PATROL IN THE SPACE

Main review

The universe has pretty much looked after itself for over thirteen billion years but, as soon as mankind finally makes its way out into the great black yonder, it feels the unstoppable urge to set up a space administration to “protect” space even if there’s no obvious threat apart possibly from mankind itself.

That new commitment to interstellar security does mean that there’s a significant number of regular patrols being dispatched in order to keep a beady eye on even the most remote, uninhabited corners of each galaxy and, despite the detrimental effect to mental health such long haul single person missions may be having, they’re essential because there’s always the chance of invasion from some alien evil striking… and apparently this threat even applies to areas that are just to one side of the middle of nowhere, even when there’s been absolutely no sign of intelligent life recorded.

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

Patrol in the Space is a “dodge the landscape” game with fast horizontal scrolling. The area being traversed by the player’s shiny blue rocket is almost unnervingly quiet so the pilots flying through have tended to do so with their throttles open all the way, with their plan presumably being to get this ridiculously tedious job over and done with so that they can head back to the space barracks for a nice cuppa, some digestives and perhaps even a sticky bun or two.

But even with the engines running hot, avoiding death by smacking into the surface of an alien world would be reasonably easy if it wasn’t for the ship guzzling fuel at a ridiculous rate, forcing forces pilots to get up close and personal with the landscape to use the fuel dumps which the space administration have kindly left dotted around.

Graphics are reasonable but nothing spectacular and the music is solid throughout but, apart from having a couple of different styles for the alien worlds zooming past, there really isn’t much in the way of variety and Patrol in the Space doesn’t stand out much from any of the similar titles out there. It is quite fun to play in the short term but, ironically for a game about flying through large areas of space, it doesn’t really seem to actually go anywhere and soon becomes repetitive.