Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

The Good
Shadows of the Empire (SOTE) was conceived as a multimedia project in the mid-nineties as the closest we'd get to another Star Wars film, without the expense of actually making one, and before the prequels appeared. It purposely uses a time frame between 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi' a period little covered, and focussed on the chase for Han Solo (frozen in carbonite) with a new baddie thrown into the mix. In a novel move for the time the creators decided to split the story across three media; a book, comic series, and this game. Each tackles a different facet of the story, occasionally intertwining scenes. The novel is really the lynch-pin of the group and I'd recommend anyone wanting to play this game should read that first as it will help you understand quite what is happening in the game.

The whole storyline for all the version is a bit shoddy really, even by later Star Wars standards, so the game didn't really have much to live up to. The plot of having a monstrous new evil guy, Prince Xisor, as powerful as Darth Vader is just lazy. Though you never really know it from the game, which plays out on the periphery of the main story, with three pretty unrelated scenarios; the escape form Hoth, finding Han Solo, and stopping Xisor. It's clear that the game's plot was developed last, the designers handed a complete story and told to fit a game around it. They made a good choice by focussing on one character, Dash Rendar, a new character devised for the series who has bizarre cameos in the other media, seemingly designed to fill in plot holes as he's constantly traipsing across the galaxy. Elsewhere he's portrayed as a more callous Han Solo, but the game designers evidently made him more loveable, removing that aspect along with his stubbly beard. The here-there-everywhere nature of dash makes him quite versatile as playing him enables you to be at several points of the action, and action is the game's speciality.

What kind of game did this create? Well for a start it was made for the N64 initially, with this Windows version being clearly a port. It means the level design is made to fit the console, and the whole game is quite short. The Windows version has been upgraded with higher resolution textures and completely different cut-scenes to the N64, now in full 3D. SOTE has a definite arcade feel to it, like the later Rogue Squadron III, mixing aerial combat with ground mission. In fact the first level seems to have directly inspired the Rogue Squadron series, with a game only scene of Dash piloting a snowspeeder against AT-ATs. The battle has been heavily altered to fit the constraints of the time and does really capture the atmosphere of a retreating action, or the scale of the later Rogue Squadron versions. Next mission reveals the slightly dodgy 3rd person shooter play mode as you escape Echo Base, where contrary to most shooters you don't pick up new guns but different ammo for your gun instead. Typical console shooter practices are in force here; enemies who are slow to respond and poor shots allowing you to first first, and auto aiming which makes any precious ammunition difficult to conserve. Then the final chapter of the Hoth sequences demonstrates the last mode of play as you man the turrets of your ship, the Outrider, to take out attacking fighters, whilst your droid co-pilot makes the getaway.

The rest of the game repeats one of these three types as it picks on any crumbs left from the novel's story to expand into levels, or else just alter the plot to include dash. Game-wise it delivers quite an action-packed experience, as the designers have tried to give each level something unique, such as moving trains, jet packs etc. Story-wise it's confusing and feels like someone's just handing you odd jobs, you have no feeling of control. the levels are all linear, you'll rarely get lost or stuck, but they are fun and I enjoyed playing them without getting bored. It's quite a short game, something I always like in shooters, with only ten levels. some of which I completed hardly aware they were separate levels. I just found it confusing that some of the events in the game differ completely from the novel just to give Dash a bigger role, but undermine the bigger story.

The Bad
That the game has been ported from the N64 really shows through and can make for a difficult playing experience. the flying levels are fine but the shooter levels have horrendous mouse control, causing several avoidable deaths. The auto aim is also frustrating as they do not allow any fine control, and often Dash decided to shoot at an enemy hidden behind a wall rather than the one who was shooting at me a little further away. it's a shame that the console limitations affect the level design so much, even for 1996 even though the texture have been upgraded from the console they are still horribly applied, appearing stretched and distorted. It also carries over the checkpoint save system of the console, so a couple of levels I had to start from scratch on, though this wasn't so bad as the levels are generally quite small.

My main hang-ups come from the bland storyline. Whilst it's nice you get to play as one character and follow their journey, dash really is a shallow Han Solo clone. The levels are simple shooting matches, no puzzles to solve and no alternative to fighting. The variety level type though (shooting, flying, 3rd person) is nice though, especially the flying which nicely handled and must have inspired the first Rogue Squadron. The 3rd person levels are pretty poor though, really feeling halfway between Dark Forces and Jedi Knight. It's a shame they tried to fir this into the main SOTE story so much, it could have been much more engaging rather than a series of disconnected missions. This is evident at the start of each levels, where are are directly told what you must do and why, rather than discovering it through playing.

The Bottom Line
This game feels like a play-through of scenes that didn't make the man SOTE story, with a character who desparately wants to be Han Solo. Still, it avoids any of the really stupid aspects of novel (sometimes even contradicting them) and instead makes a fairly short and fun action game. The variety of levels work here to create a more epic scale, though the lack of alteration from the N64 version means that frequently you die at the hands of cumbersome controls. However without the backup of the silly bigger story, the game can't really deliver much of a lasting impression.

Oh yes, of course it is another chance to re-use all the music and sound effects of Star Wars, including the famous death scream!