Star Wars: Starfighter – Aces of Naboo

I have a soft spot for the sequel movies, even if they are not the greatest. Games like Star Wars: Starfighter play into the nostalgia fun just right for me. An often major feature of these games is that, instead of playing as film characters or following the movie plot too strictly, they present the main conflict from a different perspective. I love this, since it expands on the lore, and provides insight (in a gamey way) in how others fared in the war. It’s usually from a grunt-side view, and being a regular Joe caught up in battle is very different from being a noble Jedi slicing heads off uppity droids. Star Wars: Starfighter is no different.

Volunteer pilots
Star Wars: Starfighter takes place before and during the battle of Naboo, fighting the trade federation droids. It starts rather casually, with you playing as the recruit pilot Rhys, navigating a tutorial course with your mentor. Soon after, you are thrown into the thick of things, when you are ordered to provide escort to the Queen’s ship meeting with federation dignitaries. It’s an ambush, of course. The Queen manages to get away, but your ship is disabled in the process, with your mentor dying heroically in the battle. You are later picked up by a scavenger by the name Reti while drifting in space, which is a guy that becomes part of a crack team of fliers later on.

You see, there are a couple of different characters you get to follow through the game, who all come together to work as a team to defend Naboo from the Trade Federation. While Rhys is being led to safety to a rogue space station for repairs, you get to play as the female pirate pilot Vana, and later the alien raider Nym. These two get to know the efficiency of the droid army first hand, and being pirates, they are not exactly treated kindly, if you don’t consider being vacuumed out into space like trash kindly. 

The base of a cool and interesting story is here, with you being shown the occasional CGI cutscene to propel the tale forward. However, it’s unfortunately very underutilized. How these people meet, join up, and decide to fight the Trade Federation, and a disappointingly quick ending movie is basically all you get. It doesn’t matter too much, though, but an attempt was made, at least. The story continues with these four fighting the Trade Federation, in both space, and on the planet.

Lasers go pew-pew
Before we go into the nitty and gritty regarding the gameplay, I just want to clarify that I played this on the PCSX2 emulator for PlayStation 2 games, using a PS4 controller. I had no issues at all running the game, it was very smooth and pleasant out of the “box”.

Now for the gameplay. As you might expect, this is not a simulator. It falls more in line with an arcade space shooter. Yet, I did find that it actually has a nice mix of both, since hull damage is permanent, and the arcade-nature of the game is being held in check by making stuff dangerous. The maps are pretty expansive too, which allows for free maneuvering, and careful line-ups for missile runs. If you get close to a turret, they will make mince-meat of you rather quickly. You also get wing-men that you can order around. By themselves they are pretty poor pilots, but if you order them to attack an object, they usually do a good job of it, everything from ground to air, both static and moving.

I was surprised by how much of Star Wars: Starfighter takes place on planets. Cruising and blasting droids while watching the rolling hills of Naboo is spectacular, and fun too. Most of the missions felt fair, even if I got blasted out of the sky a couple of times. Besides fulfilling the main objectives, there are also secondary missions to complete. To earn medals, all these tasks must be completed. It all comes down to how much effort you want to put in. I was mostly happy by just staying alive.

Anger leads to suffering
I have to mention two maps that stuck out to me, and not in an especially good way. One of the maps is mission 11 where you have to escort Reti and his flimsy ship through the canyons of Naboo. The canyons by themselves are a pain to navigate, but having to make sure Reti makes it out alive is the cherry on top of a foul-tasting cake. Holy hell, this mission was hard! This map comes with extremely low freedom of movement and droid tanks that do serious damage to anyone who dares as much as look at them. Not to mention the rebel base at the end that you must defend against hordes of tanks and droids with genocidal intent. I wouldn’t have been able to finish this mission, if it wasn’t for the emulator “save states”, since failure is met with a restart. I salute everyone that made it through the classic way.

The other map that annoyed me to no end is the final assault. This map is actually cool to about 80%, seeing as you are attacking a massive Trade Federation droid ship. But what ruins it, is the final boss that shows up at the end. That guy has a ship that comes equipped with some kind of super high-tech shields and missiles that wreck absolutely everything in the radius of a few miles. This boss is pure pain in every single way. Other than these two missions, the game is fun with fair and excellent varied missions.

Star Wars aesthetics
Star Wars: Starfighter is a few years old, considering it’s a PS2 title. Regardless, I think it does the job well to immersive into the world of the prequel Star Wars movies. The only thing that drags it down, is the poor texture work when the game decides to zoom in on the pilots during an in-game cutscene. It is forgivable, however.

While the game looks fine, what makes it truly stand out is the soundscape. Beyond the classic blaster sounds, and music, like hearing Duel of the Fates going off when attacking the final droid ship, the com-chatter during the skirmishing is absolutely outstanding and elevates the game to eleven on the immersion scale. It’s so cool listening to what is going on around you. Most of the stuff is scripted to follow the ever-changing operation objectives, yet, it works really well, and pulls you into the world. The com-chatter is also interwoven with dynamic voice lines, like hearing friendly units call out in distress and cheering if they scored a nice hit. The whole thing makes it feel much more grand than it actually is. It’s very effective at making it seem like you are part of something bigger.

Conclusion
Star Wars: Starfighter is a fun little game set in the prequel Star Wars universe. However, if I’m going to be totally honest, it feels more like a distraction than a real game, even if I enjoyed my time with it. The reason for this is that it’s incredibly short! I think there are only 12-13 missions or so, and most of them are over within ten minutes, unless you grind for medals, that is. That’s hardly enough time for anything! Nevertheless, it’s worth a playthrough if you like older Star Wars stuff. You can find the game, and everything else you need, over at Vimm’s Lair.

Thanks for reading.

/Thomas