Frontier:Elite II - Konami/Gametek, written by David Braben
               PC - œ39.95, Amiga - œ29.95

         A review by Roy Sims, played on PC and Amiga.

Frontier is the sequel to Elite - the game that originally made me
want to get a disk drive for our BBC Model B Micro computer back
in the early days of the 8 bit revolution. When it came out for
the Spectrum I bought it immediately, but soon discovered that I
didn't actually like it all that much. Frontier has been on the go
for about five years on and off, and it has now been
simultaneously released for the Amiga and the PC with an ST
version to follow shortly.

I'm in the fortunate position of being able to choose which
version to go out and buy, and logic dictated (to coin a Vulcan
phrase) that the PC version would be the faster and smoother of
the two, so I plumped for the PC version whilst a very good friend
of mine went out and bought the Amiga version instead. Therefore I
can pass judgement on both versions at the same time.

Frontier comes with three separate black and white manuals, a
Quick Start Guide and a large colour map of part of the galaxy
from the game. The main manual contains all the stuff you need to
know about the game itself, but why they included the other two I
do not know.  One is a Gazetteer which gives you superfluous info
on some of the other solar systems in the game. The other is
'Stories of life on the frontier' and is a collection of short
stories that hark back to the days when 16 bit games had to be
bundled with a novella of some kind. You don't need to read either
of these to play the game.

Frontier is an open ended game in that it has no official
conclusion. I've stated before that I prefer games that have an
ending, but in the case of Frontier I'll make an exception. The
galaxy that Frontier is based within is so well defined that it is
the first game that has truly felt real to me. There are many
solar systems to explore, and a large number of them are based on
real systems (although the planets within them are best guesses as
astronomers have yet to prove that other planets other than our
own actually exist). Each system has a political and economical
background. Some have planets with starports, space stations and
the like where trading can occur. Others have yet to be explored
or have no recorded settlements. Some are home to penal colonies
and require permits before legal entry can be allowed. Planets are
colourful and detailed, some are ringed and have their own moons.
It also makes a change for the planets to have the type of names
that you would expect planets to be christened with once all the
classic ones have been used up (Reagan's Legacy being one example,
or maybe you would like a trip to Birmingham World or Gold?).

The 3D part of the game is depicted using a 3D engine that is best
described as unique. The type of sun (white dwarf, red giant etc)
casts a different coloured light onto your ship as you travel
through the solar system. Even the planets are real 3D objects.
The object complexity and the colour scheme is very impressive on
the Amiga version (and even better when run on an A1200 where the
speed increase is significant), but it looks less impressive on
the PC even though they are identical! The problem is that our
perception of what a good 3D space game on the PC should look like
is way beyond the style of graphics used here. Instead of doing a
simple port over to the PC, proper 256 colour VGA graphics should
have been created. As a result the PC version looks very poor when
you compare its visual appeal to the likes of Strike Commander or
Privateer.

As in the original game, you can battle your way through combat to
eventually be acclaimed as one of the Elite. However, due to the
added depth of the game there are many other possible avenues to
explore. You can also have Federal or Imperial ranks that go up
when you successfully complete missions for each side. You also
have a number of legal ratings which can be affected by you
trading in illegal goods or conducting illegal procedures (like
ejecting rubbish into space or discharging a weapon illegally).
The missions themselves are varied. Apart from the Federal or
Military options, there are many individuals who are after your
services. The most lucrative are assassinations, but you can only
get those if you are of a high enough Elite rating. Ferrying items
to nearby solar systems pays peanuts in contrast, but is a good
way to get started.  If you have enough extra cabins, you can also
act as a galactic taxi service. The smaller missions may sound
easy, but sometimes you end up carrying people who are wanted, or
items that pirates would gladly attack you for! These missions are
accessed through bulletin boards found at all starports, space
stations etc. All have to be completed by a certain stardate, so
make sure you have enough fuel and time to succeed before you
accept one.

With all these different ratings available, you will find yourself
making choices as to what career you are going to follow. Being a
pirate will include attacking ships and stealing their cargo
(using a fuel scoop and cargo scoop conversion) as well as dealing
in lucrative illegal goods between solar systems. You could always
choose the safer route and taxi people and items around, and maybe
do the occasional Federal or Military mission. Then again, you
could just concentrate on mining asteroids for money or become the
most feared assassin in the galaxy!

Money (credits) can be used to upgrade your ship's equipment with
all sorts of goodies, or you might wish to save up and try to part
exchange your current ship for a new one! Unlike in the original
game, you aren't restricted to just one ship. There are well over
a dozen different ship types to buy (or attack!). You start off in
the ship left to you by your late Grandfather, Commander Jameson.
It isn't great, but it has enough room to do some of the smaller
missions on offer at the start. Talking of the start, you can
choose from 3 starting positions which give you different ships
that start in different solar systems in the galaxy. Two of the
positions put you in a ship which might seem familiar to players
of the original!

