STAR WARS™ Starfighter™

Honestly, apart form a few joystick control issues, I still enjoy Star Wars Starfighter. Granted, it's no X-wing or Rogue Squadron (though it is a marked improvement over the lackluster Battle for Naboo), but the gameplay still holds up well enough, as does the story, which sets you as a Naboo Starfighter pilot before the events of Episode I, and later gives you control over two smugglers and their personal starfighters. I can't spoil much, but seeing how it's an improvement over the film's narrative I'd say it's all right. The gameplay itself is basic, but easy enough to learn. Targeting and flight is managed in third-person mode, and the option of four playable craft is small, but still welcome variety. Though not as tight or smooth as Rogue Squadron, you'll be able to dogfight with the best of its AI, with proper practice. Level design is still relatively strong, and with a medal achievement system on hand it's worth a couple playthroughs. Long story short? If you're a fan of arcade flight shooters and/or Star Wars, six bucks is pretty good for this game. Just don't expect a masterpiece.

Game's really fun. Controls are solid and flying the fighters feels nice. There are 2 major issues, though. The first is the extreme amount of screen shake whenever you get hit that can render the game unplayable in the later missions. This problem stems from the increased framerate of the game. It can be mitigated by reducing the framerate to about 30fps using a 3rd party program like RivaTuner Statistics Server. The other major issue is how ridiculously difficult and unforgiving the the later missions are, specifically the last one. I played the entire game through on Normal difficulty and enemies become dead-on accurate and deal tons of damage that can lead to you dying if you don't already have the enemies' locations in your head and even then it only works when the enemies are in set locations (something that doesn't apply to space combat). This is only made worse by the lack of checkpoints in missions. If you die in a mission, no matter how far into it you are, you have to start from the beginning and do everything all over again. It can get really frustrating, but I personally only really had this problem in the literal last mission of the game (having died once at the literal end of the mission; not fun). Aside from that, the game is really fun for most of it and I would recommend it if you want something like Rogue Squadron.

Enemies have insane accuracy and a single shot sends your aim all over the place, even moving it by 90 degrees at times. What this means is that you have to snipe enemies from a ludicrous distance because if they manage to get a lock on you, you'll basically be stun locked because your aim will be flying all over the place and you'll be dead in seconds. All of this culminates in the escort mission "Midnight Munitions Run" where you have to fly through an ever narrowing tunnel filled with enemies while protecting another ship. If you take a shot from any of the enemies there's a good chance you'll end up flying into a wall and dying. If you go slowly then your VIP will fly on ahead in a suicidal charge and get themselves killed. The game has no checkpoints so it requires near-perfect gameplay for ten solid minutes. I even failed the mission with the invincibility cheat on because the screen-shaking stun locked me for ages and the VIP went on and died. The ingredients for a good game are there but good god, the baffling design decisions just make it an absolute slog to play.

This is a VERY nicely polished space shooter from LucasArts in the same genre as the Rogue Squadron series. In my experience, this is best played with a mouse/keyboard combination, because mouse aiming is much more precise. Have a ThinkPad? This is perfect, because if you didn't carry a mouse with you, the pointing stick becomes your "flight control stick" and it is extremely precise. Due to its age, this game will not be without technical problems for some of us. For Windows 10 systems, you may experience some pretty serious graphical glitches (flickering cutscenes, terrible frame rate, etc). If you have this problem, visit www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=47772&p=630628 and grab the modified d3d8.dll from there, drop it into your "star wars starfightergame" folder (be sure it goes in the game folder, and not in the primary folder), and that *should* solve all graphical issues, and the frame rate will be liquid smooth (also, turn OFF all compatibility options). Graphically, the game is beautiful. Space combat is very fast and fun, and mouse control is spot on. Gamepads *do* work fine, although game pad triggers, which are typically used for rolling, are somehow reversed (my controller is a Logitech F310, set to XInput mode). All controls are otherwise fully customizable in the launcher menu. The game is 100% recommended, worth your money, and definitely worth your time.