I’m a fairly big Star Was fan, but it wasn’t always that way. I hated the franchise as a kid and it wasn’t until becoming an adult that I started to follow it. Despite this I still played the video games back when they released. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire released at a time when the Nintendo 64 hard a very sparse library. This was part of a multimedia project that was a part of the expanded universe. The game is actually based on the storyline of the book. I rented the game back when I was a wee lad expecting the same kind of quality from the SNES titles based on the franchise. I was pretty disappointed, but I could never quite remember why. Today I’ve decided to finally dive back in and see if I just didn’t give Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire a fair shake.
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire’s story takes place in between the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Here you play as Dash Rendar, a mercenary for hire who encounters the rebels while making a supply run to Hoth. Here he joins forces with them, and then gets swept up into a plot by an a sith named Prince Xisor to replace Darth Vader alongside the emperor. The entire story feels shoehorned in to Star Wars lore. That’s par for the course with the expanded universe stories. Familiar faces are abundant here with Han Solo being featured in the introductory sequence, and later on you’ll encounter Luke Skywalker and of course the worst Star Wars character of all time Boba Fett. Even as a fan of the franchise I didn’t care at all for the storyline here.
With my disdain for the plot out of the way let’s get to the real meat and potatoes of this game. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is a basic 3D third person shooter. The camera follows Dash Rendar from behind as you explore environments and shoot down foes. Your primary weapon is the traditional blaster and this has unlimited ammunition. It does overheat with use and needs to recharge, but this doesn’t take much time at all. Throughout the duration of the game you’ll find several other weapons as well, but these are all projectiles with limited ammunition and vary in strength. Dash’s other abilities are pretty limited; he can only jump or use his jetpack (which you acquire in one of the later stages). I really like that you can opt to play the game almost entirely from a first person perspective if you so choose.
There’s no real nice way to put it; Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire is a chore to play. Just wandering around is clunky, and the level designs leave a lot to be desired. They’re either too linear or offer too many paths to dead ends. Dash Rendar controls like an awkward tank, and something that should be easy like turning around is very awkward. The auto-aim is very generous but any kind of manual targeting is an exercise in frustration. Far too many areas of the game take place on narrow ledges which only exacerbates the issue. What’s more is the fact that Dash Rendar can jump. I don’t know why they threw this feature in because he does so with the accuracy of a blind person. Some areas require you to make just of his hop which can be beyond frustrating.
When the jet pack comes into play things only get worse. It can only be used for a short while, and the developers went ham with it in some sections. As if the controls weren’t already inaccurate this brings it to a whole new level. The fight against Boba Fett for example was particularly frustrating because he flies around, and you cannot maintain any level of accuracy while in the air. He (like all of the boss characters) is a bullet sponge and the encounter lasts far too long because of it. Generic foes such as the storm troopers or security bots can be taken down in one or two shots. They got that part right. The bosses however take too long and I found myself actually getting bored during these encounters. They’re all pretty poorly designed, and I hated the time I had to spend with these boss characters.
The basic gameplay, for lack of better word, sucks. There is some saving grace here however. The Hoth stage (which you play first) takes place entirely onboard a ship. You cruise around the arena taking out droids and eventually AT-ATs. Your aircraft comes loaded with harpoons that you use to ensnare the legs of the walking units causing them to trip which destroys them. This is actually a lot of fun and the engine runs much more smooth than the base game. The developers should have focused entirely on this aspect because Shadows of the Empire might then have been an actual good game. In another segment Dash rides on a swoop bike in a race of sorts. This sequence is pretty decent. The highlight however are the sections you pilot his ship the Outrider in space. All of these concepts are much better than the third person shooter sequences.
The graphics are a real mixed bag. In the third person shooter sequences the characters are all blocky, and animate poorly. At times the framerate moves at the pace of a slideshow. To make matters worse there’s a ton of fog and pop-in. The environments are all drab and uninspired. I realize that it’s Star Wars, and they are supposed to be, but the artists failed to re-create anything that bears more than a passing resemblance. I’m not sure how but the engine handles the flying sequences very competently. I wish the same care had gone into the rest of the game. The soundtrack sounds like your typical atmospheric Star Wars pieces. It’s okay but nothing particularly amazing. At least they got the sound effects right. The blaster effects in particular sound like they were taken right from the films.
