Star Wars: Tie Fighter - RRP œ49.99 (By Lucasarts, distributed in Europe by Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd) (Star Wars game for PC) Review by Roy Sims After trying to be a hero for the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars: X-Wing and its two data disks (Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing), you now have the chance to serve the Emperor and join the Imperial Navy thanks to Lucasarts' latest Star Wars release - TIE Fighter. There are six different Imperial ships to get to grips with, ranging from the standard TIE Fighter, TIE Bomber, TIE Interceptor, TIE Advanced, through to the Imperial Assault Gun- boat and a new secret TIE starfighter. Before I go into more detail a quick word about the required hardware for this game. Our 33mhz 386DX was rated as being FAST by X-Wing (which is now two years old), but when installing TIE Fighter the same PC is now rated as SLOW. Some people will call this progress, but I'm not one of them! A 486 is recommended but I would imagine that something faster than a 486SX 25Mhz would be preferable. I say this because the latter specification isn't that much faster than our current 386, and I found the game to be a bit 'chuggy' at best in the 3D - but more on that later. The game opens with the usual Star Wars style intro sequence. The music changes gear into the Imperial March (from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) as the story scrolls up the screen into deep space. Once the words have faded away you get a very impressive sequence showing three Imperial Star Destroyers rumbling into view. They are en route to Coruscant for a rendezvous with the Emperor himself. The rest of the introduction has been drawn 'by hand' and is a bit disappointing in places, especially when the Emperor and Admiral Thrawn are shown speaking. X-Wing also suffered from a few examples of poorly drawn bitmap artwork and TIE Fighter is no exception in this department. Despite this, the intro is still quite good and it sets the mood nicely. Along the way you witness an Imperial assault on a Rebel Space Station and the ensuing battle that results in its destruction. The structure of TIE Fighter is very similar to X-Wing, so veterans of that game will feel immediately at home. You first have to register your name before being allowed to choose what you do next. The Training Simulator involves flying your fighter through a series of connected tunnels, firing at objects and flying past obstacles (moving and stationary). Each object you shoot will gain you precious extra seconds as each 'level' has to be completed within a specific time limit. In the later levels (5 onwards) you can't just rush through the tunnels without shooting anything. You need the extra time bonuses as the levels are impossible to complete otherwise. One element that seems to be missing from this training course is hostile emplacements shooting back at you. This might be because the lowest TIE Fighter doesn't have any shields at all and so wouldn't last very long! Each of the different ships can be flown through these training exercises (except for the new secret TIE Starfighter which isn't available until you have progressed quite far through the Battle missions). Combat Training is the equivalent of the original X-Wing Historical Missions section. You get the chance to fly some missions in most of the available craft and try out tactics and manoeuvres. There have been a few additions since X-Wing. When you enter a mission you will start receiving messages from your Tutor actually telling what to do and which keys to press to achieve it. This is much better for beginners than in the original X-Wing game when you are left on your own to figure out what to target and how to do it. Another nice addition is extra speech which audibly encourages and congratulates you when you destroy one of the primary targets. Talking of primary targets, missions have been adjusted too. Each mission now has a primary objective, a secondary objective and a bonus objective. Each one can have a different success level, so you may only have to destroy 75% of the ships to accomplish the primary target whereas in X-Wing it was 100% or nothing. When you enter a mission (be it training or a real one) you can interrogate the supervising officer and ask additional questions. The answers should give you some useful tips (although probably not in enough detail to stop them from publishing another comprehensive (and expensive) strategy guide in the near future!). Some missions also are of special interest to the Emperor. A mysterious cloaked figure is also available both before and after certain missions. They usually ask you to inspect ships for cargo or disable ships allowing them to be captured. These requests usually form the secondary objectives. If you complete enough of these missions you should be initiated into the Emperor's own special elite team. What benefits that holds in store I have yet to discover! Other additions during battle include the ability to toggle between the normal 2D map and a 3D version which gives a clearer idea of the position of ships during a mission. Also available is the ability to match the speed (where possible) of your currently chosen target by simply pressing a key. This helps out in combat quite a lot. I could still do with an auto-pilot that swings around to follow it as well though! Some missions include ships which will resupply you with more missiles during a mission. You can also call for re-inforcements, but they won't always be available! You can also now target individual sections of a large target so, for example, you can fire your missiles just to knock out a ship's laser turrets, leaving the rest of the ship defenceless but intact. As you progress through the missions various plots and sub-plots emerge. At the successful conclusion of a battle scenario (usually made up of 5 or 6 missions), you will be treated to a cut-scene which moves the plot in a new direction (in a similar style to the intro sequence). Every scene I've witnessed so far (about six in total) has included full digitised speech and quite a lot of it too. This time, Darth Vader's voice is very close to James Earl Jones' original dulcet tones (he who provided the voice for the Dark Lord in the film trilogy). The Emperor's isn't too bad either. The now legendary iMuse music system is used to good effect during the game. When a group of rebel X-Wing fighters hyperspace into your sector, you get a snatch of the "Death Star battle" music from Star Wars. Similarly you get an uplifting military score when a mission's primary objective has been achieved. As in X-Wing you can turn the music, sound effects and speech down in volume or off completely whenever you wish. I have to admit that I was never very good at X-Wing even though I loved it. The Strategy Guide I bought later on helped me out to some extent, but I still wasn't making great progress. However, thanks to the three difficulty settings, the non-linear way that you can jump between Battle missions, the variable mission goals and the flexible success levels, I have been able to make very good progress in TIE Fighter. As I write I have nearly finished the 5th Battle scenario and am enjoying it tremendously. All of the improvements to the gameplay are very welcome. They increase the playability above the level set by its predecessor. The only problem is the speed of the 3D world. If you've got a fast 486 machine then you're laughing as you will be able to have all the shading, light source and ship markings you desire applied to the 3D polygon ships. You can turn all these extras off if your machine isn't quite up to it, but this still leaves the 3D running a bit slower than it did in X-Wing. This even seems to affect the fluidity of the mouse control system used outside of the 3D space battles. The worst problem in the 3D comes to light when a big battle is taking place and there are over a dozen ships involved at once, and they are all firing at each other! Under these circumstances the 3D leaps badly and the game fails to act on my attempts to fire some concussion missiles at the enemy. That one grumble aside, I can confirm that having played this game for hours on end over the past two weeks, it is very good indeed. It isn't massively different from X-Wing, but all the extra tweaks have made it a more playable and enjoyable experience (even if the 3D is a little slower than before). If only Lucasarts would get rid of their naff graphic artist and introduce more decent bitmap screens it would be that much closer to perfection. (The next Star Wars game due from Lucasarts distributed through Virgin is "Dark Forces" which is a "Doom" style game where you are cast as a lone rebel soldier who infiltrates Imperial bases, Star Destroyers etc. in a bid to gain the plans to the Death Star. It sounds wonderful already...) - o -