic, is a game which fits into the category. Can the incredibly long wait really be worth it in the end? Well... not really.

The story behind the game is basically a reworking of Battlestar Galactica, with the human race fleeing disaster in a massive fleet of ships. After and admittedly impressive introduction sequence - a massive fleet of animated ships flying away from the doomed planet - you have to take on a series of missions as a pilot on the experimental Epic fighter. The fight mission is pretty much a direct steal from Galactica, with the player having to blast a path through a minefield before the fleet can pass. Next it's a series of attack runs on the Rexxon bases, destroying their communication systems, supply lines and defence systems. Later in the game, you must take part in space battles along with other fighters in the human fleet, ending up with a massive attack on the Rexxon Emperor's personal space cruiser.

Elitist?
Originally it was planned to make Epic a wide-ranging, Elite-style 3D space shoot-'em-up, trading and strategy game. What it has actually turned out to be is a pretty bland, simplistic 3D shoot-'em-up with a few fancy polygon spaceships.

The fact is there are so many annoying quirks that leave you screaming at the screen. For example, when you try to lock on to a target using the waypoint computer, it will only guide you to one particular target out of all the ones available, even if you've already destroyed that one!

Some of the missions are a bit of a mystery to begin with, so you have to guess what you're supposed to be doing. Where are the nice animated computer briefings? Left out of the Amiga version, it appears. Added to all this, perhaps the most galling aspect is that the game is incredibly easy to finish. Pretty much everyone who has played the game, to our knowledge, completed all the missions within two hours of first starting the game. Doesn't really seem to be worth the money, does it?

Don't believe the...
So after all the hype, the long delays and the promise of a massive space saga, all we have is a futuristic, toned-down version of F29 with less missions and less than challenging gameplay. Sorry, but adding a few in-between animations (which take a while to plod through, many of them being repeated) doesn't improve things. Digital Image Design started the project so long ago, but have been working on newer (and better) games, leaving little time for finishing Epic. However, Ocean decided they still wanted to release the title, but Digital Image couldn't get it together in time. So we're left with a rushed job to get the thing released. The result is an out-of-date shoot-'em-up.

Oh dear. And I was so looking forward to this. Epic has taken a long time to arrive, and you'd think that we'd be in for something pretty special considering the months of hype. Oh dear...

At first it looks good though, along Wing Commander (out on the Amiga soon - see Things To Come this issue) in that it links a series of space-bound shoot-'em-up outings together with a fairly linear galaxy-spanning plot. (Talking of which, I get the impression that the game's designers spent an awful lot of time watching Battlestar Galactica. The ships, the missions and all are suspiciously reminiscent of that brave body of actors harried across space by the nasty Cylons.)

The game hangs on a series of missions, each with a specific objective and each with a time limit - I can't say I'm a great fan of the latter idea, as it gives a finite air to what is, after all, supposed to be an epic adventure. To give you some idea of what's in store if you chose to buy the game. I'll go through my first play of it in some detail.

After a series of graphically impressive, but tedious, intro screens - lots of spaceships zipping around Star Wars-style - I'm told to go and clear a path through the mine belt surrounding the Rexxon planet of Amragan Nine and destroy a tracking station that poses a threat to the human fleet. I've a starfighter to play with - and a 3D bunch of space mines to get through/blow up.

It's rather like a shooting gallery here. All you do is squirt laser fire at the mines, dispatch the one enemy fighter that has taken exception to your excursion, and watch the mission percentage figure tot up as you go. Your spaceship is quite easy to control and the quality of animation is impressive, which makes suspension of disbelief quite easy - it's not quite like 'being there', but quite jolly nevertheless.

Assuming that the first part of the mission is there just so I can get to grips with controlling the ship, it's straight then off to the next objective - blowing up the planet-bound transmitter. As I mentioned, there's a time limit on this - the pretext is taht the planet goes through an eclipse during which it is incommunicado from the rest of the Rexxons, and that's when you've got to make your strike.

Hitting [Help] gives you the co-ordinates of the tracking dish, making it very easy to find, and so I park the spaceship by it and pump everything I've got into the damn thing.

'Shoot the generator,' says the on-screen message. "Er, what generator?" says I. There I am, blasting gigatons of fiery death into the target, and I'm told to shoot at something I can't even see.
Scratch one mission - the Rexxons know where the human's fleet is and I'm in the doghouse (A colleague later told me that the generator is some way off to the right of the dish, and no, he couldn't find mention of it in the manual either).

