Colony Wars: Vengeance

About Colony Wars: Vengeance

Colony Wars: Vengeance (1998) is Psygnosis's branching space combat sequel set a century later, in which pilot Mertens joins the Earth Empire's Colonial Navy as it fights back against the League.

Colony Wars: Vengeance in Depth

In 4671, a century after Colony Wars, the canonical ending saw the League of Free Worlds drive the Earth Empire's Colonial Navy into a last stand in the Sol system, where it held out; the League withdrew and closed the warp hole, cutting Sol off from the universe. Without fresh resources, the Empire collapsed into decades of civil war, held together only by a man named Kron and his anti-League propaganda. The player is Mertens, a pilot who enlists in the Navy and begins by eliminating rogue Navy forces.

Missions, mostly in space, are flown in one of four Colonial Navy fighters, each with a different mix of energy weapons, missiles or torpedoes, and some with non-lethal EMP cannons. Countermeasures shake off incoming missiles and a grapple gun captures important targets. New are upgrades to engine power, manoeuvrability, shields and afterburner duration using power pods earned after missions, and a lead-pursuit indicator for aiming cannon fire. For the first time in the series some missions take place in planetary atmospheres, flying the Navy's Spook drop ship, and some pit the player against giant League machines called Sentinels. The campaign is divided into Acts, with branching paths and outcomes that depend on performance, certain missions acting as turning points.

Making Colony Wars: Vengeance

Psygnosis developed and published it for the PlayStation in 1998 as the sequel to the previous year's Colony Wars. Scagg said the team had "totally rewritten the AI routines" and the collision routines. It averaged 86.67 per cent on GameRankings from 12 reviews.