Retribution

Decent 3D shooter from Gremlin that tries hard to enhance the immersion with Wing Commander-style interactive screens between missions, but didn't quite succeed due to insipid plot and writing.

The plot: as the name implies, fight to avenge the fallen of your race that have been "harvested" by the evil Krellans (no relation to Star Fleet games). Cutscenes and digitized speech both add to the atmosphere, but unfortunately the plot doesn't get better than the very simplistic kill-the-aliens premise. Between missions, you can wander around in the base talking to different characters (who look remarkably similar to pilots in Wing Commander 1), who often have tips or info on the backstory. The writing is sub-par, however, making these interactive scenes little more than a waste of space.

The good news is that true to Gremlin's reputation as developer of some of the best in-game 3D graphics, the 3D landscapes in Retribution are very smooth and detailed, with good gouraud-shading effects similar to NovaLogic games. Gremlin touted their technology as "logi-scape real time landscape generating technology incorporating new Deep Horizon format", and the results are great to look at. Retribution is a very challenging game that gets very hard very fast.

With eleven major campaigns, each with 4 highly strategic missions, and 8 training missions to enhance performance, Retribution will keep the most expert of pilots occupied for some time. Recommended, but only for veteran gamers who are looking for a furious space combat game without the need for an engaging plot.

Review By HOTUD