Star Wars Video Games: S/D, C/D, POO?

Inspired by the scads of fun I am having playing The Force Unleashed, and the excitement stirred by the knowledge that the next level takes place on Cloud City (my #1 Fictional Location I Wish Truly Existed)...

Though a more discursive thread might be better than a poll, but if someone wants to start one... Loved the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series, haven't treally enjoyed any of the RTS games (though I have tried) and I don't find the LEGO games massively satisfying, though they are fun (I think I'm just not a huge platform type guy). I remember really liking Rebel Assault II, and even its predecessor, though they were mostly rote rail shooters. Rogue Squadron was fun too.

Hell, I think my favourite may have been the Empire Strikes Back game for the 2600...

The original Dark Forces, which looked like Doom with star wars gfx.

It was one of the few fps games i played right through. But that fucking ice level with the conveyor belt, aaargh.

For a long time, if you can believe it, the quality of Star Wars games was pretty consistently high. Absolutely loved Super Star Wars - the next two were fine as well but the first one especially was a great platformer.

X-Wing and Tie Fighter were legendary flight sims, great extra universe settings and stories. Agreed on Dark Forces/Jedi Knight being great, fun games too. Even Rebel Assault, for a basic cinematic game, was fun if not amazing.

Around Episode I (to match the movies of course) the games started getting much more spotty and generic. (I hear Episode I Racer has a lot of fans, but I thought it was just passable.) That said, Rogue Squadron II on the GameCube was fantastic.

the first Kotor on Xbox is probably the best Star Wars game out there, though the Force Unleashed demo came close in providing that same sense of power and mad skills as one expects to have as a sith. Of course Kotor isn't all Star Wars-y Star Wars but that's what made it work.

Oh duh, how could I forget that one. KOTOR was pretty great.

i still have Tie Fighter for the pc, i think it's on about 9 floppy disks.

love that game though, wasn't too enamoured with xwing allience though, got very hard very quickly.

the only star wars game i got for the ps2 was something called jedi starfighter, dreadful stuff.

I'm playing through Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga at the moment with my girlfriend. I really love it and can't help thinking the prequels would have been infinitely improved if they had simply been animated lego films with no dialogue.

Jedi Knight II is also one of the very few fps's I have played all the way through (along with Deus Ex and Golden Eye!)

Rogue Squadron on the GC was pretty great - I'm thinking of the first one which had the Battle of Yavin and not the second one, which although I never played allegedly had some pretty ropey third person running around bits.

Super Star Wars was far too hard for me as a kid and I had to use cheats. Ditto Star Wars on the original Gameboy.

the 'super' series on the snes was soo hard, couldn't get anywhere.

although might give it another blast now i have a decent control stick for the emulator.

never got too into the TIE Fighter series, my PC was always a bit too behind the times when they came out - I had one of the later compilation releases, but I don't think I ever really got into it.

Am intrigued by KOTOR - now I have a 360, I can run the old XBOX copies on it, I guess. Never touched Galaxies, though my WOW-playing, SW-obsessed former housemate tried it and said it sucked.

Enjoying Force Unleashed for its story as much as anything, and, as I said, the iconic locations and characters, though the game mechanic itself is a lot of fun - destruction is big, and impressive, and the balance of different powers is varied enough.

the 'super' series on the snes was soo hard, couldn't get anywhere.

Those games are perfect for emulators.

old school motherfuckers can you get down with THIS

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9773

That ate a lotta quarters from me at the local chuck e cheese

dude i played the shit out of that game at aladdins castle!

it gets my vote.

no doubt!

yeah i took over the hiscore table with that one at a local holiday site one summer

oh shit I loved that game so much

still (predictably), KOTOR wins for me

man, i should get rogue squadron for GC, i remember seeing my roommates play it in college and thinking it was dope.

much love for dark forces. i even have fond memories of the o.g. rebel assault, even though it's pretty silly and limited in retrospect.

unfortunately i tried kotor when i started to lose my patience/time for really long games, and the beginning just didn't suck me in.

surprised that no one is pushing the Battlefront stuff

I actually sat in and played one of those classic Star Wars arcade machines about 2 weeks ago! Still fun and still kind of hard!

I have played very very few Star Wars games but me & my son have gotten a lot of mileage out of the Lightsaber Duels game for Wii. Am a little disappointed in how little unlockable content there is though.

