Starshine Legacy: The Riddle of Dark Core

The disc came safe and unscratched and I finished the game within the next two hours. It was awesome. The bubble wrap was fun, too.

Besides the sneaking levels, I really like it! says my 11 year old.

All discs worked

I received this game via the PONY Club. This game is the fourth and last in the Starshine series, and is probably the best out of all because it not only has a secret level but also has a great ending, this time without having to compete in a show to finish the game. You play as a girl named Alex, the tomboy of the group, who still has not found her powers as a "Soulrider". To fully understand this game you should probably get the first three before this one, otherwise it will be very confusing. You cannot move using the arrow keys, instead you use W, A, S and D. There is a tutorial, but I don't think it tells you how to run in the game, so by the way you use Shift while moving. It is a little goofy, with the talking horses and the looks on some characters' faces. The game has eight levels, nine including the secret one, and almost all let you ride. You can use either the mouse wheel or Page up/down to scroll through your phone, journal, backpack and map. You move the horse using WASD as well. You also jump with both Alex and the horse using the space bar, and you move the camera using the mouse. The camera is very flexible, and you can do pretty much any position, except you can't zoom in or out. You can even make the horse rear (space bar while standing, walking, or trotting) and buck (very quickly press S then the space bar)! You cannot fall off, a plus for a game where in some levels you're chased and need to move quickly. Though this game is probably meant for younger girls, there are a couple things that make this game a bit scarier than the others. One is that Alex's power seems to "kill" her opponents, however they just stand there and look like ghosts, not moving. The second is that the girl's nemesis, Mr. Sands, was injured in an earlier game, and now looks horrible (he's in a wheelchair, he has a drip bag filled with some green goo, one of his eyes is all green, and his face doesn't look quite right). Despite this if you can take something a little creepy it's fun to get him and a couple of his goons to chase you through a tunnel, around logs, and across the shore, and whenever Mr. Sands starts his wheelchair it's like he's revving it for a race. If you ever fall off a cliff the screen will go black and you'll hear a creepy tune, then you will either be brought back to where you were before the fall or the level will restart. Great storyline, poor dialogue (they speak very oddly, it sounds as if they're speaking a foreign language, and they don't move their mouths), good horse gaits and the rider posts and does two-point too. A nice ghost-story-like game. One more thing: this game is very restricted in the way of exploring, unlike it's "sister game" Star Stable. There are walls (that you cannot see) around the area where the level takes place, and there are several doors at both school and the stable that cannot be opened. If you like to explore in games with horses, Star Stable is a better bet, and those games also contain most of the characters from Starshine Legacy. I have played this game on Windows 2000 and XP. It does not run on Macs.