What more appropriate title to reminisce over for my first online nostalgia trip than this, my first ever PS2 game. I could have done much worse, it must be said. As is pretty much a given for something branded with George Luca?s favourite little bundle of joy, this sold like sex cakes and was eventually given the honourable Platinum badge, just like the sequel would be a few yonks later (I?ll get to that in time, don?t you worry: if I wasn?t poor right now I?d be scanning Amazon for it this moment).
Where to begin when there is so much to say?an overview of the genre I think. Starfighter, as you wouldn?t have to be clever to figure out, puts you in a cockpit (either in space or closer to the ground) and gives you stuff to shoot, protect and dodge. Thus is the gist of the space-shooter genre, a chapter in gaming that, while occasionally awesome (Colony Wars has also been caught in my Sauron-like gaze), has mysteriously pretty much died out. Why is beyond me, although a good guess would probably be an absence of new ideas, especially seeing as the aforementioned nostalgic goldmine Colony Wars pretty much did everything cool one could without becoming Assassin?s Creed-style monotonous repetition that defies all logic and leaves one shaking fists in the air, cursing the name of a certain developer and demanding to be told how anyone could possibly, in all sanity, think that constantly saving the same badly voiced woman from the same 4 crusaders might be called enjoyable. Or perhaps nothing could ever be that bad. Again, I mean. Ubisoft is still on my list, people.
Whatever the cause, I can?t name a single release of a space-shooter since reading OPS2 (it?s a magazine, fools) some years back and noting a ?meh? out of 10 for Battlestar Galactica. Having no knowledge of the franchise and better things to waste my money on, do this day I haven?t bothered with it. If that truly was the last space-shooter then the genre didn?t exactly go out with a bang, to say the least.
So, Starfighter and its sequel may have been the last worthwhile games of their kind, certainly on PS2. I?ll say it now: for anyone expecting me to be one of the dozens of folks doing ?worst games ever? things, you?ll be disappointed to read these words: Starfighter is pretty smegging good. While not really inventive, creative or revolutionary, it was a very playable, consistently enjoyable and ?on occasion- surprisingly hard blast fest. For something clearly made to get 7s and under who liked the film (which sucks donkey nostrils, by the way) to buy it and fuel the cash reserves which kept the production of the next movie (even worse, if you ask me) going, this beast can be rather unforgiving at times, especially if one knocks the difficulty onto hard. Head-on collisions with scenery at speed can make you go from full health to last legs in an instant, and during the ?protect this fetcher? missions the Trade Federation?s druids have a tendency to gang-rape your charge en-masse. Missions aren?t long, none of them lasting over 15 minutes tops, but when you pwn a load of AATs, celebrate with a loop-the-loop and suddenly find yourself with a sad R2 unit sound effect and a heartless ?MISSION FAILED? screen, you?ll find yourself taking the scissors to your Jar-Jar Binks doll in no time. Although you should be doing that anyway, kids. Medium is just a good challenge, while easy is just too easy, unless you happen to own my controller.
The controls, even on my much-abused SIXAXIS, are great, with lovely responses all round, although I wish I was rich enough to get me a shiny Dualshock 3 so that I could feel the rumble going up my arms again, but that?s Sony?s fault, not the game. You only have two attacks, laser thing and one secondary weapon, which changes depending on which bloke you?re using, but that?s all you need, as only the biggest adversaries require heavy pwnage to enter victory-fanfare states of deadness. One irritant is that you can?t always come to a complete stop, and so can be left without enough room to nip around things in some of the more compact stages. Colony Wars let you stop if the need took you, and even reverse, which now that I think about it, Starfighter doesn?t let you do either. Still, you?d be nit-picking (not that I?m above that) to find any other faults with the controls.
