Independence War: Special Edition - Defiance

I know we've been asking for old games to be remade in today's 3D clothing, but we meant ones older than this. We were talking about Skool Daze, Jet Set Willy and Chuckie Egg. Not 1-War. It only came out about a year ago and had all sorts of fancy non-accelerated graphics effects anyway. It doesn't heed enhancing. It's fine as it is. Tell that to Infogrames, though.

So I-War Special Edition is basically the original game with 3Dfx enhancements (which could really have been done as a downloadable patch when you think about it) and a new campaign of 18 missions. What Infogrames haven't done - and what they should have - is updated the game to fit in with our more refined needs.

There's a clumsy interface at work - a screen that's often cluttered with pointless and distracting information. The way the game is presented also feels rather basic - very 1997. When you stack it up next to games like Jf -- Beyond The Frontier, Freespace 2 and X-Wing Alliance, its primitive feel is all the more apparent.

It isn't a bad game, by any stretch. The mission structures are quite nice, as it goes, even if there is a little too much dependency on the fly-shoot-fly-shoot-fly-home model. The new campaign isn't bad, either - a nice parallel storyline played from the opposite side. And it looks a treat. It's just that the dated feel of the gameplay lets it down and you constantly wish you were playing something more modern. Still, it's cheap, so that's something.