STAR WARS™: TIE Fighter Special Edition

This is just a quick hands-on review: First of all: TIE FIghter is, was, has always been and probably will always be one of my most favorite games of all times. If you have not played it yet, buy it. If you played it back in the days: buy it again, to show your support and the demand for a new Star Wars Space Sim. I've only just tried out both the 1994 and the 1998 versions included in this game and while the 1994 version had some graphical issues even in the intro-cinematic and in the "main hangar room" (blinking coloured dots everywhere), the 1998 version seems to work just fine. I played using a XBox360 gamepad because I couldn't find my Joystick fast enough (it unfortunately isn't much needed these days) but I highly recommend using a Joystick. I do not know if the graphical bugs in the 1994 version are caused by my hardware (i5, nvidia gtx770, 8gb ram, windows7 64 bit) or by the game itself so for now I can only recommend the 1998 version, but hey, you get both versions for the price of one so that's no problem and maybe it will be fixed soon. Long story short: must-buy title, one of the best games ever and certainly one of the best space-sims Long live the Emperor!

This is one of the few perfect games out there. Yeah, it's that good. - Engaging story, which starts you off as a peon in the Imperial Navy, but quickly adds twists and even some backstabbing. I felt like a small but essential part of a big machine. - Great mission design, triggered and timed events, plenty of bonus objectives to chase (and fail). The place feels alive because enemies have their own missions that they'll try to complete. Not everyone is simply chasing you because you're the player. And you better have your target priorities sorted or you will fail. - Great music, at least in the DOS version. The iMuse system dynamically strings short samples together, based on what's happening around you. - Clever game mechanics, it's not just shooting whatever's closest: manage your engine power, shields and gun recharge rate, conserve missiles, play with special weapons, disable specific parts of enemy (capital) ships, I wore out three joysticks playing this and X-Wing. Didn't care much for the later titles, they didn't feel as epic. Highly recommended, but here's some things you will hate: - the bloke you'll have to keep alive can and will show up in an unarmed flimsy tin can. He will want to sit still in the middle of things for 4 minutes. - you can fit about 10 concussion missiles less than you'll need - TIE Fighters don't have shields, X-Wings do - "Mission critical craft under attack! Mission critical craft shields down! Mission critical craft hull condition critical! Mission critical craft destroyed! Abort mission, mission a failure!" Yeah, buy it.

TIE Fighter is generally known to be one of the best, if the best, space simulation games; I personally can agree with a lot of that consensus (especially in term of story and flight mechanics). There's an added degree of difficulty, though, due to the titular ship you end up flying a lot of the time. For me, this translated to a *lot* of mission retries, even on easy, and often not of my own fault; mid-air (mid-space?) collisions are a fact of life in this game. Still worth it.

What a Classic add to GOG. The X-wing games are some of the best games on PC of there genera. Here's to hoping that X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance make the cut soon too!

X-Wing and TIE Fighter were the pinnacle of Star Wars gaming. There is an incredible amount of content from training missions, side objectives, and the extremely long campaigns. TIE Fighter stands out especially because of the excellent job it does making you feel like a "good guy" as an Imperial pilot. Suffice it to say there is a mission where you are Darth Vader's wingman, and it is as cool as it sounds. The story is fantastic and makes each mission feel important from beginning to end. I strongly suggest playing the DOS version of the game as the IMuse music system is fantastic and the original MIDI compositions are vastly superior to the movie soundtrack the Windows version incorporated. The textures are actually imported from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, a later game in the series, so the "real" experience is with DOS! Get X-Wing too!