Although the name may night ring a bell at first, Global Star Software has at least a few high profile titles under their belt. Along with publishing Scaler and Conflict Vietnam, as well as picking up the Army Men franchise, Global Star's logo can also be found on the back of just about every ESPN title released this year. So while you might not recognize the name, at least we know they have a few high profile titles, so they must have a good website, right?
Look and Design:
It's not hard to see just what Global Star wants you to see when you log on. They have a giant animated banner that is much too flashy and not
It's a shame there won't be a ESPN NFL 2K6, we heard you would be able to play against the Donald!
any more effective than what you would get with one half the size. Crunched on the side are search options and the latest news. The rest of the page is dedicated to their hottest games, which in this case happen to be ESPN College Hoops 2K5 and Scaler.
The game pages have a few things going for them, such as a whole bunch of pictures to search through. These pages are also nice looking; they don't feature any wacky color schemes that take your eyes away or anything. Global Star relies a bit too much on the power of bullet points, but at least it fills in a lot of information. Still, I can't help but notice how similar to the back of a box this looks like, and a little more work on the design and information could go a long way.
Accessibility:
There are really only a few sections in the Global Star website, so finding your way around shouldn't be too hard. But if you do manage to get lost you can consult the site map, which is even more confusing than their default layout. If you're looking for a game all you need to do is click the Games tab and pick your system, there's a news and support page for you to dig through as well. And if you want to learn more you can read their extremely short history which manages to encapsulate nearly ten years of business into a paltry 100 words!! Makes you wonder if that's all they can say about themselves, then what the hell am I doing writing ten times that about them. Lazy bums!!
No offense, but this guy doesn't need his own game!
Global Star is one of the companies responsible for ESPN's NFL 2K5 ... yet there's not a single mention of the recent Electronic Arts deal with the NFL. This exclusive contract effectively kills one of Global Star's biggest franchises, yet they don't say a single thing about it on the website. The newest information is actually two months old, and all about Scaler. If you look over the full news section you'll notice that Global Star actually had a lot to say, but then around late October they all but stopped communicating. Up until then they had multiple posts with all kinds of (slightly) interesting things to say, but these days nobody is manning the news wire.
Parting Thoughts:
There are some things that should go down with the ship, and the Army Men series should probably died with 3DO. Here's a series we've seen dozens of times, and yet no matter what version, format, or genre they take, the games always seem to end up being mediocre at best. I can certainly understand getting behind something like ESPN NFL 2K5, but nobody is shouting for another Army Men game. And while I'm at it, can we stop going back to Vietnam? It really wasn't that interesting of a "war", and honestly, it's not doing us any good making us relive something we didn't even win.
FINAL GRADE: D
(Important Note: This review was written in 2004. As is the case with websites things tend to change and get moved around. We've decided to cover major companies who should have a presence on the web for many years to come, but the actual reviews of the layout may not be relevant for more than a month to a year. Having said that, we're hoping this article was still interesting, and if not, at least you go this extra little paragraph of explanation that you wouldn't normally get on the other websites.)
