Pong and Beyond

747th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1994
Developer: Totally Games
Publisher: LucasArts

There is a subset of Star Wars games that focuses on the space dog fights that are a part of the franchise – small crafts flying around as they chase each other around the large structures. They were even part of the Lego Star Wars games, as annoying as they might have been there.

For me, they were not the favourite part of the series and I’m not very hopeful for the games either. There are four games on the list – two in the Tie Fighter line and two in the newer Rogue Squadron line. I still need to start both and you’ll see Rogue Squadron come around in a few weeks. Today, we fight as part of the empire, so let’s see how we go.

Our Thoughts

One of the things that usually gets me in these games is that they can be disorienting. I don’t think it was as much of an issue with Star Fox, although I remember that as being more on rails, but with the likes of Elite it seemed like that black void didn’t let me orient myself at any point. However, I guess Tie Fighter must have set a new high, as I never felt like I was spending a lot of time figuring out where I’m going.

That made it more fun to go through these space battles, flying up to different craft to check them and chasing enemies. There’s a decent targeting system that gives you a fair amount of control and makes it easier to follow your enemies (including speed matching) or your allies if you need to. You still have to get your aim correct, which isn’t always as easy, but the game kept me from constantly spiralling.

The game still stayed challenging for me, as aiming stayed tricky, and the big long fights got quite tricky to keep up with. It stayed fun to play, however, setting a standard for other games to now live up to.