Star Wars Videogames Special Part 2

The Phantom Menace was a rubbish title, and the film wasn't much better. Once this bandwagon got running, however, the Star Wars games came thick and fast and the Lucasarts assault on the gaming market hasn't really lessened much since. I went from a Star Wars IP starvation diet to the threat of death by gluttony. It was clear one had to be picky from now.

I still had an original Playstation but in addition to Dark Forces, the only other Star Wars game I played on it was Jedi Power Battles which was one of the many games released to tie in with the first prequel. It was quite a fun little caper, with some cool lightsabre moves, but a mere taster compared to the sumptuous meal of Jedi Knight which had gone before it.

However by 1998 the Playstation was starting to look increasingly dated and in any case I had a brand spanking new pentium PC which I soon modified with more RAM and a 3D graphics card that I won from PC Gamer magazine for writing a particularly witty letter. An early game I sampled was Tie Fighter, which by now had a budget all-inclusive re-release. It was pretty cool, and better than X-Wing from what I heard, but for one reason or another I never got round to playing any of the follow up space battle games.

So next up was the brilliant Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. Still playing as Katarn, Lucasarts took notice of the lightsabre criticsm of the first game and hugely ramped up the sabre battles with all sorts of smart moves. Force powers were much improved as well making Outcast a pure delight from start to finish. If you don't like this game, you don't really like Star Wars.

Skipping over the Age of Empires-inspired Galactic Battlegrounds which never appealed to me thanks to its tinsy-winsy looking AT-AT's and the flawed Force Commander, I kept on the PC FPS trail with Jedi Academy. This game got mediocre scores in the PC gaming press (70% from PC Gamer if I recall correctly, a far cry from the glowing reviews for Outcast), but I still hugely enjoyed it and found it quite refreshing to be playing a new character rather than miserable old Katarn again. If you like Jedi Knight, you'll get something out of it for sure.

Also on my PC I played the multiplayer games Battlefront and Battlefront 2. These gave you the opportunity to go online (or on your own if you prefer, with and against bots) and slug it out within some of the most famous locations in the Star Wars universe. Like Academy, it also got luke-warm reviews, but it appealed so much to me that I bought them anyway. What's not to like about jumping into snowspeeder and plunging headlong towards advancing AT-AT's on the snowbound planet of Hoth? OK, it was a tad limited, and despite the prescence of "historical" and "galactic conquest" modes, there's no storyline to speak of, but with a huge variety in weapons, soldiers and vehicles, Battlefront is great. I downloaded loads of maps as well from the internet, giving it even further hours of play. Battlefront 2 expanded on the original with Jedi Heroes (and Sith Villains) plus a few more locations, chiefly lifted from the final film, Revenge of the Sith. It was more of the same, but if ain't broke...

So what came next? Well not a lot actually. I briefly dallied with Bounty Hunter when I finally acquired a Gamecube a couple of years ago, and its enjoyable enough, if a little flawed. The Rogue Squadron games appear wonderful to start off with, but achingly poor level design and those dreadful on-foot levels ruined them for me, especially as the Battlefront games had already done it bigger and better (in my personal timeline).
Knights of the Old Republic I tried, really tried, to get into, but just couldn't, finding the game too slow and clunky after the pure shooting simplicity of Battlefront. I bought its sequel, Sith Lords edition, recently for the XBOX so will give it another go I guess. Over on the PS2, the Lego Star Wars games are good fun, and I played a fair way through the Original Trilogy version, but found the stud-collecting a bit of a chore. Also for the PS2 I have Force Unleashed to play which received mixed reviews so I will approach that with no little trepadation. I think I've got an Episode III game somewhere as well as Republic Commando for the XBOX which I really should play as admittedly it does look good. With no home PC to command, the well-liked Empire at War RTS game is unlikely to get a play any time soon.

So retro-speaking, what have I missed out on? There were games such as Jedi Arena and Empire Strikes Back as long ago as the early 80's on the Atari 2600. They hold little appeal these days however, and neither do the various Spectrum incarnations. The Nintendo "Super" Star Wars games are essentially super-tough platformers - again this does not appeal and I presume Rogue Squadron on the N64 is merely a cruder version of the Gamecube iterations.