Great:

Star Wars Arcade (I still blow quarters on this at Ground Kontrol)
Kotor 1
Kotor 2
Both SW Lego games
Jedi Knight 1 & 2
Xwing
Tie Fighter

Good:

Xwing: Alliance
Battlefront
Dark Forces (OUTSTANDING for 1994, tho)
Jedi Starfighter
Jedi Academy (JK2.5 or whatever)
the Rogue Squadron series (RS1 blew so many people away in 1997? 1998? when it hit)

Enh:

Alliance, or whatever that RTS thing was
SW NES
Empire NES
Racer
Whatever that AoeII clone was
Shadow of the Empire (AWESOME hoth level, tho)
The Empire Atari 2600 game (played this shit a LOT)
Rebel Assault I & II (along with Myst, helped sell SO MANY people on getting a CDROM drive in '93 or so)
SW Battlechess (1992)

Bad:

Force Commander (apparently)
Teras Kasi (bad SW tekken)

???:
the aborted ray-traced Empire game
the atari 2600 games
the RotJ arcade game from '83 or so
Starfighter I (the Naboo one)
Clone Wars
the SNES games, which, except for Empire, I never really played

come to think of it, Kotor I is probably the greatest game out of all these, not to mention that they

1) adapted the BG2/Planescape format to work in third-person 3D format

2) made a great SW rpg game

3) proved that you can tell a narrative both excellent and deep in the SW universe(Extended or otherwise) so long as your writing is good enough(see also the Tartakovsky series & Kotor II)

Heh. And to think, so many of the games got high accolades just for being SW content in the dark years whether they were good or not.

by the early 90s, people were SO hungry for this kind of sub-genre exercise that they eagerly lapped it up, which of course has led to the continuation of the varying spin-off media today(I figure the same holds true for the dry years of Doctor Who et al)

And i'm reminded of what my best friend remarked on the theoretical improvement of the game over Doom when the demo level of Dark Forces was first released in aug/sept 1994, right as I went off to university, "shooting stormtroopers is a lot more fun than shooting demons"

and he was right.

still loving force unleashed but the cloud city scene was hellz of short. i could imagine getting the DLC for this, though, and playing through it again at a higher difficulty rating, which is a rarity for me.

battlefront games are pretty decent, tho the II version featured a pants flying section.

So inspired by this thread I picked up KOTOR for my PC and I am loving it a lot. I think it is kind of funny though how all the reviews highlight its "compelling" and "original" story and yet virtually all the main plot elements seem to be simply rehashed from the films just with different names for the characters (I'm only about 10 hours in though). Maybe I'm just not a big enough fan of Star Wars. It is still a great game though.

should i play rogue squadron 2 or 3 for gamecube?

eh, the main plot for KOTOR is a pretty good twist on what happens in the movies, IMO

never played RS so can't answer that one

This is quite a fun series (still in progress, doubt he'll stretch it over more than three parts though):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bastard-of-the-old-republic-article_2

Think I'll try something similar on my second Fallout 3 playthough (I guess Mordy's doing that right now).

xpost

I take that KOTOR comment back now I've played it a bit more. The story is gradually growing on me.

KOTOR is out for the ipad? I'm intrigued...

Whoa! http://www.legenio.cz/images/product/11608/l1.jpg

hah! wheels within wheels.

not a video game, but the table top X-Wing game is a TON of fun

All the Super NES games were top notch imo. I used to play them over and over when I got sick.

battlefront beta is pretty cool. looks really good

the multiplayer for me is mostly getting killed by the same pro mlg headshot mcteabag dude over + over until the round ends and i see my pathetic ranking

JonTron is doing occasional reviews of old Star Wars games. Warning: he's only occasionally funny.
http://www.youtube.com/user/JonTronShow/videos

I suck so bad at multiplayer. Last round I got 3 kills but died 7 times.

The game is cool but not really as mindblowing as I hoped. Shooting stormtroopers is really fun. They have weird ragdoll physics though the world is less impressive cos of it. Still it looks amazing.

It was cool as hack to have to figure out how to destroy an AT-ST while dodging it behind rocks and through caves. It was much faster than I thought it would be. Tried rolling under its legs like Dark Souls .... not a good idea

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/10792-indiana-jones-and-the-last-crusade-the-graphic-adventure-dos.gif

I was really into the Indiana Jones Graphic Adventures and always dreamed there would be a Star Wars one. I think it would have worked really well. Just like walking across these pixel art Star Wars landscapes to talk to Obi Wan, and he has these inside jokes as stuff, and the music and sound effects are all PC speaker.

Shame they never did that, but LucasArts in the 80s had a strict no-Star Wars rule for some reason. Oh well it allowed them the freedom to come up with all the beloved classics they are known for. They all have a weird underground comic sort of vibe to them. Sam & Max. The Curse of Monkey Island.

Maybe The Dig was the closest we got to a Star Wars graphic adventure? I had it and thought it was cool but it was a little too abstract for my mind at the time. Plus I was really into BBSing and DOOM levels and hacks so maybe The Dig was too much of a monolithic experience. It would be nice to revisit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_68gQyAfYiw

Dark Forces was great. It really came close to feeling like you were in the movies. Sound effects were SPOT ON. The level design went way over my head as a kid, I remember being stuck in the sewer level forever. But it was always fun. Winswept cliffsides.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=359qyiXskCE

Rebel Assault may not be the best video game but it is AMAZING as an artifact. Interactive Pre-Special Edition Official Extended Universe Star Wars. New models flying over new landscapes. Re-creations of stuff hinted at in the first movies. CGI cutscenes. An exclusive on-rails lofi INTERACTIVE CD-ROM experience.

