Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

The Good
The Hoth level is amazing.

The Bad
The 3D shooting is poor.

The Bottom Line
Shadows of the Empire was a big “Expanded Universe” multimedia event with this story getting a novel, soundtrack (for the novel), comic book, toys and, of course, a video game. Shadows of the Empire was released on the N64 on PC. I was originally going to use the PC version for this, as the game is identical, but it has video cutscenes with voice acting, but controller support is poor (and the HUD goes tiny). With the help of remapping buttons, I was able to create a good setup that uses modern using the strafe setup.

I played this as a kid and I do remember enjoying it.

The game starts off during the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes back, with you controlling a snowspeeder. This section is great, with the snowspeeder feeling great to control and toppling AT-ATs with the tow cable is great. Unfortunately, the level isn’t very long and it’s the best part of the game (you may notice the large amount of lives – that’s more for the poor platforming in later stages). If the entire game was like this, it would be a great game, but most of the game is on-foot.

You play as Dash Randar, who in this game is essentially a Han Solo clone (the novel expands the character’s personality a lot). You’re armed with a blaster that recharges, and you can get special ammo for it (best saved for bosses). The game heavily relies on autoaim, which is especially necessary as you can’t really aim up or down in any reasonable way (the aim button lets you, but it’s far too sensitive).

Trying to setup so you can flee Hoth, you start by watching the Millenium Falcon leave (shouldn’t Vader be standing nearby?) then blast your way through the stormtroopers attacking the rebel base. The shooting isn’t very satisfying and the movement is wonky.

After blowing up an AT-ST, you make your way off Hoth and blast TIE fighters in an asteroid field in a dreadful turret section with awful controls. The game at least gives you plenty of time to react as the bombs from the TIE bombers are really slow, and you have infinite missiles – they just reload between batches of 5.

Hunting for Boba Fett, Dash heads to a junkyard planet to get information from IG-88. I absolutely hate this level as a kid due to the controls but I didn’t find it too bad – I think the ability to strafe helps a lot with lining up jumps, and I never figured that out the first time round. It’s still a very ugly planet, though – Shadows of the Empire was definitely ahead of its time for its use of greys and browns. At the end of the level you take out IG-88, who gives you information on where Boba Fett is.

This is where the platforming really does take a nosedive. Dash’s jump is incredibly floaty and not difficult to control, and the narrow paths of this level are built for you to fall off constantly. You get a jetpack half way through which helps a bit, but is not as fun as a jetpack should be due to being slow and only possible to use for short bursts.

You fight Boba Fett and the Slave 1 at the end. I ran out of ammo, but found a spot where Slave 1 couldn’t hit me, so was able to hit it a few hundred times to destroy it.

Some text explains that after this, Boba Fett escapes and an assassin tries to kill Luke, so it’s up to you to help protect him.

As Luke chills out at Obi-Wan’s home on Tatooine, Dash hears of a swoop gang heading to kill Luke. Speeding through this level is great, but it’s much better to go slowly to take out enemies. You find out information that an Imperial ship contains the necessary information.

As Luke waits outside in his X-Wing, Dash assaults the imperial ship on his own (this game makes Luke seem weak). Most of this level is messing with door switches in a large cargo hold. There’s some secrets to find, but you need to work your way, then fighting a big droid near the end. The jetpack you found earlier would have been handy, but Dash left it on his ship. On a side note, I do really like the Outrider.

In order to infiltrate a base, we need to go through a sewer. Dash has absolutely no issue diving though massive amounts of excrement as you have to find a few different items to progress. The boss fight at the end is a horrible experience, with respawning tentacles and the poor jetpack controls underwater.

Going through the base your job is to find a reactor to place charges to blow up a space elevator. Luke is also infiltrating this base to save Leia, but that’s just background information and you never get to see them during gameplay. This is another dull level.

After another bad ship turret section, we get to actually fly the Outrider, and it’s great. You don’t get to focus on shooting other ships, though: your mission is to shoot four turrets then fly into the base and blow up the reactor, Death Star 2-style. The game ends with Dash seemingly not making it (but then reveals his fate in the final cutscene).

Shadow of the Empire is not as fun as I remember. The genre has evolved a lot, and the controls are just strange and floaty. The full story is probably good, but this isn’t a good adaptation as important points are relegated to scrolling text.

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!

The Good
This game was the first Star Wars game to come out for the N64. The game pitted you as Dash Rendar, a friend of Han and Luke's as you fought along aside them in a timeframe between Ep. 5 and 6.

The first level of this game really gives you high hopes, with you flying around with other landspeeders trying to haplessly destroy AT-ATs as they approach Echo Base. This level was truly amazing. You could shoot AT-STs and wrap up AT-Ats. To a Star Wars nerd, this is pure bliss. However, this level ends a bit short and you are left with the rest of the game.

The other really exciting part of this game is that last level. Skyhook battle is open, surrounding a giant space station. Nearby is a giant star destroyer, constantly letting out tie fighters, as the skyhook lets out their fighters. In between all this is you and rogue squadron. This provides for a nice three-way war. Buddies help a bit, but not as much as you do. And besides that, there is not much to do except destroy a never-ending wave of tie fighters or else do your mission.

The last, and most valuable part, of the game which I liked was it told you where Luke goes between Ep 5 and 6. Multiple cutscenes have him fighting along side you, but too bad you never get to do it in real play. However, you could have just read the books too.

Sound is a classic, with classic blaster noises and screams. Music is brought straight from the movies with nice tones like the asteroid field music. They made good choices when it came to sound.

The Bad
The rest of the game is mediocre. It's a generic third-person/first-person shooter (they are switchable in game by tapping a button). Besides a blaster, Dash gets a seeker missile, an automatic pulse rifle, a flame thrower, and a pulse bomb which wipes out everything within seeing range. Yeah, thats it. 5 Weapons.

Enemy AI is stupid. Guards patrol nicely when your not around, but when they see you, they NEVER move. The only time they will move is if they've seen you and you go out of range. Then they will get in range again, and stand completely still to shoot. Not much of a challenge there.

The other two vehicle levels are not much to boast. The asteroid field leaves you on a rail cannon, unable to drive. The skiff bike chase is repetitive and annoying.

Graphics are nice (I mean that), however there is a lack of detail in the environments. Why would the rebels even want Echo Base if there wasn't any computers in sight? Most of the levels are just hallways. Boooring!

The Bottom Line
Overall, only about half the game is worth seeing, and even those parts have been vastly improved upon. The Rogue Squadron series improved upon Hoth (number 2 had the best version) and everything else in the air. The Clone Wars improved upon ground vehicles. Even the story has been out for years in the book. The music can easily bought as the Star Wars soundtrack (the background music is taken directly from it)

Unfortunately, at its time of release, had lots of potential, however, it has been left back in light of more updated games.