Internet spaceships, or more appropriately Sci-fi MMOs, are as a genre, vastly under represented. So its a pleasure to a review title like Black Prophecy. Developed by Reakktor Media and published by Gamigo, as a Free-to-play MMO, Black Prophecy is a twitched based space combat game. Using the mouse control flight system first pioneered by the Microsoft classic Freelancer, you control a small but fast space fighter.

The setting for Black Prophecy Gold is in a future time where the galaxy has been colonized by the Human race. During that time Humans have diversified into sub races. The two dominant ones are Tyi and Genides. Tyi are a race of cybernetically enhanced humans and the Genides are a genetically tuned and perfected race of human paradigms. Both exhibiting abilities way beyond normal humans. Not surprisingly there has been years of hostilities between the human factions and the player enters the world during a time where an uneasy peace now exists.
Not bad Sci-fi stuff so far, yet the Black Prophecy Gold team really push the immersion with an interactive prologue the player must play through before he gets to the game proper. The prologue story was developed by Sci-fi author Michael Marrak and consists of a series of scripted player missions, interspersed with cinematic cut-scenes. Apart from at times heavy cutscene usage, I really enjoyed it and it certainly made the back story a more permanent facet of my game experience. Without giving too many spoilers away you are faced with choosing between the Tyi and Genides after completing the prologue. This isn’t a game breaking decision since the only difference between the two are the cosmetic visuals of their respective ships, everything else is exactly the same.

Now on to game-play, as I mentioned earlier Black Prophecy uses a control system similar to Freelancer. Where you ‘look’ with the mouse cursor controls the direction of flight, which in turn also determines where your guns aim. Speed, strafing and rolling are controlled by “WASD”. In a way its just like playing an FPS, its a great system and also does away for the need of a paying money for a joystick (though there is joystick support). What this all means is the combat is about actively flying the ship and relying on good reflexes to get you through the fight. As opposed to say EVE-Online where you give the ship commands and more demand is put on tactical thinking.