Star Wars: Squadrons

In the aftermath of the Battle of Endor, the Rebel Alliance has become the New Republic. But the new government is still gathering its strength and the Galactic Empire, fragmenting as it is, still has a vast fleet at its disposal. The Republic has a secret project it hopes will swing the conflict in its favour and assigns Vanguard Squadron to help secure it, but the Empire has learned of the project's existence. The legendary Titan Squadron is given a new mission: to locate the Republic's Project Starhawk and destroy it.

Back in February 1999 I eagerly queued up to buy X-Wing Alliance, the fourth game in Lawrence Holland and Totally Games' X-Wing series. If you'd told me than that it would take almost twenty-two years to get a follow-up I'd have flat-out disbelieved you. The X-Wing series had fantastic graphics (for the time), superb gameplay that matched accessibility with tactical depth and told pretty good stories in the Star Wars setting, and was going from strength to strength. Unfortunately X-Wing Alliance's quality was not rewarded by strong sales. In fact, the entire space combat genre fell off a cliff that year, with Freespace 2 also bombing despite being arguably the greatest game ever made of that type.

When EA confirmed earlier this year they were making a spiritual successor to that series, under the name Star Wars: Squadrons, there was widespread scepticism. EA's highly promising 2013 development deal with Lucasfilm to deliver multiple Star Wars games had delivered exactly three major games, the so-so multiplayer shooters Battlefront and Battlefront II, which were fun but lacking much depth (Battlefront II did come with a very short single-player story campaign), and the very solid Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. With EA's reputation for filling their games with different ways of draining money from players, there was a fear Squadrons would end up disappointing.

Much to everyone's surprise, Squadrons is actually a very solid game. It consists of a single-player campaign and two multiplayer modes, with absolutely no microtransactions of any kind. The game has even launched at around half the price of a normal, new release in 2020. It does have some weaknesses, but it gets much closer to the highs of the X-Wing series than most people expected.

As with the X-Wing series, you follow a series of missions (fourteen plus a super-sized prologue, which the game counts as two different missions) which tell a story. Unlike the X-Wing games, there's a huge focus on your wingmen and squad mates, which both Vanguard and Titan squadrons having an interesting roster of new characters, each with their own backstory and personality. You can talk to your fellow pilots during mission briefings and on the hanger deck to get some more insight on the story and the objectives. There's no great shakes here - the game's writing is functional at best - but it's a nice touch and a solid growth from the older games where your team-mates had no development whatsoever. Unfortunately it also removes some tension from the game, as your squad-mates are all essential characters and can't die mid-mission. 

Once in the cockpit, the fun kicks in. You can pilot your fighter via mouse-and-keyboard, gamepad or joystick, with an array of UI aids that you can switch on or off depending on your skill level. You can also set the degree of the simulation and customise controls. The flight model is very solid, being mostly arcade-like but with the ability to shut down engines, glide and then boost in a different direction which can lead to some nifty manoeuvres. It's not a patch on, say, Elite: Dangerous' flight model but it's an improvement on the old X-Wing series. There's also greater control over your power systems, with shunting all power to engines charging up an afterburner-like boost, or shunting all power to shields allowing you to overcharge them. There's more options for equipment as well, such as a hull repair droid you can use to fix hull damage mid-mission (vital equipment for unshielded TIE fighters, in particular). There's far more customisation options then there ever was in the 1990s games, which adds a surprising amount of depth.

The game is definitely not the disposable arcade blaster some were fearing, although there are some concessions to less-hardcore modern games. The game is more forgiving about allowing your laser blasts to hit as long as your target is in the reticule and far more forgiving about damage. As well as the hull repair robot and the shields on Republic ships, calling for a resupply will also fix hull damage, and your support ship may repair you even if if you haven't called for aid if you take an unexpected pounding. There is a cooldown on the repair options, though, so you can't spam repair orders to get through tough situations.

The missions are surprisingly inventive, rarely pitting you into battles in open space devoid of features. Instead you find yourself fighting in a nebula which impacts on sensors, in an asteroid field, in the atmosphere of Yavin where diving too deep may fry your fighter, or in a massive scrapyard where you have to dodge debris and use ejected power cores as makeshift mines. The constant inventiveness at times strains credulity - a few more battles against a more traditional space background would have been nice - but certainly keeps the game interesting.

There is a draw back with the colourful backdrops, the impressive explosions and huge glowing laser blasts, that sometimes the noise of it overloads the UI and you loose track of where your targeting reticule is pointing or the status of your engine booster. This problem is accentuated by the fact you can't switch off the (impressive, it has to be said) 3D cockpits as in X-Wing Alliance, or go third-person as in all previous X-Wing games, which would help clear up the problem. Some of the feedback in the game is also a bit variable: missiles in particular feel poorly-rendered, looking like big fireballs your blast out of your ship rather than warheads.

Still, the flight model is mostly great and blasting enemy fighters out of the sky is impressive and fun. There have been concessions which occasionally make the game feel a bit arcadier than the old X-Wing games, but these are balanced out by even more options for customisability and controls.

The biggest issue with the game is value for money. If you enjoy playing singleplayer and multiplayer, the game is an easy recommendation. If you want the game for just singleplayer, it becomes more questionable. The 16-mission campaign will take you less than ten hours to complete (I finished it at 9.5 hours, but that includes leaving the game on for an hour whilst I had dinner and a fair degree of faffing around with my control setup, so 8 hours would easily be doable). You can also fly in the multiplayer mode against bots, which is a nice feature you don't see often any more, which can extend the playing time out quite a bit, but I doubt you'll get more than 15-20 hours out of the game for single player-only content. Multiplayer gamers with no interest in the story mode may also find the content the game ships with a bit on the weak side: there are only six maps and two multiplayer modes, and there's no more than 10 human players in a match (even when there's way more fighters present in a battle, with the rest being controlled by the AI).

