Shadow Squadron

"A great bare-bones space shooter"

Shadow Squadron is a spaceship dogfighting game along the lines of classics Colony Wars, StarFox and Wing Commander. While it doesn't have the voice-overs or interesting characters of the aforementioned games, it has absolutely fantastic gameplay mechanics, stripped to the core.

To explain, Shadow Squadron just simply doesn't have any characters at all. Nor any spoken voice overs. At the beginning of each mission, you get a tiny little mission briefing set of words along the text box, and that's it. No characters crying about some empire's takeover of their homeland, no space princesses to save, no bounty on anyone's head. Just you, in a spaceship with lots of firepower, blowing up stuff left and right.

And the good part - the blowing up of stuff is done really, really well. The rapid-fire machine-laser on the Feather 1 ship (one of two you can select from) just rockets out, and makes a great thumping noise with each hit. When ships explode, polygons go everywhere and a great, bass boom echoes through space.

Graphics and sound, therefore, are quite excellent indeed. Probably the best graphics of any 32X game. Really clean polygons are the name of the scene here, which may not be some people's favorite look. But I personally really dig the look of Virtua Racing cars, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Cop people. In Shadow Squadron, it is done really well. Music is tolerable, but not notably good or bad. The booming sound effects tend to drown out the generic space music for the most part.

Control is just simply awesome. Control of yawing, forward thrust, slowdown, left/right/up/down turning is spot on, and laser sighting as well as lock-on photon type torpedoes is also really intuitive. I picked it up within minutes of playing. Better than StarFox or Colony Wars, if you ask me.

Level design could use some help, though. While blasting things mindlessly is a fine level setup to me, a lot of the levels (like, levels 2 through the final level, 6) involve really difficult to destroy behemoth ships. This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if the process of blowing them up didn't take so freakin' long. Best tactic to use on them is to just keeeeep coming in blasting away, dodging missile fire, escaping, then coming back in for more. As an example of how tedious it can become, I just played level 4 for nearly 15 minutes and didn't quite finish it before I was destroyed. and now must begin the process all over again. Must have patience, young Jedi.

Speaking of which....this game would have been soooooooo good if it had been a Star Wars license. Star Wars Arcade for 32X was such a waste...and it could've been so good. Shadow Squadron would be an absolutely incredible Star Wars experience if the behemoth ships were Imperial Cruisers instead of generic Big Green Evil Ships (tm), and the enemy fighters were Ties. Throw in a character or two, and you've got a classic on your hands.

But as is, Shadow Squadron is just a really great no-frills shooter. If you've got a 32X, definitely pick it up. If you don't have a 32X but are thinking about it, I'd recommend picking one up if you're really interested in a game that's like StarFox but with better control, fewer levels, better graphics but no characters or plot.

Mindless shooter fans unite! Shadow Squadron provides us the Zen we've been unable to achieve amidst the distractions of pointless plots and complex controls in other space-opera ship adventures. It's basic, but fun - it's all about blowing stuff up; nothing more and nothing less.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/23/02, Updated 04/23/02