It's not 'Game Over' time, however - this is an awfully forgiving program, in that I'm given a bio-clone of myself with which to attempt the next mission: destroy some space ports and a mining complex. It's all very well, this continual self-regeneration, but it does nothing to build up a relationship between yourself and your game character.

MISSION IMPLAUSIBLE AGAIN
Back to the mission, then, and once again we've got a problem with the navigation data. I'm given co-ordinates for the target (some mines), it's blown to smithereens and 20-odd percent of the mission is complete. New co-ordinates please? No chance. It keeps sending me back to the minehead I've just destroyed.

After a while it dawns that someone hasn't been too clever at programming this bit of the game, so I whizz off willy-nilly and, sure enough, there are more mine heads scattered about the surface of the planet - four in all. And no, that's not in the manual either.

Ah yes, the manual. I'll tell you one thing that is in the manual - a grittily written affair set in an eye-straining typeface, by the way - and that's the definition of an ion as '...a particle of *FILL IN LATER*' (sic). And in the German section, it's: 'Ein Partikel von *FILL IN LATER'. So why do I get the impression that parts of this game are unfinished?

Anyway, back to the game, and after several abortive efforts at this seconds mission it is completed with relative ease once I know where the targets are - even the enemy fighters sent out to stop me cause little concern.

I feel I'm just about getting the hang of things, having learned to use my initiative a bit more than I thought I would, when I hear that the Rexxons have got word from Amragan that humans are about, and the main battle fleet is headed for the Federation's armada.

It's here that the most stupid, idiotic, mind-numbingly, incomprehensibly dumb feature of the game comes in - the cheat. I'm out there, once again in the starfighter, as streams of Rexxons ships fly in with weapons blazing, doing their best to destroy the Federation ships. Fuel is dwindling and I've only got limited weapons; what do I do?

The answer is easy. Hit (Enter) on the keypad - sorry you A600 owners - and I've got them all back again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Sure, I think it's fine for game designers to put in an obscure cheat that can be leaked out in six months' time - but for heaven's sake, don't put it on the pilot control card!

If you're about to get wiped out in a battle, there's just no way you're not going to hit the cheat button. What's next? Well, according to the messages on-screen, I'm a great hero (yeah, yeah, let's have some action), my name will be revered throughout all eternity and the Rexxons are defeated. Er, game over. Playing time three hours.

THE EPICENTRE OF A REAL EPIC
Now hold on a minute there, bub. Three missions, the first of which I fouled up, and I've won? I thought this was Epic, 'a sci-fi extravaganza featuring spectacular graphics and stunning gameplay'. Okay, the programmers, DiD, are the folk who did RoboCop 3 - but it's all a bit short and a little too easy once you've figured out that the mission details amount to little more than pointing you in the rough direction of where the action is.

So what went wrong? Well, seems me fluffing the first mission rather mucked up the flow of the whole game. It turns out that I'd hit that tracking station (hey, I tried right?) back at the front end of the game, the Rexxons would never have come out in such force on mission 3, thus dragging the game into further missions.

In the spirit of fair play, I did go back to the beginning and try out some of the missions I'd missed through my pre-emptive, complete and utter destruction of the Rexxon menace - but sooooorry guys, Mission 4 entails flying to a magma cannon and blowing it up, a two-minute job. Mission 6 entails flying to a command centre and blowing it up, another two-minute job. And Mission 7 is to destroy the entire enemy fleet - and we've been here before, haven't we guys?

Summing up is simple: Sorry, but this game is just not up to the mark. It suffers that most typical of failings, great graphics but crop gameplay. I feel disappointed and cheated by a game that promises so much but simply fails to deliver. Wait for Wing Commander or dust off your copy of Elite. I never thought I'd use Wayne-speak, but as far as this game goes it's Epic - not!

With the likely non-appearance of Mindscape's Wing Commander on the Amiga, it looks as if Ocean's long-awaited sci-fi blaster, Epic, will be a more-than-adequate substitute. With a scenario which bears more than a passing resemblance to the 70s cult sci-fi show, Battlestar Galactica, the game pits the player against the evil Rexxon Empire as you attempt to escort a massive fleet of Federation starship through deep space to a new safe-haven.

The game begins with a finely-crafted animation sequence which relates the story so far in true 'Star Wars' style. With a sun approaching supernova, a loose alliance of planetary systems are rapidly facing extinction. Their only hope is to construct a vast space fleet capable of transporting the entire populace to Ulysees VII, a habitable planet located on the far side of the galaxy.

