STAR WARS™ Shadows of the Empire™

I owned this game for the N64 when it first came out. The GOG version plays so much better than the original. Buttery smooth unlike the N64 version which was very choppy. The replaced rendered animated cutscenes with voiceovers is a nice surprise unlike the N64 VN style cutscenes without voices. The controller I have plays nicely with it with better controller mapping. The most fun was tripping up the AT-ATs in the first level. The jetpack part was fun too. Not a bad star wars game for it's time.

I used to play this on the N64 back in the day, and I had a blast. Just picked this up to try again, and it's a lot more difficult than I remember. It's very difficult compared to modern gaming, but I love the challenge. The port job for this game is also pretty solid. It runs great on my new gaming PC.

Man, I remember first playing this on a computer that could barely run the thing. I would get stuck on levels for weeks because the framerate was so bad. Looking at it now, we must've had a very low-end family computer... this game was totes fun though. I still remember loving the racing level in Beggar's Canyon, and the train-cart jumping level on Ord Mantell was always my fav. You could also put the game CD in a radio or walkman and it would play the soundtrack! I wouldn't buy it if you haven't played it before, as I imagine its value now is purely nostalgic - but I tell you what, I sure am loading it up this time on a monster of a PC, in honour of the child-me who kept falling through the corners in the IG-88 level.

Pretty sure most people like this because it reminds them of their childhood. Is it a good game though? Nah. Especially when you compare it to the Jedi Knight series. I even like the Super Star Wars games on Super Nintendo better. While the gameplay is quite varied, only the first stage is ever really that much fun. Every other vehicular stage ranges from boring to annoying (Mos Eisley -_-). Rail-shooting 50 TIE fighters in stage was probably impressive to some degree when this game came out, but it's really just another gimmick. The 3rd person shooter gameplay is somewhat workable on PC, but aiming and jumping still has this floatiness to it. It's somewhat fun if you have the jetpack, and I also kind of liked the boss battle Vs. the IG-88 droid. But it all comes together to an uneven, messy kind of thing. Some levels seem to go on forever, and others are over in less than two minutes. And if this was supposed to be some kind of cinematic experience, the story is really just kind of like "Oh, which parts of the Star Wars trilogy can we use to make some levels out of. and let's have a carbon copy of Han Solo as the protagonist, because Star Wars." Overall the best and most cohesive part of the experience are the sounds and the music. Those really elevate the crappy, uneven parts. To summarize, if you're a Star Wars fan, you can get this game here on sale and play it through once, but there's really better ones to spend your time with. And I really wouldn't wanna play this with an awkward controller, either.

To this day, one of my favourite Star Wars games of all time. The one that molded my childhood dream of becoming not a Jedi, but a smuggler with snarky droid and a heart of gold. To this day, the duel with IG-88 or Boba Fett stays in my mind as one of the most memorable bossfights in video gaming, along with extremely tense swoop bike chase to save Luke Skywalker. Maybe it hasn't aged that well - but the charm, varying gameplay and charismatic protagonist fully make up for it.