ICONS: Star Wars Games

[Matt_Fury]

I don't know if any of you watched the show Icons on G4 Tv, but tonight's episode was a history of Lucasarts' Star Wars titles.  They talked about the highpoints (Dark Forces, the X-wing/TIE Fighter series, and KOTOR) and the lows (Force Commander {Sorry Jesse}, Masters of Teras Kasi, and Power Battles).

I thought it was pretty interesting, and if you missed it, it'll be on again 14 August.

[Jesse James]

I've watched that episode before...  It was a little unfair at times, I thought, and a little vague too.  They skipped entire games that were actually "high points", like if I recall the X-Wing: Alliance game was completely skipped yet it's overall a vastly superior game over XvT in every way plus it was generally more popular and still has a supported online community to this day (amazingly).

Force Commander love is something I've just come to not expect.  The rags tore it up because it didn't appeal to mainstream gamers enough because they couldn't play it...  It's by far and away not Lucasarts' best foot forward as I think Dark Forces/Jedi Knight were that, with XW, TIE, and XW:A being VERY close 2nds, and Rogue Squadron a nicely situated 3rd.  Those games are all unequaled to this day as far as what they did for Star Wars gaming, and in gaming in general they were HUGE strides for any company.  I mean, Dark Forces was THE game that made 3rd person shooting more than the Doom experience.

I'd have put XvT as a low point.  The engine for that game was so wonky but people had such a boner to play online X-Wing/TIE Fighter gaming that it got good marks.  X-Wing: Alliance (oh the tragedy it is, falling prey to E1 gaming schedules pushes  ) was so vastly superior and such a blatant replacement to XvT, that I think it's a game that never gets the props it deserves.

Then again Lucasarts totally ignoring the flight sims since Alliance is a bit of a boner on their part all together. 

To me, the low points are MoTK, Battlegrounds (game mods are best left for downloading online, not buying at the store), Rebellion (it's just never been one I liked), Racer's Revenge, among some others.

Lucasarts is one of my fav companies, I just wish they'd pick it up a notch with FPS gaming and Flight Sims (and in general, PC gaming).  Go back to what you perfected at one point, and re-claim that throne, ya know?  Put out that Star Wars "Saga" Flight Simulator...  Add to the Katarn story pre-Jedi Knight...  Just do something that isn't the same old same old.  LA's not done well with PC gaming for a while.

[CHEWIE]

I consider FORCE COMMANDER to be one of my favorite games of all time.  But I never could beat the damn level where you have to get the rebel pilots to the A-Wings.

 

[Jesse James]

A bitch of a level man...

See Matt, someone liked it.   That's 2!

[Matt_Fury]

I never disagreed with you that there were good points to the Game Jesse.  I thought the graphics were great, the soundtrack was cool and the story was good.  I didn't even have the control problems others had, because I had never played a RTS game before so I had nothing to compare it too.

I've discussed my problems with the game ad nausea, so I won't go into it here.

I finally caught the entire show (thank you mr Tivo), and even though they didn't go into all the games into great detail, I did think it was a good overview of the SW gaming history.  It was pretty cool looking at the old Super Nintendo games, since I haven't played those in about 10 years! 

Lots of interesting nostalgia stuff like that.