What a shame the interface is so messed up! Beyond the difficulties of playing Frontier: First Encounters there are some absolutely stunning and beautiful graphic displays of deep space and planets. Using the mouse to pilot your spacecraft is especially ugly and the keyboard nearly useless.

There is no calibration setup for the joystick so that avenue is a dead end. Unfortunately, they all work about the same, not very well. Frontier: First Encounters can be played with keyboard, mouse or joystick. That's assuming you ever get beyond the incredibly difficult learning curve to figure out how it's supposed to work. The disappointment is akin to a seven-year old racing downstairs on Christmas morning only to find out all his beautifully wrapped presents are clothes, not toys.įirst and foremost on the long list of flaws is the almost totally unusable, user-unfriendly interface. Every single attempt at playing this game end with abject frustration.

It seems quite likely that the game never underwent any extensive testing and if it did, the testers were judging it on wishful thinking. All the elements of good gaming are present in the game but the execution (or lack thereof) of the program is disastrous. This is even more mystifying considering the relative successes of its predecessors by the same designers. The difference between those games and David Braben's Frontier: First Encounters is that the former games deliver, whereas this one, upon close inspection, fails miserably.

Every so often, you come across a game such as Civilization or Warcraftwith so much potential it's staggering.

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