Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

"An action-packed Star Wars experience that's just not quite as good as we all hoped."

Shadows of the Empire, the very first Star Wars game on Nintendo 64. This game is one of the basic reasons that I bought my N64. I played the game at a friend’s house and thought, “I must own this game!”. The prospect of shooting stormtroopers in the head as I charged through giant 3-D environments was just too much to bear for me, a loyal SNES gamer and avid Star Wars fan who had never seen 64-bit graphics. But back to the review.

Many have been harshly critical of this game which came out several months before it probably should have. That is understandable, but let’s get to the facts. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is set in the time frame between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”, and centers around Dash Rendar, a cocky, hot shot pilot after Han Solo’s own heart. He endeavors to help defend the Rebels at Hoth, to rescue the carbon-frozen Solo from the clutches of Boba Fett, and to destroy Black Sun crime syndicate along with its ring leader, Dark Prince Xizor. If you are unfamiliar with the Star Wars films, then you have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. But that’s alright, because you don’t have to know much about Star Wars to play the game. It doesn’t rely heavily to the flicks.

The game is for only one player, and the adventure game consists of ten levels. Shadows tries to be two games in one, with some of the levels being first or third person Doom-style levels, and the others being flyer/shooters in which you pilot a certain craft. The game is said not to excel at either mode, but I think it does: the game’s best offering is it’s first person stages, which make up the bulk of the game (6 stages out of 10). In these you are Dash Rendar, a rather polygonal man with a geeky face, trying to complete a variety of missions. Some are action packed shootouts with stormtroopers like some areas of Gall Spaceport, and others or more sneaky, like the haunting Sewers of Imperial City. Either way, you get to wield a variety of powerful weapons, and sneak around flipping switches and undermining Imperial plots. Don’t count on any perplexing puzzles, though. There are none. Almost every dilemma can be solved with just a little thought.

The game starts out with a bang. You are thrown immediately into the cockpit of snowspeeder to distract the Imperial attackers long enough for the Rebels to evacuate Hoth. Engaging towering AT-ATs with your tow cable and frying probe droids with your oversized cannons is what people have wanted to do for 16 years since the movie came out, and the Hoth battle does not disappoint. You have total control of your speeder, and you can take it where you want to, but you still do not have complete freedom. For instance, you cannot do flips or rolls, and if you go too far to the edge, the game will grab you and turn you back into the battle. Though rather easy, the stage is fun and leads into the Echo Base stage.

Here you have a first person shooter stage, where you go around killing snowtroopers and flipping switches. Not too exciting, but I found it a true joy blasting those stupid troopers with my laser weapon. Yes, even that gets old after a while, but it’s fun the first 15 times or so. Then you get thrown into a less than engaging scuffle against TIEs in the asteroid field close to the planet. This stage is just like a PC X-wing vs. TIE Fighter or Rebel Assault game, in which you don’t even control the ship. Your copilot takes care of that, as you merely turn your gun turrets and fire away into space. Again, nothing new, but fun just the same. There are other fun flight-type stages like Mos Eisley where you pursue a bunch of assassins on a swoop, and the demanding Skyhook Battle in which you have to destroy the battle station’s core. Sound familiar at all? I could go on about all the levels, but let’s talk about a few other things.

GRAPHICS: 7/10
Frankly, I think the graphics are great! The characters look nice and move smoothly. The framerate is at least consistent, as I never noticed any slowdown. The one bad thing is that there is an excessive amount of fog on most ground stages. I don’t really think it interferes with the gameplay, but sometimes you can’t see your enemies in the distance because of it. There is also a little pop-in at times, and every now and then you can see a character’s arm through the door or something. Again, this nothing terrible. Some of the graphics are very impressive and the textures are complex and fitting to the game. Compared to Rogue Squadron, the flying levels are laughably inferior. The enemies seem kind of blurry and the craft’s propulsion gives off no light, it’s just kind of painted on the back. All this together creates a game experience with average graphics. They’re good, but the Nintendo 64 is capable of better, as was shown in SOTE’s successor, Rogue Squadron. Without comparison to this later game, however, the graphics are not to be complained about, especially the PC SOTE, which has better graphics than the N64 version. The game is still enjoyable.