Battlefont Beta is cool. Mine has some pausing and glitching in between menus or load screens, which is slightly annoying but the gameplay is flawless so nothing really to complain about.

spent so many hours playing Jedi Knight: DF 2 as a teen. fantastic game.

replayed dk1 recently, was surprised to find myself now capable of handling the sewer level. maybe the best single-player experience--the best level design and sense of presence--of the first fps wave? better than doom, slightly; better than heretic/hexen; better than duke nukem 3d (second-wave, but using first-wave tech). the detention center level is the pinnacle of something.

i played so much jedi knight too--along with the original half-life (not much remembered for its multiplayer) it was me+high school friends' go-to lan shooter. not sure force powers in multiplayer ever quite graduated from being a gimmick but they sure were fun.

df1, i meant.

Maybe The Dig was the closest we got to a Star Wars graphic adventure? I had it and thought it was cool but it was a little too abstract for my mind at the time.

the dig is much realer than star wars, not just in literal setting but in tone. closer to some of infocom's harder (in both senses) sf games--starcross is the one i'm thinking of. lots of experimenting with buttons and squinting at alien glyphs. one of the purest graphic adventures in that item-on-item inventory puzzle contrivances and dialogue trees are mostly absent--despite the characters and the talking it sometimes has the eerie solitary vibe of the better mystlikes (read: riven).

rebel assault and rebel assault 2 were barely even games, "artifact" is otm. 2 in particular--which was like all fmv, including the gameplay--i played and played and played.

closest thing to a star wars lucasarts adventure was "yoda stories", the sw version of the superior "indiana jones' desktop adventures", which procedurally generated ten-minute adventures and was fun for a little while. the premise of performing a series of self-contained jobs made a lot more sense when you were indy than when you were luke tho.

battlefield beta is cool (love the star destroyers/corvettes fighting above you; imperial/rebel uniforms surprisingly effective at providing readymade camaraderie) but feels pretty uncomplicatedly like a modern console shooter with stormtroopers. cool if u like modern console shooters.

field, front, whatever.

oh you know what i LOVED despite its awkwardly straddling about 6 genres and not being particularly good at the one it concentrated on (fps) and being designed for a console that seems to grow less fashionable w the year? shadows of the empire.

that game is fun but dash rendar is the chris gaines of star wars

Attempted Battlefront Beta but alas graphics card wasn't up to the job.

Has any attempted playing the Tie Fighter or X Wing games through Steam? I'm hearing conflicting reviews, but I really want to play those again.(My existing copy of Alliance won't work anymore through Windows fantastic compatibility nonsene.)

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/66449/

Haven't tried them personally but I'm pretty sure they just re-released them w modern support. Those games were pretty great too.

I hear the GOG releases are superior for various reasons, reasons that I could not explain

actually just bought a new windows laptop today, might spend Xmas having a nostalgia fest of Jedi Knight / Half Life / Deus Ex :D

Battlefront turned me off. I'll give it another try when it's done but the beta didn't make me want to keep playing.

It explains why stormtroopers could never hit anything in the movies. Protip: don't use your sight unless they are really really far away.

rogue squadron on n64 was really good back in the day

battlefront is just a beta so i can't really knock it too hard yet but the hoth/walker multiplayer is the only thing fun to replay. planetside 2 is still way better

The single player thing was fun, with the waves of stormtroopers and walkers. Hope I can still play that after this beta ends.

might spend Xmas having a nostalgia fest of Jedi Knight / Half Life / Deus Ex :D

liveblog!

Yeah the horde mode was the only part of BF I enjoyed, and even that was only so-so. It's so disappointing, the game looks absolutely amazing (photo-real I think, in some parts of tatooine) but it turns out the game is (perhaps unsurprisingly) still a hardcore online shooter which I'll never have enough time to not suck at, so the beta has pushed me from "day one must buy" to "meh will pick it up used next year for £10 and just play the solo modes".

I think my most fondly remembered star wars games are Dark Forces, Tie Fighter, and the Gamecube one I can never remember the name of - Rogue Leader maybe? Oh and Episode One Pod Racer was a surprisingly fun time too.

may the force teabag u
http://i.imgur.com/owXACib.gifv

sigh

AMERICA

That's gloriously stupid. I had to laugh at all the idiots running into frame to bop up & down like a collection of Minions.

Did anyone get Battlefront then?

Seems to have been a bit of an anticlimax, especially considering the new movie comes out soon

i got it. it is fun but thin. should be available second hand at a significant discount in the near future. if perhaps ea hadn't built it, the game might have been better.

i would recommend waiting for the inevitable Gold edition (or whatever it will be called) with all of the DLC that will be added over the course of the year. as art said, it is thin. walker assault mode alone kept me occupied for 10-12 hours but i started to get a little bored with it. i haven't read anything about it, but you have to assume that death star levels will be coming soon and that they will be incredible.

i would 100% get this game if it came w everything at once. but season pass, eff that. will wait until there is a complete edition on sale.

as for Star Wars video games, i was OBSESSED w Super Star Wars as a kid. some of my favorite memories are discovering Weird Al while blasting through Super Empire Strikes Back when i was home sick from school.

Al was in the game?

ho ho ho