To reach their destination, the rag-tag collection of 8,000 interplanetary craft must pass through the Rexxon Empire, a huge expanse of space controlled by a war-like race dedicated to the extermination of the human race.

To help you protect such a large and vulnerable fleet of ships, the Federation has built a large number of battleships including two huge dreadnoughts, the Battleaxe and the Redstorm, and a highly advanced fighter equipped with a fearsome array of weaponry. Made from super-tough Epical metal, only three such fighters could be constructed because of the scarcity of the ore.
As the Federation's top flyboy, it's up to you to take control of the craft and help protect the fleet to the best of your abilities.

Escorting the Federation space fleet to their new homeland is fraught with danger. Not only will the Starfleet need to be protected from hostile Rexxon battle squadrons, but a number of pre-planned missions need to be undertaken to help neutralise the Rexxon threat.
In all, there are eight missions to complete and failure in just one of these will result in the total destruction of the fleet and, consequently, the end of the game.

The main screen features a bitmapped cockpit display of the Epic fighter together with a 3D representation of the area immediately in front of the craft. A combat scanner locates and targets enemy ships while punching the 'Return' key toggles between the various weapons at your disposal.

Each mission requires a different combination of armaments ranging from standard self-regenerating lasers and nuclear-tipped torpedoes to lock-on missiles and a cobalt doomsday device which destroys anything within 200,000 kms.
Best of all is the neutron blaster which throws out a concentrated beam of energy in front of the ship which destroys anything in its limited range.

Toward the left-hand side of the cockpit is a system display which shows how much fuel is left, current speed, and shield status. Fuel consumption is the Achilles' heel of the Epic fighter as most functions eat away at the fuel tanks at an alarming rate. To help compensate for this 'design fault', the Federation has placed fuel pods at strategic points during each mission as well as a number that have been scattered at random throughout the game.

A tractor beam is used to snag the pods which is accessed via the weapons system. The ship's protective shielding uses up the most fuel, so it's best not to use this facility until entering a combat situation. But do remember that when activated, the shielding takes up to six seconds to completely envelop the ship.

Controlling the craft is simplicity itself. Holding down the left mouse button controls the speed while the right button activates the currently-selected weapons system. The ship can be made to bank to the left or right by moving the mouse from side-to-side with a forward motion sending the craft into a dive and a backward movement enabling it to climb rapidly. And that's it. Such simple controls cut out the need for over-complicated displays and allow the player to jump straight into the action.

The eight missions involve both planetary and space warfare and have been designed to test the Epic fighter to the limits of its endurance. Missions include blowing up strategic Rexxon fuel dumps, clearing nuclear mine fields, repelling attacks on the Federation fleet, disrupting communications and neutralising the attack capabilities of the amassed Rexxon battle fleet. Each mission is extremely difficult, and gets progressively harder as the game progresses and all have a knock on effect for subsequence missions.

For instance, failure to blow up a Magma Cannon on the planet Potead before the Federation Battle Fleet is in range will result in the near-total destruction of the convoy and leave you alone in facing the Rexxon Imperial Guard - a task not to be relished!

Another mission involves repelling a Rexxon Attack Legion. Although this is easily done, adequate protection must be given to the Agricultural ships and the Ordnance storage vessels. If either of these should be destroyed, the consequences might not be immediately noticeable, but later on in the game you could find yourself without food of any weapons.

The most amazing thing about the game is the quality and speed of the 3D graphics. The variety of designs, literally 'borrowed' from classic sci-fi TV shows and movies, adds to the overall atmosphere and gives a convincing feel of 'authenticity' to the game.

Some of the ships in the game are gigantic, up to six miles long, and the player can zoom in to take a closer and more detailed look at some of the larger craft. Near-perfect collision detection means that you can fly in between the individual struts and girders that make up each ship's infrastructure without inadvertently trashing your craft due to poor design.

The sheer scale of the game is also impressive. Up to 400 polygons can be on screen per second and multiple battle sequences can involve more than 350 ships, each with their own intelligence routines. For example, predator ships will merely pursue a vessel until either it or its target are destroyed while other craft display attack modes based on real war tactics and theory such as encirclement and dispersal manoeuvres.

More than six man years have gone into developing the game with a good proportion of that time spent on perfecting the battle sequences.
Old timer Dave Whittaker, provided the sound FX. Mars, the Bringer of War, from Holsts' Planet Suite, forms the main in-game music to good effect and there are plenty of sampled sounds to keep things suitably raucous.

With some super-fast polygon routines, and the chance of dogfights aplenty, Epic definitely lives up to its name.