There's a time in every young boy's life when he must become acquainted with the phenomena that is Star Wars. The fact that today's kids may see episode 1 first instead of episode 4, is lamentable.

Shockingly enough there are even times when Star Wars games aren't that great and they generally seem to be associated with Ep 1. Luckily, for the first Star Wars anything offering on the PS2, LucasArts has done a decent job and created a fairly memorable game.

Starfighter explores alternate events surrounding the battle for Naboo depicted in the movie, introducing a ragtag cast of characters. LucasArts doesn't demonstrate the greatest skill in weaving the story but they do succeed in giving this game a feeling that you are part of this ragtag team (in fact, you play all members at different points) and instills a sense of comraderie that builds from somewhat shaky cutscenes early in the game to stronger in-game narrative later on.

Since you get to play each of three members of this team, you get to experience three different starfighters. There's the plain vanilla Naboo starfighter with the 50s chrome and the 90s yellow with a simple arsenal of unlimited lasers and limited lock-on torpedoes. Then there's the mercenary ship that really deserves the name "Y-wing" moreso than the Y-wing SW fans have known since the first movie released. It has standard lasers and a rechargeable weapon that tags enemy ships. Once tagged, the standard lasers suddenly become homing lasers, targeting the enemies you've tagged and locked onto. Rather cool. Finally, there's the other mercenary ship that's essentially the heavy bomber of the bunch. Lasers and rechargeable energy bombs which are launched forward of your current position and cause massive havoc. Anyone remember a little arcade shooter from Namco called Xevious? This ship gets me waxing nostalgic about that game...

All in all, they could have ditched the Naboo starfighter and left us with the other two, but then I guess this wouldn't be much of an Ep 1 game without the eponymous starfighter in it...

In addition to building a better sense of comraderie than other games of its type, Starfighter is one of the first games of its type that I've played that creates a believable sense of scale in battles. I don't get around to every space shooter there is, but I've not played a Star Wars offering on the PC or otherwise that's managed to overwhelm with sheer numbers of the enemy, like this one can. This makes some of the missions truly memorable.

This sense of scale is perhaps paid for with a lower level of detail found on all in-game models and terrain. Everything look good from far away, but get close enough (and it doesn't have to be nose to nose) and you'll see texture detail that seems no better than what you'd find in an N64 game.

But I would still grade the visuals as fairly impressive. Land-based missions take place against beautifully contoured terrain and with simply outstanding draw distance that fades appropriately into the well-realized horizon. And space missions take place against beautiful high-res 2d renders of planets and such. Every environment has invisible boundaries beyond which you can't travel. In general the boundaries are not restrictive and you'll hardly notice them. But, LucasArts must pay for how restrictive they made these boundaries in the canyon missions. That'll lose Starfighter at least half a star, especially considering the way hitting a boundary is handled - it throws your ship around in a very disorienting fashion, often sending you careening toward a rock wall...

Beyond that, I found this game to be appropriately challenging on the medium difficulty. Some missions are still cakewalks, but there are enough that require multiple runs to get them right that the game has lasted me through 10-20 hrs without having completed it yet. And then there are the bonus goals for each mission that, as completed, count toward unlocking another 6 or so bonus missions.

Audio quality is typical of at least the SW flight games I've played...stock SW tunes and effects which always sound great, and radio chatter that can get repetitive, but doesn't grate on the ears.

It won't take long for this game to be eclipsed on the PS2 but that shouldn't stop anyone from partaking in what is a solid and thoroughly enjoyable experience from a company who's work is rather hit or miss.

Recommended: Yes