The baddies I mentioned earlier include things from the movie like Droid Starfighters, AATs, STAPs, yadda yadda, but also a load of junk which, I believe was made just for the game, which is nice. Not one of them isn?t fun to shoot, although the big Lander things can only be blown up if you deliberately fail the mission wasting your time shooting them. A feature I always find hilarious is the fact that if you shoot a fighter enough without quite killing it while on a ground-based mission, smoke will pour out of it as it enters a death spiral and uselessly jihads into the mud. Cocky gits like myself can make little squads of bombers all fall out of the sky at once into the delightfully HARD scenery, and will continually do so whenever possible. I do, anyway. The game?s highlight, a Naboo battle against seemingly endless swathes of mechanical pwnage fodder, has loads of little bomber groups, and so my fellow sadists and I shall doubtless replay this section purely to see the little craft go spinning downwards, and just picturing a spasming droid sitting at the controls, unable to halt the rapid loss of altitude. Addictive indeed.
With gameplay pretty much covered I might as well introduce you to the main cast and give you a plot summary. The thing starts with you placed (reluctantly, in my case) in the shoes of Rhys, a staggeringly bland Luke Skywalker-like Naboonian s?wit who, after quite randomly having a dream wherein he sees himself get blown up in space (gee whiz, I wonder if this could be foreshadowing something?) is taken on a basic tutorial-mojig by his similarly bland instructor, who is so obviously not going to survive long you?ll just be snorting whenever she makes a reference to something she plans to do after the next few days.
The next level sees you escorting Queen Amidala (or her double, whatever) to a meeting with the Trade Federation in a completely isolated armpit of space. Anyone who watches the first five minutes of The Phantom Menace can tell you that the TF are less trustworthy than a car salesman who deals exclusively in ?good value? merchandise, and one of your fellow fly-boys even says that it?s a strange place to have a meeting, so I can only assume that the Naboonian leaders are almost as blind to blatant wrongness than the Jedi Council. Sure enough, the TF?s ship buggers off within seconds and a load of mercenaries make a poor attempt on the queen?s life. After giving their arses a good dose of plasma-flavoured whooping, Queenie?s ship nips off back to Naboo, just before some bastard in a souped-up über-ship fries your mentor and blows both your wings off, flying away again mumbling something about killing you later. Woo. That went well.
Thus we meet a scavenger: a scavenger-man called Retti (or something similar, subtitles aren?t included and I?m too lazy to check Wookiepedia) finds you, and whisks you off to a friend?s place to fix your ship. Said friend is a near carbon-copy of your predictably fated instructor with another hard-to-remember name (I think it begins with a J?) who just fell out with the TF after being double-crossed (*SHOCK*) by them. Returning home with plans of revenge, she is met by Nym, easily my favourite character here, because not only does he look like a cross between a wrestler and a squid, but he spends the first half of the game being the biggest dickhead you can be before getting ridiculous, such as the main guy in Force Unleashed, who I dare you not to laugh at constantly whenever he goes off on a Anakin-style sulk/rant. ?I will be the most powerful Jedi ever!? springs to mind. Anyway, Squidward locks lady in a cupboard for putting him in jail at some point, and then blasts off to be a awesomely baddass elsewhere.
Now while the plot never takes any unexpected turns, I can?t be bothered to take a piss out of the whole thing, so I?ll leave it here. You?ve met everyone who matters anyway: Luke Wanabee, Dies-On-Second-Level, Nemesis, the great Scavenger-Man, generic feisty woman, and Squidward, ravager of worlds. Only Retti and Nym have any personality at all, with Retti being fairly bumbling and daft, and Nym?s initial hardness turning into reluctant helpfulness. Hardly up to the standards of the original space opera epic. But, as a vehicle for quality blasting, it?s acceptable, and shall give thou a few hearty chuckles at least.
To sum up, I shall end this voyage like I intend to end future editions, with a recommendation as to whether or not your humble self should pop out and buy this piece of physically manifested nostalgia. ?Hell yes? has to be my response. With this fine title going for less than a British gold-coloured coin (plus P&P, of course, but that goes without saying), anyone who can play it should. Casual folk can switch it to easy or medium and enjoy a brief but satisfying experience at minimal cost, while more hardcore lads and lasses can pull the level over to hard, and muscle their way through the frustration to glorious victory. Getting all the little medals (oh yeah, this thing had trophies a generation in advance) for each level on über-difficulty is plenty hard, but definitely not impossible. While you?re all out buying that, I highly recommend the sequel, Jedi Starfighter, which is basically the superior game. Costs marginally more, but it?s worth it, people. Plus you can boast about owning the last worthwhile PS2 space-shooter, for what that?s worth (my guesstimate: two potatoes with a side order of turnip shavings).
