"A Mediocre Star Wars Game"

INTRO: Star Wars is certainly one the biggest franchise in anything and everything ever. One thing that has eluded them though is a solid game. Most big franchises make games that try to sell themselves alone based off their fan base. And Star Wars can certainly do this better than anyone else if they wanted to. But Shadow of the Empire does appear to have a lot of effort put into it... at first glance. Then it's list of design issues rear it's ugly little head.

GRAPHICS: For an early N64 game Shadow of the Empire is a pretty good looking game. Some of the levels, namely the first, are very large and expansive. The rest of the game does continue to perform as well. But unfortunately nothing that really impresses you. Except for a few other instances the rest of the game is just uninspired Doom style corridors. And quickly these corridors will become ugly to you. The appear muddy, missing maybe one more texture to give it the really good look. Besides these level design issues the camera is also dreadful. There are four different views you can set it on. But besides the first person view they are very unconventional in many situations. And when you do use the first person view it can quickly become a chore to handle the camera.

SOUND: Shadow of the Empire features the typical star wars affair of music. This of course is always a good thing. However the story is progressed with subtitles only no voice overs, which in my opinion is a serious disappointment. Even though the music is legendary too it sounds very muffled. In fact this the beginning of a trend that the N64 is far inferior to the PSX in sound quality.

CONTROLS: The analog stick is used to control your character in this 3D in environment. This at the time was still a relatively new concept. It does work very well in the flying missions, in fact I would say much better than the corridor exploring first person view action. The game does have some rare instances of platforming as well. Although none are complicated walking in a straight line in this game can be a challenging one.

STORY: This being a Star Wars game and all the story is probably the primary reason most people are interested in this game. Shadow of the Empire takes place between during and after the Empire Strikes Back. You play as Dash Rendar, a bounty hunter flying a ripoff of the Millennium Falcon. Your helping the empire for free for some unknown reason. And although the game has many detours than main mission to is find and kill Dark Lord Xizor. The story progress nicely enough but lacks any real depth or presentation. However I'm sure the introduction of all new characters is enough to please Star Wars afficionados.

REPLAY: Shadow of the Empire offers very little reason to play finish the game a first time with no bonuses besides unlockable characters, I see no reason anyone would want a second play through. There is enough cheats out there to satisfy all you needs to screw around. And if you do want to beat the game for the story then your looking at about 5 to 7 hours.

GAMEPLAY: Playing as Rendar you will go locale to locale across ten levels. The types of levels are FPS and space dogfights. There is a little very variety though, including a brief speeder mission. The flying levels are actually really fun, but they only incorporate less than a quarter of the game. The FPS sections are mainly just endlessly trudging on shooting enemy after another. The game tries to mix this up with a bit of platforming and precarious environments. And with the aforementioned camera issues, this becomes a frustration. Add that now to the spaced out save points, and now you a have quite a significant frustration. The is also a problem in the boss fights, losing a boss battle might set you back half a level. The boss fights aren't that hard, they have easily recognized patterns, but often the geography of the stage for the battle will cause your frustrating death.

BOTTOM LINE: With a lot a gameplay mechanics issues I certainly can't recommend this game to buy. But if you're a Star Wars fan then a rental or the $5 dollar bin could very well be worth your time, as long as you don't set that high of expectations.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/13/06