I hope I'm wrong - but I fear the golden period for myself and Star Wars games - the late 90's / early noughties has passed.

NB: I've recently tried Force Unleashed. Not particularly impressed so far!

Star Wars Videogames Special Part 1

Star Wars.
Everyone loves it, right? At least most of us did, until 1999 and the release of the Phantom Menace, but that's another story...

Of course, movie licenses have always been a big part of computer game culture, and Star Wars was arguably the primest target for any computer game. My first experience of playing a Star Wars game was, like many, the superb wireframe arcade machine from Atari - the sit-down version of course. I've blogged before about this classic (click here), but suffice to say when you're charging down the Deathstar Trench with Obi Wan Kenobi echoing in your ears, palms sweating in tension as that fiendishly small exhaust approaches and the famous music ringing out, you are Luke Skywalker, saving the known universe from the evil Empire.
Fast forward to 1985, and having recently acquired a shining brand new Spectrum 48k+, the first two games I spend hours and hours on are 16k games: Ultimate's Jet Pac and Micromega's 3D Deathchase, with the latter being a Star Wars game in all but name. Deathchase sees the player on a motorbike (speeder bike) charging through a dense forest (Endor), hunting down enemy bikers (scout troopers on speeder bikes) and tanks (scout walkers). Anyone who had seen Return of the Jedi and didn't pretend they were Luke Skywalker astride a speeder bike on the forest moon clearly had something wrong with them.

Then it all went a bit quiet on the Star Wars front. Domark's 1987 adaptation of the Atari arcade machine was too little too late (certainly on the Spectrum) and the isometric Return of the Jedi never appealed to me. So, having missed out in the early 80's thanks to having an Intellivision and no money to buy the expensive cartridges, it appeared, despite the enduring appeal of the brand, that I was destined not to take part in the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia et al.

Then, in late 1994 I acquired my second console, a Sega Megadrive. Shortly afterwards I foolishly laid out 200 quid for a mega cd unit (click here) and one of the first few games I bought for it was Rebel Assault.
Now this was more like it! The iconic music was present, and the fledgling CD format meant the proper orchestral music by John Williams, not that tinny metallic beeping from the arcade machine. The first level has you guiding a T-16 down a narrow trench on Tatooine and was frustrating but still enjoyable. After that, Rebel Assault becomes a strict on-rails shooter, but what the hell, it was Star Wars, it had decent graphics and you felt like you were taking on the Empire!

This was it for the 16-bit Star Wars era for me, however, and we pick up the story in 1996 with my first PC, and a year later, the Sony Playstation.
When Doom came out, there were a rush of First Person Clones, as you might expect with it being such a monster hit. Lucasarts didn't miss out and released Dark Forces for the PC and Playstation, but if I'm being totally honest with you, this game never grabbed me. By the time I got round to playing it, not only were the graphics outdated, but compared to games such as Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, the gameplay was positively archaic (no jumping!). A year or so later, I remember wandering into Electronic Boutique in Lakeside and seeing Masters of Teras Kasi on a demo Playstation unit. It looked and sounded great but I had reservations, so didn't buy it, a wise decision it turns out. A far better choice was Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight.
Jedi Knight was so different from Dark Forces, I still don't understand why they bothered to link the two games with the Dark Forces II prefix. Playing nebulous rebel footsoldier Kyle Katarn, Jedi Knight began within the towering spires of Coruscant and simply oozed atmosphere and authenticity. The advent of the CD-rom era had done Star Wars games a huge favour: here were the real sound effects, the real music and an authentic, immersive, experience. With a vastly improved engine, Jedi Knight allowed Katarn to leap around with gay abandon so giving rise to a number of tricky jumping puzzles. One abiding memory is the level when you're stuck in a ship that's crashing, a mind-muddling mad dash to the emergency escape pods. The game had its weakpoints: fashionable yet dreadful cutscenes did it no favours, the lightsaber battles were naff and the game didn't really change should you decide to "all medevil". It was (and still is) a great experience however, and one of the first few PC games that I played through several times.

But away from videogames for a moment, something was happening elsewhere that was about to really change the scale and frequency of Star Wars games. There was a new Star Wars movie coming out.