SOUND: 9/10
Quite fitting for the game. The classical scores by John Williams are getting a little old by now, but what other kind of music could you possibly put in a Star Wars game? Rock? Techno? I don’t think so! The music in the Hoth stage sounded like it came right out of the movie, and was very inspiring. Some of the other stages don’t make much of the music, having just hardly noticeable tones in the background that one would be hard pressed to refer to as music. The sound effects are also satisfactory. There is a different sound for everything. The electrical churning of gears, the blasts from a pulse cannon, and the roars or the wampa ice beasts to name just a few. Oh, and my very favorite, the way the stormtroopers scream when you knock them off the edge. AAAAAAAAAAUUGH! Sweet. I thought the explosions were a little muffled, though.

CONTROLS: 5/10
This is the game’s saddest shortcoming. The controls are overly sensitive on the ground levels, making it easy to slide right off a cliff, or make other foolish mistakes that could easily be avoided if the control was better. Most people will get the hang of it in about an hour, but it continues to be a constant source of frustration. Yes, there are times when you don’t think about it much, but at other times you may want to scream. This is especially true when using the jetpack. Did I mention that you can collect a jetpack in the game? You really need it, as it allows you both to fly and to swim, and flying can be a lot of fun. However, fine tuning your direction in the air is almost impossible. When you are up against a wall, trying to get to the right place, maybe to slide into an alcove in the structure or something, you will constantly turn too far or not far enough, or slide down, or go too high, or...aaugh, I can’t convey to you the frustration that this causes. You know what happens when you are swinging about trying to control your stupid flailing pack? You run out of fuel and drop to your doom, that’s what! Experts will overcome this obstacle of control, but younger players may find it exasperating. The control problem is added to by the fact that every button does something. If you want to turn on your rocket pack, and you hit the wrong C button and end up switching views instead, you will go splat.
There are four camera angles in the walking stages, and all but one are actually useful for something (the first person: move easier, the overhead: more accurate jumps, etc.), but there is one view that is good for nothing. The movie view. When using this, the camera changes constantly depending on Dash’s position, sometimes showing Dash’s geeky face, sometimes showing the wall, who knows. But it isn’t good for anything whatsoever.

CHALLENGE: 10/10
I gave it a ten because you get four difficulty levels, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Jedi. Easy is just plain easy, Medium has an even challenge, Hard is VERY hard, and Jedi is the most realistic. What do I mean by realistic? I mean they KILL you. Quickly. It will take quite a while for any player to conquer all the modes.

MULTIPLAYER: 0/10
Sadly, there is no multiplayer. No. Not any. None. Not even a trace. I don’t know what a “trace” of multiplayer would look like, but I know that there isn’t one, so don’t go looking for it. Hey! What’s that over there? THAT looks like a trace! Oh, false alarm. Made you look, though, didn’t I? I didn’t? I’m rambling? I should get back to the review? Oh, yeah.

FUN FACTOR: 8/10
The second or third time through, after you know what you’re doing.

REPLAY VALUE: 7/10
Yes, you can play this game for a while. You won’t get through it renting it for three days, trust me. You only have ten levels per difficulty setting, but the levels are not short! One can take nearly an hour to complete. Not only do you have four (count ‘em, four) difficulty settings to beat, but there are challenge points scattered throughout each level. You have to try and collect ALL of them for secrets and surprises. Plus the game is fun, particularly the swoop stage, the Skyhook Battle, and Echo Base, so Shadows should keep you playing, at least for a couple of months if not much, much longer.

BUY OR RENT?
Rent, definitely. You may not like it. But if you do, you might beat half the game, and then you’ll want to finish it so badly that you’ll just have to go out and buy the freakin’ cartridge. For great Star Wars fans, this is a must have. Just buy it with your N64. For others, it might not deserve a permanent place in your library. If you really enjoyed the Hoth stage, but thought the rest of it flopped, then Rogue Squadron is the game for you.

AVERAGED SCORE: 6.57142857142 (rounds to 7)

MY OPINION: 7.6924

GAMEFAQS SCORE: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/20/00, Updated 05/20/00