Where to begin when there is so much to say?an overview of the genre I think. Starfighter, as you wouldn?t have to be clever to figure out, puts you in a cockpit (either in space or closer to the ground) and gives you stuff to shoot, protect and dodge. Thus is the gist of the space-shooter genre, a chapter in gaming that, while occasionally awesome (Colony Wars has also been caught in my Sauron-like gaze), has mysteriously pretty much died out. Why is beyond me, although a good guess would probably be an absence of new ideas, especially seeing as the aforementioned nostalgic goldmine Colony Wars pretty much did everything cool one could without becoming Assassin?s Creed-style monotonous repetition that defies all logic and leaves one shaking fists in the air, cursing the name of a certain developer and demanding to be told how anyone could possibly, in all sanity, think that constantly saving the same badly voiced woman from the same 4 crusaders might be called enjoyable. Or perhaps nothing could ever be that bad. Again, I mean. Ubisoft is still on my list, people.
Whatever the cause, I can?t name a single release of a space-shooter since reading OPS2 (it?s a magazine, fools) some years back and noting a ?meh? out of 10 for Battlestar Galactica. Having no knowledge of the franchise and better things to waste my money on, do this day I haven?t bothered with it. If that truly was the last space-shooter then the genre didn?t exactly go out with a bang, to say the least.
So, Starfighter and its sequel may have been the last worthwhile games of their kind, certainly on PS2. I?ll say it now: for anyone expecting me to be one of the dozens of folks doing ?worst games ever? things, you?ll be disappointed to read these words: Starfighter is pretty smegging good. While not really inventive, creative or revolutionary, it was a very playable, consistently enjoyable and ?on occasion- surprisingly hard blast fest. For something clearly made to get 7s and under who liked the film (which sucks donkey nostrils, by the way) to buy it and fuel the cash reserves which kept the production of the next movie (even worse, if you ask me) going, this beast can be rather unforgiving at times, especially if one knocks the difficulty onto hard. Head-on collisions with scenery at speed can make you go from full health to last legs in an instant, and during the ?protect this fetcher? missions the Trade Federation?s druids have a tendency to gang-rape your charge en-masse. Missions aren?t long, none of them lasting over 15 minutes tops, but when you pwn a load of AATs, celebrate with a loop-the-loop and suddenly find yourself with a sad R2 unit sound effect and a heartless ?MISSION FAILED? screen, you?ll find yourself taking the scissors to your Jar-Jar Binks doll in no time. Although you should be doing that anyway, kids. Medium is just a good challenge, while easy is just too easy, unless you happen to own my controller.
The controls, even on my much-abused SIXAXIS, are great, with lovely responses all round, although I wish I was rich enough to get me a shiny Dualshock 3 so that I could feel the rumble going up my arms again, but that?s Sony?s fault, not the game. You only have two attacks, laser thing and one secondary weapon, which changes depending on which bloke you?re using, but that?s all you need, as only the biggest adversaries require heavy pwnage to enter victory-fanfare states of deadness. One irritant is that you can?t always come to a complete stop, and so can be left without enough room to nip around things in some of the more compact stages. Colony Wars let you stop if the need took you, and even reverse, which now that I think about it, Starfighter doesn?t let you do either. Still, you?d be nit-picking (not that I?m above that) to find any other faults with the controls.
The baddies I mentioned earlier include things from the movie like Droid Starfighters, AATs, STAPs, yadda yadda, but also a load of junk which, I believe was made just for the game, which is nice. Not one of them isn?t fun to shoot, although the big Lander things can only be blown up if you deliberately fail the mission wasting your time shooting them. A feature I always find hilarious is the fact that if you shoot a fighter enough without quite killing it while on a ground-based mission, smoke will pour out of it as it enters a death spiral and uselessly jihads into the mud. Cocky gits like myself can make little squads of bombers all fall out of the sky at once into the delightfully HARD scenery, and will continually do so whenever possible. I do, anyway. The game?s highlight, a Naboo battle against seemingly endless swathes of mechanical pwnage fodder, has loads of little bomber groups, and so my fellow sadists and I shall doubtless replay this section purely to see the little craft go spinning downwards, and just picturing a spasming droid sitting at the controls, unable to halt the rapid loss of altitude. Addictive indeed.
