Lucas Arts Gets Back In The Saddle
Written: Mar 28 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Control refined and adapted to near perfection for a console.
Cons: Short on content.
The Bottom Line: Excellent console-oriented control, clever missions and great graphics!
Casual Star Wars fans and long time X-Wing/Tie Fighter addicts rejoice- your game has come in.
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| billservo's Full Review: Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter for PlayStation 2 |
Let me preface this review by disclosing a little fact about myself: I'm a X-Wing/Tie Fighter freak. I started playing X-Wing when it first came out back in 1991 (!) and I still play it, although it's one of the updated versions.
With that out of the way, you know what I have been waiting for ever since the last expansion pack for Tie Fighter was released and what I expected as I tore the shrink wrap off my copy and fired up the PS2.
Gameplay:
Star Wars Starfighter is a flight action/adventure game set in the Star Wars Episode 1 universe. The game's focus is more on action than anything else, and really, I couldn't figure out this got labeled as an 'adventure' game. Arguably, almost any game with a plot is an adventure, and it looks like that may be the reasoning used here. But in then end, you'll have the same attitude I did: who cares? The flight action is top-notch, and that's what all the Lucas Arts flight games were about from the beginning.
While the game shares many of the gameplay foundations as X-Wing and Tie Fighter, it's most definitely watered down a bit for the PS2 audience (a little Rogue Squadron influence). The game's strength is that it leaves all the horrid sim-heavy elements that a Jane's flight game would burden you with. Get in the cockpit, fly around, shoot stuff- that's pretty much the same technical briefing that Luke got, right? OK, it's not quite that simple (ahem...Wing Commander), but close. Basic movement is straight-forward, flight-sim stuff. Starfighter does one-up X-Wing, though, in that you can use your etheric rudder (move left and right) while rolling. It always bugged me that this was missing and its inclusion lets you pull off some slick maneuvers.
The meat of the game, of course, is the missions. The missions are fantastic, but short- in a four hour session I managed to complete half the game. Granted, countless hours on X-Wing helped, but there really should have been more. What in included, though, is exciting stuff. Missions are scripted well, and place dramatic events at just the right time. There are the minimum mission goals to successfully complete, but the game is pretty forgiving in how you go about accomplishing them, unlike in the PC flight games. One of the cool twists the game adds is that you don't know all the mission objectives until you actually get into it. Events occurring during the mission change your objectives and force you to scramble your wingmen together to try and salvage your operation. There are also bonus objectives that open up secrets in the game and generally make you feel like a first rate bad-a*s: they aren't easy.
While the missions are cleverly created, the same can't be said about some of the AI. Enemy ships don't display any great piloting skills, I've yet to get myself into a dogfight that lasted longer than 30 seconds. Pretty far off from some of the 3 minute chases I used to get into in X-Wing. You can definitely explain this away since a lot of the ships are droid driven or even actual droid ships, but I still miss my dogfights. Lucas Arts did make up for this in another way: battles are usually huge, sometimes consisting of 3 freighter sized ships and 20 small fighters. Whenever a battle is first started, madness ensues for the first few minutes. Vaping a few ships quickly calms things down and lets you actually wrap your mind around whatever it is you should be doing. Most of the missions follow this formula, but it's a good one.
To keep mission deja vu away, the game revolves around the stories of three different pilots. As you progress through the missions, you jump in and out of their stories. The jump is noticeable- obviously there's a ship change, but their missions are so different that otherwise similar missions are fresh. For instance, two of the characters have you doing more ground based missions which play drastically different than any space based one.
Complaints are few, and for the most part, petty. For instance, there's no ability to look around from inside the cockpit. Of all the things I'd have liked to have in, this is probably it. Being able to look sideways and above you is invaluable in larger melees, and without it, you have to be extra aware of where everyone is. A close second is that there's no mission map, though the game isn't so tactically demanding that it's absolutely necessary. My usual pet peeve of load times makes its appearance, although none of the loads are lengthy. My complaint is that you can't restart a mission without some reload time.
These complaints do little to take the shine off the rest of the game, though. Lucas Arts manages to pack what made their legendary PC flight actions games great onto a PS2 CD while keeping in mind that its a console game.
Graphics:
I've been pouring over preview images and movies of the game and had my doubts about how good it could really look in-game. It looks just as good, and maybe better. Lucas Arts impresses right away from the all-too-familiar Star Wars title fade, which finally looks like it was ripped straight out of the movie.
Ships are incredibly detailed all throughout the game. Every ship is easily identifiable by sight, and for the big ships, flying up close to them reveals that no detail was omitted. Actually, the little episode 1 details were thrown in. Some ships have visible shield auras around them that react when you fire on them, it's a cool colorful effect. In atmosphere, some ships also have contrails behind them.
Character close ups are the only graphical part of the game not using the actual in-game graphics. They are generally well done, even with respectable lip synching. Some of the character facial models are a little odd looking, though, especially the main character who seems to always be somewhat surprised. Otherwise, character expressions and mannerisms are believable while maybe not being of Final Fantasy caliber.
One serious problem is in the story telling animations. As the game's engine is used to render these scenes, disc loading seems to interrupt, and shortly freeze the sequence. The gap isn't small, either. This kind of thing is especially noticeable since the rest of the animation is done so well.
Sound:
For the first time in a while, I actually got to play a PS2 game with sound I could stand. The John Williams score sounds amazing as usual, but the rest of the sound effects do more than their share. What ends up standing out above all else is a generous use of voice samples. The large scale battles are accompanied by wingman chatter. Some of it is useful and clues you in on the important parts of the mission. If a mission critical ship is in need of assistance, they'll let you know. The droid chatter is a blast and reminds you of some of the funny droid scenes in Episode 1.
There's also general chit chat at times, something not found in the previous games. Since the voice acting is well done it adds to the gameplay rather than detracts.
Control:
Control is much like you'd expect for ship maneuvering. Clever use of the dual analog sticks lets you roll and slide at the same time. The digital pad is also used, but not for steering, keeping some of the finger slop that
SSX's similar controller exploitation caused. While ship movement differs based on who your controlling, they all handle consistently within their speed and turning limits. For some reason, the developers saw fit to add a "power slide" ala Ridge Racer, though I haven't really noticed it or needed it.
When commanding a battle, the digital pad opens up your available wingman commands. Although you have to abandon steering momentarily to access these, they are easy to reach and shouldn't take to much attention away from your course. One of the cooler features they added was a zoom button. Pressing this is equivalent to sniper mode in an FPS. Pegging fighters from a great distance becomes child's play, but I can't imagine a pilot not having something like this at their disposal.
For those of you who like to tinker with the controls, there are other preset configurations, but you can't totally customize your button layout. Analog sensitivity, however, can be tweaked for those who can't seem to find the right settings. I did play around with this, but decided that the default configuration is really the way to go.
Overall:
Star Wars Starfighter proves that Lucas Arts knows their flight sims. While the game runs a little short, what there is to play is addictive. Extra mission objectives do add to the replayability, making this a must buy for PS2 owners tired of the sorry first generation library we've had to put up with so far. The second generation games are here, starting now.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
billservo
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Member: Bill Saez
Location: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 98 members
About Me:
Lifelong game freak. Recently got to work with Sega and THQ in developing cellphone games.
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