One of the things I really hated about the original Elite was
manual docking with a space station. It was far too fiddly. If you
pick the starting position in Frontier (which places you on the
planet Merlin) then you have a ship with an automatic pilot and a
docking computer built in as standard. This makes flying the ship
a doddle. There is a 3D cuboid galaxy map to set your destination,
then you engage the hyperspace engines and arrive in the new solar
system. From there you can switch to solar system map where you
can set the autopilot to take you to a planet or station. To speed
up the journey time you can accelerate time, but this will
disengage if you are put under attack.

Combat is a bit hit and miss. The best method in the Amiga version
is to set the attacking ship as the target for the auto-pilot,
then manually fly away from it and engage the auto-pilot and start
shooting! This works quite well (my friend has gone up six Elite
ratings using this method to a giddy 'Above Average'!) but it
doesn't seem to work as well on the PC. The ships don't behave in
the same way at all, and most of the time you have to manually
follow them about which is quite difficult. To get a bounty on a
ship, you have to have bought and fitted a Radar Mapper device
first. This will tell you what type of ship you are attacking, and
how it is equipped. You are also told of its shield status which
can come in very handy! If a bounty is on the head of the pilot,
this information is shown at the bottom.

Your normal views from the ship are forward, reverse and external.
You can fit weapons to the front and rear views if you have the
room and the money. Some bigger ships have additional turrets that
can also have weapons fitted (up to four). Other equipment to buy
includes a hyperspace cloud analyzer. If you are chasing a ship
and it jumps into hyperspace, it leaves behind a hyperspace cloud.
By examining the cloud with this device, you can ascertain their
new destination. This means you can follow them to a new solar
system!  What's even more important is that if your ship engine is
a bigger (faster) one than your prey, if you jump to their new
destination you will actually arrive ahead of them and can wait
for them to arrive! (There is a way around this, by deliberately
forcing a hyperspace mis-jump. This is considered very dangerous
and your ship can end up anywhere in the galaxy! The cloud you
leave behind will only tell the chasing ship of the destination
you would have arrived at if the jump had gone normally).

Other useful equipment includes shield generators, energy bombs,
ECM systems (to confuse missiles) and much more besides. I should
imagine that having a large starship brimming with all this extra
equipment would be quite an awesome prospect! Unfortunately, big
ships need extra crew members and they cost money (weekly salaries
will be paid out from your earnings!).

Frontier also has a selection of classical music pieces that can
be played during combat, after hyperspace, during docking
procedures etc. Unfortunately, the renditions don't come across
very well on the PC (some sound horribly out of tune) and are best
turned off.  Sound effects are also sparse and generally poor on
both versions.

Frontier is very playable on a fast Amiga. Response is quick and
the 3D is smooth and looks impressive. The game loads in one go
and then that's it. You can easily install it to a hard disk and
games can be saved to floppy, hard disk or ram disk without any
hassles.  Technically the PC conversion is a rather disappointing.
For example, when you select a starting position from the menu at
the start of the game, the PC then locks up for a minute whilst it
tries to calculate what to do next, (even on a 486!). The first
few times this happened I assumed it didn't like my boot up
sequence, so I did a new one, which made no difference what so
ever. In contrast, the Amiga versions response to everything is
immediate, without any delays what so ever. The PC also locks up
on three separate occasions during the hyperspace sequences,
(although this seems to diminish the longer you play the game) and
the colour palette on many screens changes to the next one before
the screen swaps over. A lack lustre attempt has been made to tart
up the 3D graphics by mapping bitmapped surface graphics to the 3D
ships and buildings. In general, the effect makes the game look
worse than before.

I phoned Gametek about the locking up problem and was told "sorry,
but that's the way it is and we're not going to do anything about
it". They also admitted to me that it was very poor for a PC
product, especially when you see how well the Amiga version
performs in comparison.

To summarise, Frontier is a deep and engrossing science fiction 3D
game based in a very believable galaxy. There's lots to do and the
whole thing is very slick and playable on an Amiga A1200. It's not
quite so smooth on a standard Amiga, but if you turn the object
complexity down than all is fine. The PC version is exactly the
same game, but technically it's a bit of a let down when compared
to other PC product. However, if you don't get too annoyed by the
locking up problems (not seeing the Amiga version helps!) then
it's certainly worth getting hold of. One last question - why are
Gametek charging an extra œ10 for PC Frontier (œ39.95) for what is
really an inferior version?

UPDATE: Despite my enthusiasms for the Amiga version, there are
apparently some problems (i.e bugs!). However, news from
Compuserve suggests that there is a bug fix for the Amiga version
available from Gametek U.K. to registered users. Phone them up on
(0753) 553445 for more details. The only bug I know it cures is a
problem related to mining asteroids.