With gameplay pretty much covered I might as well introduce you to the main cast and give you a plot summary. The thing starts with you placed (reluctantly, in my case) in the shoes of Rhys, a staggeringly bland Luke Skywalker-like Naboonian s?wit who, after quite randomly having a dream wherein he sees himself get blown up in space (gee whiz, I wonder if this could be foreshadowing something?) is taken on a basic tutorial-mojig by his similarly bland instructor, who is so obviously not going to survive long you?ll just be snorting whenever she makes a reference to something she plans to do after the next few days.
The next level sees you escorting Queen Amidala (or her double, whatever) to a meeting with the Trade Federation in a completely isolated armpit of space. Anyone who watches the first five minutes of The Phantom Menace can tell you that the TF are less trustworthy than a car salesman who deals exclusively in ?good value? merchandise, and one of your fellow fly-boys even says that it?s a strange place to have a meeting, so I can only assume that the Naboonian leaders are almost as blind to blatant wrongness than the Jedi Council. Sure enough, the TF?s ship buggers off within seconds and a load of mercenaries make a poor attempt on the queen?s life. After giving their arses a good dose of plasma-flavoured whooping, Queenie?s ship nips off back to Naboo, just before some bastard in a souped-up über-ship fries your mentor and blows both your wings off, flying away again mumbling something about killing you later. Woo. That went well.
Thus we meet a scavenger: a scavenger-man called Retti (or something similar, subtitles aren?t included and I?m too lazy to check Wookiepedia) finds you, and whisks you off to a friend?s place to fix your ship. Said friend is a near carbon-copy of your predictably fated instructor with another hard-to-remember name (I think it begins with a J?) who just fell out with the TF after being double-crossed (*SHOCK*) by them. Returning home with plans of revenge, she is met by Nym, easily my favourite character here, because not only does he look like a cross between a wrestler and a squid, but he spends the first half of the game being the biggest dickhead you can be before getting ridiculous, such as the main guy in Force Unleashed, who I dare you not to laugh at constantly whenever he goes off on a Anakin-style sulk/rant. ?I will be the most powerful Jedi ever!? springs to mind. Anyway, Squidward locks lady in a cupboard for putting him in jail at some point, and then blasts off to be a awesomely baddass elsewhere.
Now while the plot never takes any unexpected turns, I can?t be bothered to take a piss out of the whole thing, so I?ll leave it here. You?ve met everyone who matters anyway: Luke Wanabee, Dies-On-Second-Level, Nemesis, the great Scavenger-Man, generic feisty woman, and Squidward, ravager of worlds. Only Retti and Nym have any personality at all, with Retti being fairly bumbling and daft, and Nym?s initial hardness turning into reluctant helpfulness. Hardly up to the standards of the original space opera epic. But, as a vehicle for quality blasting, it?s acceptable, and shall give thou a few hearty chuckles at least.
To sum up, I shall end this voyage like I intend to end future editions, with a recommendation as to whether or not your humble self should pop out and buy this piece of physically manifested nostalgia. ?Hell yes? has to be my response. With this fine title going for less than a British gold-coloured coin (plus P&P, of course, but that goes without saying), anyone who can play it should. Casual folk can switch it to easy or medium and enjoy a brief but satisfying experience at minimal cost, while more hardcore lads and lasses can pull the level over to hard, and muscle their way through the frustration to glorious victory. Getting all the little medals (oh yeah, this thing had trophies a generation in advance) for each level on über-difficulty is plenty hard, but definitely not impossible. While you?re all out buying that, I highly recommend the sequel, Jedi Starfighter, which is basically the superior game. Costs marginally more, but it?s worth it, people. Plus you can boast about owning the last worthwhile PS2 space-shooter, for what that?s worth (my guesstimate: two potatoes with a side order of turnip shavings).