991st played so far
Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1997
Developer: Totally Games
Publisher: LucasArts
While with some other genres, I seem to be ending on a group of games from a sub genre that I don’t make it to the end, as per my discussion on Tactics Ogre a few days ago, for shoot ’em ups I appear to have ended up with three 3D space shooters at the end. It’s one of the big names first, as we’ve played a Star Wars: Tie Fighter games before and enjoyed it, while today we’re jumping into a follow up game that should at least be a good technical upgrade.
What we are saying goodbye to is the Star Wars series. While its shooters have never been highest on the list for me, I loved the Knights of the Old Republic series, especially its second installment, so while the series might be a bit overrated, it has been a great base to create more games from. It’s pretty neat.
Our Thoughts
I don’t think I can claim there’s something amazingly different about this game. The basics of Star Wars: X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter are pretty familiar – I am fairly sure that the training missions in the game are the same ones we saw in Star Wars: Tie Fighter, except possibly for some minor additions. The Star Wars flavour is nice to have, and the ship designs always remind you of that, while it creates a nice base to build on here as well.
Once you get out of the training missions, the game does lose its structure a bit. There is no campaign. Instead you’re playing individual missions in an imperial vs rebel arena. They are fairly evenly matched and as far as I can tell, the focus of these is on multiplayer settings that you can play as well but obviously isn’t quite what I played through. It means that when you get shot, you jump into an AI craft instead to keep going and the whole setup feels really good for a long stint of playing with friends, even more with the large number of missions the game has for you to get through.
Final Thoughts
It’s possibly unfair to fully judge this game on its single player mode as it is clearly multiplayer focused. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the show though. It was a lot of fun to fly around and shoot your opponent, investigate freights and deal with other such challenges. It’s worth spending some time on for sure.