Star Wars: Battle for Naboo

the Jedi when Lando and the Alliance are facing off against just about every fighter in the Imperial Navy? ("There’s too many of them!") There are moments like that to be had, except you’ve got no capital ships backing you up. Ships fly everywhere, lasers are sear passed (or smash into) you, your droid gives that death squeal – it’s intense but BFN shows it’s console roots in a very jarring way. Even though Sykes is in space, he’s not allowed flying anywhere he wants. You’ll be crushing the Gamepad trying to out-maneuver some droid ships, trying to get behind them and turn them into a cloud of dust – turn, turn, accelerate, just a few more seconds, almost th—WHAM! Suddenly you’re going in a completely different direction because you’ve hit the edge of space! More than a few times (actually many times) it resulted in Syke’s demise because I was trying to evade enemy fire only to bounce and wind up directly in their line of fire. The "rubber walls" get old real fast, especially on the longer missions where a couple of screw-ups spells MISSION FAILED really fast. And on the subject of the longer missions, they’re hard. So hard in fact that the same principle of Earth’s Sun giving Superman his powers must have been applied – you’re going to need a Kryptonite needle to puncture the skin. Even with "help" from NPC pilots, you’re going to have to become a master pilot – a one-man army, if you will – to make progress. The difficulty makes up for the length of the game, which isn’t very long in the big picture.

To complicate matters, control is touchy. I found myself constantly over steering and just missing my mark. The various vehicles handle differently but just when you become comfortable controlling one, you are forced into another vehicle, forcing you to learn the nuances of each ship. Occasionally, you can choose between vehicles at the start of a mission or switch mid-mission. It’s a neat touch but it can really screw you up. My favorite ship has to be the gun boat, which is restricted to the water, and is also the hardest one to use effectively.

Between missions, you may be awarded gold, silver or bronze medals depending on your overall performance. A variety of variables are compared with par (accuracy, time, number of lives, etc.) to determine which medal you get. The par numbers seem to be random. Some missions I got gold no problem, other missions I gaped at how poorly I’d done compared to the par numbers.

Graphics have been pulled right from the N64. When Shadows of the Empire was ported to the PC, everyone gasped, "Wow!" It needed 3D acceleration. BFN also needs 3D acceleration but the graphics are just average for the PC. Most of the attention has been paid to the vehicles and structures. They look great, which can’t be said of the varied environments or other objects in the game. This ain’t no Giants. Sykes himself is just two cutouts slotted together. On the plus side, there’s never any slowdown. No matter how much is going on the framerate is steady. There is a lot of pop-up and fill-in but that’s just another artifact from the N64.