Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception

The first time I popped in Project Sylpheed, a differently spelled offspring of ‘80s-era space shooter Silpheed, I must admit to cracking before the tutorial even wrapped up. Admittedly, it was way late, I was off my tits and flying the fighter was simply to frakkin’ confusing. Oh, I marvelled for a while at the spectacular space vista, the distant nebulas adding brightly coloured slashes to the all-encompassing star fields. But still the controls were too complicated with multi-tasking buttons requiring more memory than I possess to pull of manoeuvres. At a more reasonable hour, I gave ’er another go and was able to suss out the game controls well enough to navigate 3D space, lead a squadron through several exhilarating deep space dogfights and start having some fun. Sylpheed doesn’t bring much new to the space combat arena — Wing Commander and several Star Wars spin-offs have been there, laser blasted that — the animé cut-scenes are pretty but vacant and the graphics rely on high-definition to bring out the twinkle in the stars. But for patient space combat acolytes, a curiously underserved niche market, this will certainly itch a scratch — even if you don’t get a multiplayer mode with which to blow each other out of the stars.