Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

So, it's not the best videogame ever made. Big deal! Shadows of the Empire is a ton of fun to play, it looks great, it sounds great and it feels great to be getting all grubby in the Star Wars universe again. If we were to look at this game on a purely technical level, then it would be safe to say that LucasArts missed its mark. There's no way that Shadow's environments, its control, or the clarity of its videogame experience even remotely approach the sensation of playing Super Mario 64 or Wave Race 64. But just because Shadows isn't quite a showcase game for the Nintendo 64 (the system already has a couple of those anyway), it doesn't mean we can't admire it for what it is - pure Star Wars immersion.

A New Anti-Hero

The story behind Shadows takes place during The Empire Strikes Back and just before Return of the Jedi. Luke's hand is cut off; Han is frozen in Carbonite; Leia is trying to figure out if she's a princess, a girlfriend, a sister, or a Jedi Knight (typical modern woman); Chewie's just not being understood now that Han's a popsicle; Lando can't be trusted; and the two droids are just trying to stay out of trouble. Perfect time to introduce a new hero.

Dash Rendar's his name. Dash (short for dashing?) is a hybrid of Solo and Skywalker. He's a little reluctant to go off into battle for the Rebels, but at the same time, visions of dollar signs aren't just the only things bouncing around in his head as he single handedly takes on a huge chunk of the Empire's force. In the illustrations through the game, Dash is a dead ringer for Kevin "I Got Water Up My Nose" Costner, but don't let that bug you too much.

The Empire ain't the only evil that Dash has to deal with. New to the Star Wars mythos is the Dark Prince Xizor. This guy is so sinister, he's entranced Princess Leia in a plot to lure Luke Skywalker into a trap, so that Darth Vader will come to collect him. Once Vader comes for Skywalker, Xizor's intention is to kill him and take over Vader's enviable position as the Emperor's right hand pit bull. Whew! Talk about career planning.

Dash (and you as Dash) get ensnared in this whole smorgasbord of adventure after you pick the wrong day to make a supplies deliver to Hoth. Ain't that always the way?

What follows are a series of different Star Wars friendly levels. You engage in snowspeeder to AT-AT combat on Hoth; you navigate through an asteroid belt, while target shooting at TIE-Fighters and Bombers; you run amok through junk yards, imperially infested canyons and polluted swamps; and finally you make it to a showdown between you and Xizor. It's all high drama, cinematic stuff. And for the most part, it's a pleasure to play.

Capital G For Groovy and Graphics

With this game, the cartridge format of the N64 does begin show its limitations. The amount of textures that LucasArts' developers have been able to store is a dead giveaway that there may be a few snafus later on in this system's life span (meaning the 64DD might turn out to be a godsend). There are many, many places in the adventure where objects and textures repeat again and again (the Mos Eisley swoop bike race for instance), but what becomes abundantly clear in this game is how solid and immaculate those textures, and the polygons that house them, all look. The Nintendo 64 is a graphics power house, capable of reproducing environments that look concrete enough to grasp through our television screens. Shadows of the Empire definitely benefits from the horse power.

There are so many different locations in Shadows, it's hard to give the game an overall appraisal for visual quality. Some levels definitely look much better than others but through it all, there is always at least one component that stands out in every stage.

My favorite visual moments in Shadows are:

The snowspeeder sequence off the top is marvelous. Boosting through an AT-AT's giant mechanical legs is like taking a dip in the fountain of youth.
When Dash Rendar's Outrider narrowly brushes over the Star Destroyer in the Asteroid level, you can't help but feel like Han Solo.
IG-88 proves to be a tough turkey to defeat in the junk yard level.
The first time you encounter Storm Troopers on a skybridge above you, it brings back that sensation of Luke and Leia being trapped on the ledge in the Death Star.
The first time you use your jet pack to fly from rocky ledge to rocky ledge is brilliant. The rigid character animation of Dash Rendar in flight doesn't work but the smooth visual panning of the scenery spellbinds.
Confronting an AT-ST walker on foot is a little bit more frightening than necessary, but you won't know that 'til you see how easy they are to destroy.
Confronting Boba Fett sent chills down my spine.
The blue mist in Xizor's Palace is incredibly eerie - combined with the music, you have possibly one of the most cinematic environments in all of videogames.

...And The Not So Groovy

There are quite a few problems in the graphics as well, so don't start getting all starry eyed on me. I'm sorry, but Dash looks stupid. The textures on him are okay but he moves like a drunken marionette. His animation is stiff and choppy, his control is way too sloppy. It's nearly impossible to get the guy going in a straight line (read on, brave gamer), so more often than not, I had to play in the first person perspective. There's so much going on above and below Dash that I would have preferred to play the explore levels using the exterior cam but, alas, it proved too frustrating.

There's also the scenery repetition problem. In the streets of Mos Eisley, it's very easy to get confused about which way you should be racing because the buildings all look the same. Another by-product of the cart's lack of storage memory is the rather sparse and underpopulated feel of the different 3D exploration levels. The environments are large and there's lots of stuff to see, but I sure would have liked to shoot at more storm troopers. I seem to recall the troopers running around in large squadrons in the movies. In the game they come 2, 3 and 4 at a time - no problem for a Corellian sharp shooter like me, who can shoot the ears off a swamp rat.

Cool visual effects like the seeker-cam or the ridiculous movie-cam, actually turn out to be more of a hindrance than anything else. The seeker-cam, which is mounted on the heat seeking missile that you shoot at your enemies, can't be turned off until it explodes. The problem with that is sometimes you don't hit your target right away and your seeker ends up doing loop-de-loops, while you're getting nauseous and the bad guys are going giddy with glee shooting you in the back. Thankfully you can toggle the seeker-cam in the options menu. The same isn't true with the movie-cam.

