Thoughts on Starwars shadow of the empire?

[Anonymous No.5084691]

[Anonymous No.5084705]

I'm not much into Star Wars anymore but I fucking love that game Except for that Mos Eisley level

[Anonymous No.5084723]

Star Wars games you must play before you can start complaining about star wars games;

Dark Force II
Battlefront
→ Shadow of the empire
KOTOR

[Anonymous No.5084729]

Amazing game that laid the groundwork for future Star Wars titles but maybe hasn't aged as well as you'd hope.

[Anonymous No.5084753]

Very memorable, impressive for 1996. Suffers from trying to cover many genres but not really mastering any. Most of the levels are 3rd person action, and while the controls are decent, they're very superficial and a bit clunky. You can choose to play in 1st or 3rd person though, but there's platforming involved so 3rd person camera works better in those cases.
The best part of the game is actually the first level, which is a recreation of the battle of hoth from Empire Strikes Back, and this one level seems to have more polish than the rest of the game. It would eventually lead to the Rogue Squadron games which are all flight/space combat games.
Even if you did't care about SW this level was something to experience when it came out, and I think it's still fun to play today. I believe they remade this level for one of the modern games.
The rest of the game throws you on foot missions with a cool 90s chad Han Solo poochie that honestly is fine, as long as you don't watch the CGI cutscenes on the PC version.
I'd say the rest of the game is good in terms of atmosphere, but gameplay and level design is just OK and sometimes levels can go on forever and have bullshit difficulty spikes. I guess they live up to the legacy of the Super SW games.
If you engage in the game, there's a few more variety, some better than other. 3rd level is an asteroids shooting mission, feels like a mini game, it's OK, looks very cool.
One of the later levels is a bike race around Tatooine, this level is the worst part of the game, the controls are very erratic and not fun to play. Map design is a clusterfuck. They clearly weren't giving much fucks and just wanted to add one of those shitty gimmick levels.
Last level, if you can make it that far, is the other highlight of the game. A real space combat mission where you have to blow up shit. Not as good as Hoth but still pretty good climax.

[Anonymous No.5084870]

>>5084691
Beat but didnt like. Love the hoth speeders & 2 flying lvls tho

[Anonymous No.5084886]

>>5084691
i really enjoyed all of the levels, especially after you get the jetpack. i don't think realistic jetpack physics like that had ever been done in a game before. this game did a lot of things first in general actually.

[Anonymous No.5084936]

Fucking love it except for the crappy Millenium Falcon levels, I don't know why they thought the final boss should be one. The ground levels get a little samey near the end but Hoth and the junkyard are two of my favorite levels in any game.

[Anonymous No.5084945]

>>5084691
Play with savestates if you want that sweet debug mode.

[Anonymous No.5084949]

I loved it when I was a kid. I just replayed it recently and thought it was pretty bland. The level design is really uninteresting, most of the bosses are just terrible, there's next to no replay value other than messing around with cheats. The precision platforming segments are fucking atrocious, and the games total reliance on auto aim makes most encounters more about luck and how much disruptor ammo you can hoard than skill and reflexes.

What it does have going for it - great soundtrack and sound effects, levels are all totally unique and distinguishable, the hoth level is glorious, and ord mantell is a really admirable effort considering it's (as far as I remember) the first train level in a 3D game.

[Anonymous No.5084958]

WOMPA STOMPA

[Anonymous No.5084962]

IG 88 was one of my earliest vidya PTSD moments.

>Freaky sound when moving around
>camera controls make it hard to track where he is
>can easily instakill you at close range
>randomly jumps around making it even harder to track where it is

[Anonymous No.5084964]

>>5084691
Dash Rendar's smug face and personality sold it to me. Shame that the last few levels are so dark!

[Anonymous No.5084978]

Fair reviews all around ITT. Loved the game when it came out and have since enjoyed it on emulators, but it doesnt hold up as well as i'd hoped - mostly the controls, which IMO makes some bits particularly hard, hence the random difficulty spikes.

[Anonymous No.5084982]

Fun until the Swoop Gang bike race.

[Anonymous No.5085001]

>>5084982
A lot of people ITT complaining about the bike race level, but i never minded it (except it breaks when emulated IME). The robot boss on the second last level was far more annoying to me.

[Anonymous No.5085006]

>>5084962
The game actually got me more interested in Star Wars and I thought IG-88 was really cool. Imagine my disappointment when his role in the movie was just to stand in the background of a single scene and do nothing.

[Anonymous No.5086807]

>>5085001
Gladiator droid is some bullshit, I basically just saved all disruptors possible for this.

[Anonymous No.5086821]

>>5085001
Yeah that boss is huge pain in the ass. You basically need to save all the seeker shots in the game for it.

[Anonymous No.5086895]

>>5085006
Most minor Star Wars characters are basically just background details from some scene in some movie that were given a name and an expanded role in some game, comic book or novel.

[Anonymous No.5086896]

>>5084691
My favorite game when it first came out. I played this game more than SM64 I loved it so much. As I was shocked when I discovered the internet later that the game was considered average at best. I also didn't know the PC version had actual cutscenes. After playing much better star wars games I understand why it was reviewed the way it was, but I still love the soundtrack.

[Anonymous No.5086906]

>>5085001
Yeah the AI on that level is really dumb and if you focus on killing all the bikers first and then head off for Luke it's actually really easy.

