Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire follows Dash Rendar, a human smuggler working as a mercenary for the Rebel Alliance. Together with his co-pilot droid Leebo, Dash works to complete missions in a story that takes place between the films The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. While the game begins with Dash Rendar doing paid work for the Alliance, the mercenary is soon pulled into a much larger plot that will threaten both the Alliance and the Empire.
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| I'm gonna need a bigger blaster... |
As previously mentioned, Shadows of the Empire is technically a third-person shooter. Players will spend most of the game staring at Dash's back while fighting off the Empire's lackeys. It is possible, however, to play the game completely in first-person mode. The game doesn't use the standard "gun sticking out in front" first person view, but instead allows an unobstructed view that can come in handy for aiming. In both first and third-person modes, Dash can run, jump, and fire a few different weapons to make his way through levels on foot - though the controls feel very jerky and imprecise. On some occasions, Dash straps on a jet pack which allows him to fly for limited amounts of time. Other levels throw players into the cockpit of classic Star Wars fighters or other vehicles to further confuse you as to what sort of game this is. In these vehicle levels players either have full control of their vehicle or simply aim their ship's weapons in the general direction of oncoming enemy fighters.
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| Round and round the A-T-A-T, the snow speeder wrapped the legs up...CRASH goes the Empire |
Shadows of the Empire contains 10 missions split into 4 chapters. Missions are often broken up into stages, though many times if you die in a later stage of a mission you have to start right back at stage 1. I found the lack of checkpoints on some levels to be extremely frustrating, especially since this game is surprisingly cheap in its difficulty. There were many times when I'd be walking through a level, or riding up an elevator, only to be put directly into the line of fire of an enemy and lose at least half of my health before I knew where the danger was located and could take them out. Additionally, the game's controls are pretty bad. It's extremely easy to accidentally fall off of a cliff or off of a ledge due to Dash's jerky movements an strange jumps. It's no wonder I never made it very far in this game as a child. While I definitely had more patience for games back then, the fact that I rented the game meant that I had to get as far as I possibly could in three days before I had to return the game to the store and someone else rented it and inevitably deleted my save file.
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| Oh good, a platforming level... |
Shadows of the Empire's graphics are hard for me to judge playing it now, 20 years later (..holy..I played this 20 years ago? I'm old enough that I could have done ANYTHING 20 years ago!?) From memory of other games at the time, this game's graphics seem to be pretty average. There's a lot of short draw-distance issues (structures simply disappear when they're too far in the distance), but that's likely due to the limits of gaming hardware at the time. There seems to be some disparity in textures throughout the game, as some are very muddy and blurry while others look decent.
Unfortunately, levels in the game feel quite boring. I was disappointed in the levels after the game's strong start on Hoth - especially since I had never made it past Hoth as a child. There are simple switch puzzles, a few enemies, and lots of empty space waiting for Dash - though a couple levels do offer more interesting sections such as using a jetpack to traverse the sewers of Coruscant.
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| Just you and me in this entire galaxy |
Revisiting Shadows of the Empire was an interesting experience for me. I see now that most of my excitement about the game when I was younger was based solely on the fact that it was a Star Wars game. I wonder if I had gotten past the game's first chapter if I would now remember the game less fondly. Playing Shadows of the Empire recently wasn't a completely horrible experience, it was just kind of disappointing. It's hard to rate older games, as you often have to take into consideration the limitations of the gaming hardware at the time. Other parts of games stay the same throughout time, and are easier to rate, such as interesting level design and if a game is fun to play. I'm still impressed that Shadows of the Empire lets players do so many different things throughout its levels. It's really pretty cool to fly a snow speeder in one level, run around a base on foot, and escape in another ship while fighting off TIE fighters. I just wish that the on-foot levels were less boring and the difficulty less hair-pullingly cheap.
While I'm glad that I finally got to finish this game and see all it has to offer, I can't help but think I might have been better off spending my allowance on renting a different game as a kid. I'm sure there were much better games that I could have spent my time and money on, and I hope to come across them as I continue to write Retro Reviews!
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