Star Wars: Galaxies - Jump to Lightspeed

The Good
LucasArts overall has a great tradition of space simulation games based on it's Star Wars franchise. X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, along with the loosely similar series, Rouge Squadron.

With this venerable lineage under it's belt, you'd think LucasArts would have an automatic slam dunk here. Just take the classic X-Wing gameplay, add a few new elements such as customizable ships, update the graphics and you'd think LucasArts would be done. Instead, they have violated an age old rule that applies ESPECIALLY to VideoGames. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

The Bad
The gameplay is essentially a stripped down version of X-Wing. Gone are the easy to understand bars and displays showing your shields, energy allotment etc. Instead, the first person view is essentially useless, serving only to block your view with the pointless interior of the ship. This pretty much keeps you stuck in the third person mode if you want a good view. (You can change it if you want though). The game operates at a slow, pondering pace. Your ships move rather slowly and alot of the game is just waiting for your ship to get to it's destination.

Then, when you finally get to attack the enemy, it's slow paced beyond belief. Even the simplest ships can easily take over a dozen shots with your weapons (although later, they will be insanely more powerful than your starting weapon) as you lead your target for sometimes up to a full minute, holding down the fire button, hitting nearly every time and your enemy taking little damage.

The ships are also a bit unbalanced. At the very beginning, you will get a weak little ship. At the top, is insanely powerful ships that to many of the weaker ones are practically invincible. Piloting skill is severely devalued in this game in exchange for just whoever has the best equipment. If you've ever played Tie-Fighter, you'll know that while having a less powerful tie-fighter, it certainly isn't impossible to defeat the mighty tie-advanced. Not so in this game.

There are some rather uninteresting features to this expansion, such as being able to walk around in some larger ships and having someone get into a turret while you pilot the ship etc. But these are all really just fluff.

Oh, almost forgot, this expansion adds two more races to the game. Neither really alters the game all that much and is not really worth talking about.

The Bottom Line
Not really worth it. A real disappointment.