[Anonymous No.5087009]

>>5084691
I know it's Kotaku but they released a video a few months ago about Gall Spaceport and how it wrote the book on designing fully-realized 3D levels of the day. Things like objects (the Outrider, the random Tydirium Shuttle) being their proper size with correct internal and/or external dimensions, and that everything occupied proper 3D space, like the elevators or the lookout tower where the Jetpack is, and that the whole level is pretty much a "See that mountain/you can climb it" type deal but made in 1990-fucking-6.

The game's version of Rendar's events are nice. He's just kind of an asshole in the book that dies for no reason, and the Leia/lizardpenis scenes are fucking awful, but any time it focuses on Luke or Vader it's absolute gold

[Anonymous No.5087701]

>>5086896
yes i believe it was the first star wars game to have actual samples of the original film score.

[Anonymous No.5087729]

>>5086896
>I also didn't know the PC version had actual cutscenes
And they're horrible

[Anonymous No.5088241]

It got the Hoth flying scene right, and in general I enjoyed a lot of the space battles. But Rogue Squadron out did it in those aspects later on. The ground fighting and platforming doesn't hold up really well, but the level designs and secrets made it interesting.

[Anonymous No.5089163]

I would often play the first three levels as a game in itself, fighting and escaping Hoth.

the asteroid escape isn't really loved, but I had a soft spot for flying right under the star destroyer's nose into one of those YOU DRIVE I SHOOT sequences. such good times

[Anonymous No.5089432]

>>5084691
This was one of the first games i got as a kid and played the shit out of it. Easier than dark forces but i could not get past IG-88 I loved the tie fighter and hoth level.

[Anonymous No.5090451]

Was really cool atm, but now it feels very old and bland, didn't really survive the test of time. Battle of hoth is still cool though.

Whenever i try to play it again i always get bored at Gall Spaceport. the level is way too long and then they throw you against Boba Fett and Slave 1. One way ticket to a perpetual REEEEEEEEEEE if you get a game over and have to start from the beginning of the level.

[Anonymous No.5091976]

Plebian filth.

[Anonymous No.5092214]

>>5091976
More like pleb filter

[Anonymous No.5092430]

it's dark AF. This level is impossible to play on a crt.

[Anonymous No.5092435]

>>5092430
I played the level just fine, but the boss can be PSTD inducing.

[Anonymous No.5092458]

>>5087009

gall spaceport is my favorite level in the game

[Anonymous No.5092548]

Some of the worst third person controls and physics in existance. The game belongs in a trash heap.

[Anonymous No.5092626]

>>5092548

I give it some slack for being old as hell, but you're not wrong. I always end up playing it in first person mode because the 3rd person feels absurdly clunky compared to what games are capable of today.

[Anonymous No.5093778]

>>5092435
Is it a stretch to say the Dark Souls hydra boss ripped off of it?

[Anonymous No.5093919]

>>5087701
The weird thing about SotE is that the music is actually super low sample rate versions of the original score. It's not sequenced music,

[Anonymous No.5096039]

>>5084691
Good game. shame it never came to the Saturn.

[Anonymous No.5096180]

>>5092430
Is your CRT really old and dying? I played that level on 3 separate CRT tv's back when and never had a problem, though the pic you've taken is clearly too dark (darker than intended).

>>5092548
I think you're overblowing how bad they are - yeah they are pretty bad by todays standards but it's still playable, and in the context of it's time it deserves to be remembered for it's achievements rather than relegating it as trash.

[Anonymous No.5096443]

>>5096180
that's an emulator screenshot but the crt I had back when the game came out was just as dark if not darker. I had to jack up the brightness to 100 just to see anything at all.

[Anonymous No.5097803]

>>5084691
It's canon

[Anonymous No.5097949]

>>5084962
This fucker, and the entirety of the sewers level. The fact you can't see the diagonas, but you could hear them growling loudly scared the shit out of me. Took me years to be the game because of it. Pic related too.

[Anonymous No.5097970]

Dash Rendar was awesome and deserves his own movie.

[Anonymous No.5098104]

Was the music on the menu (level select) from the movies?

[Anonymous No.5098114]

>>5097949

this game had a really creepy atmosphere

[Anonymous No.5098116]

>>5098104

I think it's from Empire Strikes Back

[Anonymous No.5098117]

>>5084962
My nigga.

Fett was a hell of a fight, but everything about what you said is what I dealt with too, trying to keep an eye on the fucker was hard enough without being one-hit ko'd.

[Anonymous No.5098119]

Played the game for the first time some months ago and I was loving it. Then I got the Jetpack and droped it out of boredom, what a fucking shitty gimmick.

[Anonymous No.5099647]

Battle of Hoth>Skyhook Battle>Escape from Echo Base>Asteroid Chase>Gall Spaceport>Imperial Freighter Suprosa>Xizor's Palace>Sewers of Imperial City>Ord Mantell Junkyard>Mos Eisley
Accurate?

[Anonymous No.5099659]

>>5099647
Swap the asteroid turret mission with Ord Mantell, knock Skyhook down a couple notches and we'll be in business. Mos Eisley is fucking horse shit, I realized after trying to beat the other swoop guys to the finish about 60 times that the game slingshots them like mad and you're meant to slowly, painfully ram each one individually until there's nobody left. The controls are unbearable and I wouldn't blame anyone for dropping the game at that point.

[Anonymous No.5100078]

>>5099647

gall spaceport>ord mantell>escape from echo base>battle of hoth>skyhook battle>mos eisley>asteroid chase>imperial freighter>xizors palace>sewers