Star Wars Jedi Starfighter Review

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(More customer reviews)It's always been extremely "hit-or-miss" with LucasArts Entertainment's long running series of games based off of the Star Wars universe. On one hand, they've brought to life several extremely successful arcade-style flight simulators, but on the other they've stumbled and bumbled their way through countless platformers and shoot-em-ups. In more recent years, even their greatest strength, the flight sims, have taken a nosedive with poor showings on the PSX, N64, PS2, GameCube and Xbox. So when I finally sat down to have a go at this one, it was with a fleeting hope to see more of what once was and less of what's most recently been. I remember when things were good, and it's very hard to forget when they were bad.
The basic premise of this one is quite simple; you alternate playing the roles of Adi Gallia, a young Jedi Master and Nym, a typical gung-ho, brightly colored alien pirate, as they battle to save the republic from the looming threat of the Trade Federation. Both fly easily recognizable ships, and each come fully equipped with their own set of unique special weapons and secondary firepower. While Adi can use the force to aid her in the battle by slowing down time, reinforcing shields or striking enemy ships with force lightning, Nym's vehicle carries a heavy load of blunt firepower. Adi's ship is faster and more maneuverable, but Nym's packs a much stronger punch.
The entirety of the controls themselves are very easy to learn and deceptively simple to master. It's nowhere near as complex and customizable as the keyboard-based system introduced by X-Wing and Tie Fighter, but it still accomplishes many of the same tasks without the necessity of another sixty buttons. The left analog stick controls the direction of your ship, and the right analog handles the roll, which is more of a luxury feature than anything else. In space you won't need to put this to use at all, except perhaps to dodge enemy fire, but when you're battling near the surface of a planet it's easy to get disoriented by your surroundings if everything isn't level. The left and right triggers handle the speed of your craft, with the left your brake and the right your speed boost. I miss the ability to set my thrust to 40% or 60%, or to match the speed of my target and ride his tail until he's dead, but the lack of so many confusing buttons here is a trade-off I can live with.
The story, unfortunately, isn't nearly as inventive nor as easy to follow as the weapons or control systems. What story there is shoots by at such a blazing pace, it's nearly impossible to comprehend what's just happened before you're right in the thick of another fight. At one point, I didn't understand that I was dogfighting with Jango Fett himself until the second or third time he killed me. Efforts were made to tie this title in with the events going on during Episode II, but you could blink and miss the connections. Samuel L. Jackson's character, Mace Windu, is directly involved with everything you do, but it's hard to tell when that's his voice you're hearing over the comm-link, because the voice actor they cast for his role sounds NOTHING like his movie counterpart.
Another thing that bothered me about the way this game played was its straightforward series of goals. While one of the coolest things about Tie Fighter was its variety, Jedi Starfighter puts you in a new location, shakes up your odds a little bit, and tells you to do one of two things; protect something or kill something. Gone are the reconnaissance missions that made the pace of the PC flight sims so strong. You'll never be asked to retreat from a battle after holding off enemy fighters long enough for backup to arrive. It's kill or be killed, every single time.
While the gameplay itself is quite realistic in appearance, with tightly-rendered ships, daunting scale and believable obstacles such as asteroids and hidden enemy bases on small moons, the characters in the important scenes are flamboyantly cartoony and unrealistic. The regal, pompous air exuded by the tall, green members of the Trade Federation in Episode I is rendered null and void when they flail their arms around, swivel their hips or throw their heads around in strange ways during casual dialog. It seems like the animators grew bored with what they were being asked to render and overcompensated on the body language.
The audio, to its credit, is very well done from start to finish. Though the voice acting is pretty much universally terrible, the sound effects and music more than make up for it and then some. Laser fire is easy to trace, each different ship sounds crisp and distinct, and the original John Williams score works every bit as well here as it does on screen.
This is a title that had all the elements of a great game, in the same vein as its vaunted predecessors. It was overflowing with ingenuity, featuring unique new elements that made even the harshest battles exciting and entertaining, an enormous stage upon which to play, a steadily rising level of difficulty and several well-developed unlockable features. The gameplay is most certainly spot-on but the story, mood and motivations have got it all wrong. It's hard to get into a game like this, no matter how original the weaponry, if the story feels like an afterthought and each stage is just a new skin wrapped around the same old set of goals. Extra features help add a little spice to it, but on the large it's a perfect example of what could have been. I wish they'd taken another couple months on this, finished it properly and concentrated more on adding some peaks and valleys to the missions themselves.

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Product Description:
The force is truly with Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter. Thisfirst-person space shooter will appeal to fans of the genre, and will especiallyexcite any Star Wars buffs: there's a lot of material in this game thatcovers the period between Episode I and Episode II.
The time prior to the events of Star Wars: Episode II is a chaotic one.Pressure between the Republic and Count Dooku is building, and the Count has aplan that will give him the upper hand. He's made a deal with Captain Toth ofthe Trade Federation, who intends to take over the resource-abundant Karthakksystem. He has met almost no resistance, except for the alien smuggler Nym.
Aware that the Karthakk system must not fall into Dooku's hands, Mace Windudispatches his former student Adi Gallia (now a Jedi Master) to the system in anexperimental force-powered starfighter. She joins forces with Nym, and togetherthey just might have a chance at stopping Captain Toth.
Jedi Starfighter has 15 story-driven levels and an in-depth tutorial. Inall, the game provides over 20 missions, mostly protecting or escorting targetsand blowing up droids and other minions of the future Empire. The action takesplace in space, as well as in the sky over various planets. You can play aseither Adi or Nym, and you can also play the entire game in two-player split-screen cooperative mode. The Xbox version has an exclusive head-to-head scenariocalled Coruscant Territory Capture--think Star Wars meets Capture theFlag.
The two main ships you fly are Adi's Jedi starfighter (the same ship piloted byObi Wan in Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones) and Nym's strikebomber. Adi's ship is fast and light with four force powers (force field, forcelightening, force reflex, and force shock wav

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