First impressions

[Martli]

#11908

How’s everyone going so far?

This is the first time I’ve ever played this game. Unlike other months I’ve actually managed to string a few nights playing together and I’m starting to get more competent. There’s definitely a bit of a learning curve to it, I stupidly didn’t read the manual before starting, but now that I have I ‘get it’ I’m a bit better.

Aside from the overall graphic/audio experience (which is excellent), the first thing that struck me was the depth. There’s an initial training in flying basics (several levels) along with four combat training missions. Per ship! I think there’s about 6 ships or so… I’ve finished the Tie Fighter and Interceptor combat training missions, and have probably banked about 4 hours playing so far…

The system itself strikes a good balance between having a full set of functions while remaining relatively simple. I haven’t played the likes of wing commander yet so not sure how it compares to that, but it did remind me somewhat of MechWarrior 2, maybe a step or two more basic.

In terms of audio and visual experience it’s as you’d expect from a lucasarts game, especially one based on the Star Wars. The music doesn’t stray too far the standard John Williams repertoire (and doesn’t need to), and sounds great on my Roland Sound Canvas. The 3D graphics are also pretty good for the time. Not sure how they stood up at the time but I’m a fan.

And my final thought, I love just how blatant this game is about being the bad guys, right from the start when it opens with the classic Star Wars opening and then goes right into the imperial march, and even making your radar colour red rather than green (which confused the hell of out of me to start with).

So in summary, really enjoying this game so far. Wish I’d played it back in the day as it would have been perfect for my system back then… It doesn’t rest on the Star Wars Laurels and doesn’t suffer from dialing it in and relying on the strength of the franchise to hold it together. You could remove all the Star Wars IP from this and it’d still be a cool game.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#11918

So glad to hear you’re enjoying it! It’s truly special.

[shnoogie]

#11929

Awesome to hear first impressions that are not skewed through nostalgia. Thanks for sharing!

[Martli]

#11934

To be fair, I have both nostalgia for Star Wars, and DOS games (obviously) so there is a fair amount of nostalgia skewing here!!!

[TigerQuoll]

#11935

I have to be honest, I’m kind of struggling so far. I’ve only just started playing (bit late getting into it this month!), and I’m stuck at the second level of the training missions! The one where you have to defend the supply outpost.

It might just be a reflection of never having played many flight simulators, but the difficulty spike just seems insane! I went from casually blowing up a few non-hostile targets to having to manage utter chaos!

From one training mission to the next, they dump on you: following your leader, being the leader, dealing with hostiles, dealing with multiple squads of hostiles, protecting your base, managing saved targets, managing communications, protecting a target and I dunno what else.

The mission starts OK – press this button, then press that button. Then when it asks me to press ‘Z’ (which is hard to distinguish from a ‘2’ btw) it flips to some screen which I have no idea what it’s for or why I’m supposed to be there, and then suddenly everyone is shooting at everyone else, and the leader dies somewhere on the other side of the map leaving me as the leader.

I then randomly cycle through what feels like 100 targets until I find something that looks like an enemy, but it’s like a million miles away. I try to follow it – all sorts of messages blare at me along the bottom about how badly everything is going which I have no hope of responding to – I finally catch up with the ship, it zooms past my viewport and I try to get it in my sights, maybe getting one or two shots on it, before an X-wing comes out of nowhere and blows me up.
I’ve played this mission 3 times, and that is basically my experience every time.

Everything I read about this game indicates it’s incredibly well designed and balanced, so all of this probably says more about me than about the game. But yeah, it really seems above my pay grade at this point.

[slamo]

#11943

I’ve been enjoying this so far, despite the difficulty. I do agree that some of the training missions are strangely brutal, but it does force you to learn some tough lessons in energy management and prioritizing what targets to focus on. The debriefings after failing do give some solid advice as well. I got stuck somewhere in the third tier of training missions and just decided to start the campaign – it seems like the game more or less teaches you what you need to know within the first two missions of each ship. I got through the first battle and am having a better time now. There is the option to lower the difficulty if needed, but I’m going to stick with Medium for now.

[TigerQuoll]

#11954

Are the training missions harder than the campaign? Should I do a few “normal” levels first?

[Pix]

#11955

One thing you can do for training is play the first mission for each fighter then the second, etc… The difficulty more or less resets each time you swap fighter so it should scale a bit better like that. The difficulty level is similar to what you’ll be seeing in the main game by the end of those missions from what I recall – there’s nothing to stop you jumping in and seeing how you get on with those missions then going back later. The campaigns start off a lot easier than they end up at any rate so you might find them easier than some of the training.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#11956

Oh I had no idea the difficulty reset like that. Learn something new every day.

If the training missions are bugging you, just jump into the first campaign. You can come back to them later.

[Evil Taco]

#11976

I’m trying the first mission out with a gamepad – and it’s quite fun. But I think I want to try out a joystick.. or map the fire button to a shoulder button, I feel like I need one hand ready on the keyboard.

I just keep colliding with the darn rebel shuttles … !

[slamo]

#11977

That’s how I played through the game as well, I mapped the joystick controls to a gamepad – right stick for movement, shoulder button for fire, and pressing down the right stick to target. Definitely need the left hand free for the numerous keyboard controls. It was obviously not the most graceful way to do it, but it was good enough to get me through the original campaign missions (first 7 battles). The expansion missions, not so much.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#11980

Nice!!

[Evil Taco]

#12006

I dug out my Logitech Attack 3 stick – and what a joy it is! The more precise stick control you get from a joystick suits this game extremely well.

I didn’t quite finish the first training mission (flying through the tube) so I just jumped into the campaign; I was now able to tackle that first mission, and actually have finished several.

I played the demo back in the day (with a Gravis Analog Pro) and it’s just _so_ cool to be playing the proper game, finally. It’s simple, it’s challenging, it’s addictive. I’m a bit worried about being on the bad guys’ side and even doing extra objectives for some shadowy figure. Whatever, it’s fun blasting those annoying A-Wings out of the sky!

[Evil Taco]

#12007

Now I actually found the “real” training missions, heh!

[Evil Taco]

#12020

Well, I pretty obsessively played the original seven battles through over these couple of days. I think that’s enough for now, I need my life back … !

It wasn’t too hard, which is something I was a bit worried about – X-Wing has quite a reputation. There was one mission where I did look up a hint how to proceed from a guide.

I did fire up X-Wing out of curiosity and boy! It’s pretty rough in comparison. Never mind the higher resolution graphics, TIE Fighter just feels better to play, and the small improvements in the UI and communication during the missions make a big difference. Even though the 1993/1994 versions have their DOS charm (I kinda wanna go back in time and get the original release and play it in 1994) I think I’ll try out the Windows version (based on X-Wing vs TIE Fighter) some time to experience fighting on the Rebel side.

[SpaceGameJunkie]

#12023

Yeah, I feel like TIE Fighter is the peak of the series.