STARFADE: Sortie

STARFADE: Sortie puts you in the cockpit of one frigate inside a war fought by whole fleets. Battleships trade broadsides kilometres away, a worldship the size of a moon tears out of a rift, and you are a 40-metre Lancer with two wingmen and a squadron leader who keeps telling you to stay on her wing.SMALL SHIP, ENORMOUS BATTLEFIELD - Launch off a supercarrier: sit on the cradle in the Resolute's launch deck, push the throttle and ride the catapult down a 900 m tube into the fight. - Fly past the giants: battleships, Concord Edicts and a 7 km worldship are not backdrops. You fly along their hulls and take them apart one subsystem at a time. - A war on the radio: no cutscenes take the controls away. Orders, banter and the story come over the radio while you fly, and the fleet around you lives and dies in front of you. FLY WITH YOUR HANDS, AIM WITH YOUR EYES - Five controls: fly, speed, guns, missiles and look. Level flight with no roll keeps you oriented and comfortable. - Gaze lock: look at a target to lock it. The launcher picks a missile for small craft and a torpedo for capital ships and their subsystems. - A cockpit you can touch: grab the stick and throttle with your hands, or fly with the thumbsticks. - Comfort options: seated play, comfort vignette, optional auto-level, a launch you can skip. EIGHT MISSIONS, EIGHT RULES - Escort a convoy through a waking warp gate into a blockade on the far side. - Break a lattice: hunt the relays hidden in an asteroid belt that keep the enemy's shields up. - Stop the lances: Edicts charge lances that split battleships in half. Shoot the glowing focus before it fires. - Beat the seal: two spires are closing a gate on the clock. Break them and the reinforcements come through. - Duel an ace: Vael Taris and his gilded wing ambush your squadron, and not everyone flies home. - Hold the outpost against four waves, and stop the worldship: shield spires, obelisk batteries, then the engines. COME BACK FOR MORE - Grades and hidden targets: every mission is graded S to C, and every mission hides a named target. - Loadouts: earn points and buy rapid or piercing cannons, cluster or long-range missiles, shield-breaker torpedoes, upgrades and paint. - Sortie mode: endless waves with a score and a local board. Asterian waves bring the campaign's rules back; the Veyl swarm latches onto your hull. - Three difficulties. VR FIRST, FLAT SCREEN WELCOME Built for PC VR headsets through SteamVR (OpenXR). Without a headset the game runs on a flat screen: steer with WASD or a gamepad and look and lock with the mouse or the right stick.