Apparently, someone at LucasArts thought it would be cool to add a useless "dramatic" camera angle to the four or five at your disposal. This angle randomly "cuts" the action taking place around you while you move, shooting everything from multiple random vantage points - just try shooting something while this is going on! The movie-cam wouldn't be such a bad thing if finding the right angle to play with didn't mean having to cycle through it every time. Accidentally stopping on the movie-cam presents you with another situation where you'll be trying to straighten out your visual bearings, while the baddies are busy going to town on you. I would have liked to have had the ability to disable the movie-cam. It served no useful purpose whatsoever.

All in all, a mixed bag in the graphics department. A few more months nipping and tucking would have served this game enormously well. I have to hand it to the level design crew, however, they got the physical feel of Star Wars just right. Also, space vehicles, stormtroopers and some robotic creatures look really good (not to mention Boba Fett). But the main character, with his second hand Battlestar Gallactica outfit (complete with fabulous Liberace length evening gauntlets) is a sore sight, especially when he moves.

Sing-A-Long With Star Wars

Based on the relatively weak music of the last few N64 carts, I really didn't expect the music for this game to sound as good as it does. The famous John Williams compositions are interspersed throughout the adventure, in all of their symphonic glory. And new Star Wars composer, John McNeely, adds his own personal flair to the proceedings. The music's not quite at the level of CD reproduction, but it does go a long way to show that the N64's sound chips aren't meant to be laughed at. Again though, the limited storage space inherent in the cartridge format peeks through, as some of the themes repeat themselves again and again. When you have music this good, however, it's easy to overlook that.

The sound effects in this cart are stupendous. You'll be looking over your shoulder when you hear the familiar electronic buzz of those pesky probe droids. The wampa claw slices are enough to make you reach for the iodine. Stormtroopers pipe in with their generic static chatter - "You there. Halt!" - and the bleeps and blurps of helper and sentinel droids let you know that you're definitely not in Kansas anymore.

The best part of the sound design though, are the laser shots and explosions that are true to the original sounds Ben Burtt constructed in the 70's. With every hit your snowspeeder takes, your memory will be jogged back to the first time you rode in one of these things in 1980. The laser fire that the AT-ATs spray you with sounds perfect - you can actually hear the light approach you. And the sound of your craft being slapped by the fire will make your stomach tighten.

Because of this game's cinematic roots and because of the incredibly tight relationship between LucasArts and LucasFilm, there has never been a licensed home console videogame that's sounded so much like its source material. The only games that approach this cartridge are the home computer versions of TIE Fighter, X-Wing and Dark Forces.

What I would like to see in future Star Wars games of this magnitude are the actors' voices from the original movies placed into the cut sequences (if not appearances during the cinemas). In this age of CD-ROM entertainment, having to read simplified narrative underneath barely animated illustrations reeks of 16-bit.

Not Fun For The Thumbs

There are moments in Shadows where you're going to feel like a completely inadequate bumbler. When you've fallen off of that same ledge for the 17th time, a feeling of powerlessness and utter frustration is bound to take control. Don't worry, it's not your fault. The developers couldn't make the movement and control of Dash in the exploration levels seem natural. The animation of the environments moving past the camera works very well - everything in the backgrounds is smooth and fully realized. But Dash seems to floating above the ground or wearing a pair of well oiled Rollerblades, the way he slides all over the place.

The control for the vehicle levels works great - especially the snowspeeder. But the second you step out of a vehicle and into Dash's shoes, there's trouble. As I mentioned before, I took care of my control issues in the corridor levels by switching to the full first person perspective, removing Dash from the screen completely. I held it on that camera angle for most of the adventure but every so often, it's necessary to pull the camera back or above you to take a full look around. The switch of the camera angles nearly always presented a problem because I tended to do it just when the baddies wanted to shoot me. This always gave me a little jolt, and then I'd be trying to coordinate myself to return fire. By contrast, the camera angle motion in Super Mario 64 is intelligently designed and completely intuitive - I'd trade perspective control with that game any day.

Once you do get used to the fact that moving Dash around the various enemy installations is going to be very slippy-slidey, you learn to just relax and roll with it. The inexcusable part about that is the fact that 3D corridor action games have been around for years now and there's no reason LucasArts shouldn't have been able to come up with rock solid control and crisp character animation. Even their own 2 year old Dark Forces is much cleaner and sharper to maneuver than this.

I probably wouldn't be such a sourpuss about the control in Shadows if there weren't so many 3D explore levels in the game. But because there are, LucasArts should have it made it a priority to make every component in those levels the best in the genre.

Not Just For Fans

There is lots to enjoy in Shadows of the Empire. The different types of games that are represented through this cart have been done better as singular diversions before, however. And to be honest, if the snowspeeder level had been longer and filled with more bad guys, it would have been enough for me.

But as it stands, Shadows presents N64 gamers with a whole bunch of interesting pieces that, taken as a whole, provide one thoroughly entertaining ride. You don't have to be a Star Wars fan to find the fun in Shadows of the Empire, but if you are a fan, you'll be more than impressed by most of what you see here.

In the future, I'd like to see LucasArts take another crack at a multi-genre game. I think Lucas' artists have it in them to produce a more thorough and impressive adventure than Shadows. I also really believe they're onto something here by breaking up the action into a bunch of solid game play scenarios (Fox Interactive was quite successful with Die Hard Trilogy, by doing the same thing). We can't forget that this is only the first of the LucasArts forays into 64-bit game construction. Now they have to put their blast shield helmets on and practice developing a game by trusting their instincts just a little more.

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