Star Wars Starfighter

"Cool Star Wars flight simulator but it's a letdown on a few aspects"

The third game I bought for the Playstation 2. Playing it was a nice experience. Definitely the best Star Wars flight simulator I've played since I played TIE Fighter on PC, although I doubt they'll ever make a complete game like TIE Fighter was on a console.

Graphics : 9/10
I found them to be amazing, although I was expecting a bit more from the Playstation 2. Very nice attention to details though: The starships, starfields and planet surfaces are all very detailed and very well made. The only part of the graphics I found slightly below average are the explosions, especially for the bigger ships and structures.

Sound : 9/10
Again, I was expecting more out of this part of the game. I have yet to hear GOOD music, John Williams' music always comes out sort of distorted in the Star Wars games. Maybe it's because I'm too used to listening to the CD quality soundtracks which have an amazing presence. I don't know. The music didn't really grip me that much. As for the sound effects, they were good but nothing really special. The explosions could have been louder.

Gameplay : 8/10
Gameplay is pretty tight in this game, controls are easy to use and quick to learn. However, it seemed a bit too simplistic for my tastes. Again, I'm comparing it to TIE Fighter, on the PC, which had WAY more controls than a PS2 controller can offer. A few things that bothered me about the gameplay : Collision detection, especially when it comes to flying right through exploding debris, was lame. There were also, I thought, not enough normal missions (14 in total). There are lots of bonus missions that can be unlocked by getting all the medals in the various normal missions but still...

Replayability : 9/10
Very good replayability on it though. As I said earlier, you can replay the missions to get all the bonus goals, which gets you the medals (3 per mission, gold, silver and bronze) and that allows you to unlock the various bonus missions in the game. Unlocking all of the missions seems to be really hard. I'm still in the process of replaying the missions to get all the medals.

Rent/Buy :
Well, if you're a Star Wars fan, like me, this is a definite buy. However, if you're just a casual fan, rent this one first to see if it suits you. The game is pretty short to complete (the normal missions anyway) and you could easily manage to complete the game with one or two rentals.

Overall : 8/10
Overall, pretty good Star Wars game. I was slightly disappointed on a few aspects of the game but it is one of the first games that came out on the console, if my memory doesn't fail me. Again, it keeps nagging me when the music in a Star Wars game sounds distorted and of poor quality. The music during the intro crawl was of a good quality but the in-game music left a lot to be desired, in my opinion.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/01, Updated 12/28/01