The game has launched at half-price, which certainly makes up for this issue to a point, but without more free post-launch content, it's still questionable if the game is worth the price. However, it also does feel like this could be the launching platform for something bigger. If it does well, a sequel with a more elaborate campaign or an expansion which adds more ships (the B-wing and TIE Advanced/Defender feel like egregious absences) is a possibility.

Star Wars: Squadrons (***½) is a solid and respectful follow-up to the X-Wing series, even if it can't match those earlier games in terms of story and the length of the singleplayer campaign. It is often inventive and entertaining, with a great flight model and fun combat, but it's questionable if there's enough meat here to satisfy long-starved space combat fans, not when X-Wing Alliance is available cheaply from GoG with a huge number of mods available to spruce up the visuals. This could be the foundation to something more interesting down the line. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

New STAR WARS short film focuses on an X-wing vs. TIE interceptor duel

Lucasfilm and Electronic Arts have joined forces to release Hunted, a seven-minute short film focusing on a dogfight between an X-wing and TIE interceptor duel in the months after the Battle of Endor.

The short film, which incorporates CG assets developed for the film Rogue One, is part of the marketing build-up for the release of Star Wars: Squadrons, a new starfighter-focused video game for PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4. A spiritual successor to the classic X-Wing line of 1990s video games (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance), Squadrons pitches two rival squadrons in the Galactic Civil War against one another. The game includes singleplayer campaigns for each faction (although EA remain coy about how long they are) and a number of multiplayer modes.

The film focuses on Varko Grey, one of the ace Imperial pilots who appears in the game. Presumably, we may seen another film about the New Republic side of the conflict, if not several more, in the lead-up to the game's release.

Lucasfilm's direct involvement in the short is interesting. X-wings and TIE fighters are iconic parts of the franchise, of course, and as well as the 1990s video games there was a best-selling novel line by Michael J. Stackpole and Aaron Allston focusing on the pilots. The X-Wing miniatures game from Fantasy Flight has also been hugely successful and recently entered a second edition. Lucasfilm could do worse than to consider a live-action show based around pilots on one or both sides of the conflict. 

Star Wars: Squadrons will be released on 2 October this year.

New STAR WARS dogfighting game announced

EA has announced a new Star Wars game focused on space combat, to launch this October. The new game is being touted as a spiritual successor to the X-Wing and Rogue Squadron series.

Star Wars: Squadrons is set just after the events of the original Star Wars trilogy and sees the player and up to four friends forming a special elite unit within either the Imperial Navy or the Rebel Alliance.  There is a single-player campaign, playable solo or in coop, as well as multiplayer modes built around the idea of 5v5 team dogfighting.

The X-Wing series consisted of four mainline titles: X-Wing (1993), TIE Fighter (1994), X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1997) and X-Wing: Alliance (1999). These were predominantly single-player games (apart from the multiplayer-focused X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, although an expansion added a full campaign mode) with robust multiplayer. There is still an active modding and multiplayer scene for X-Wing: Alliance.

Predominantly released for PC, the X-Wing series prioritised a more realistic flight model and strategic player, with players able to shift power from one system to another, deal with combat damage and order AI wingmen to assist them.

The Rogue Squadron series consists of three titles: Rogue Squadron (1998), Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2001) and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (2003). The first game was released on PC and Nintendo 64, the latter two on the Nintendo GameCube. These games featured a much less sophisticated flight model and controls and were more aimed at arcade blasting, but were great fun for what they were. Rebel Strike notably added the ability to control ground units such as AT-STs.

It's unclear if Squadrons is leaning more towards the X-Wing or Rogue Squadron end of the spectrum, but at one point the damaged X-wing shunts power to its engines to evade an enemy, suggesting that mechanic will be present in the new game. The game will also please fans, featuring as it does appearances by fan-favourite characters Wedge Antilles (from the original trilogy movies) and Hera Syndulla (from Star Wars: Rebels).

Star Wars: Squadrons will launch on 2 October on PC, X-Box One and PlayStation 4. The game will not feature microtransactions and will have crossplay enabled, allowing players on all three formats to mingle. The game will also be fully compatible with all PC and PS4 virtual reality headsets.

Star Wars: X-Wing

The Galactic Civil War is at its height. The Sullustans are negotiating to join the Rebel Alliance, but the Empire is rumoured to be constructing a weapon of incredible power. Into this chaos steps Keyan Farlander, a fresh recruit for the Alliance. He is assigned to the cruiser Independence as an X-wing fighter pilot.

Way back in 1993 - improbable as it seems now - Star Wars merchandise was thin on the ground. Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy of novels had just started a renaissance in the popularity of the franchise and West End Games had been producing a successful pen-and-paper roleplaying game for several years, but there was still a gap in the market for an iconic Star Wars video game.

X-Wing proved to be that game. Riffing off both the starfighter dogfights in the movies and the then-extremely popular Wing Commander series of games (which later upped the ante by recruiting Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, to appear in later titles in that series), X-Wing hit a sweet spot of game design. It didn't just put the player in the seat of a fighter and let them get on with it, it also gave them control over the various ships' weapons and power systems. This was a vital move as it moved the game from being an arcade shoot 'em up and instead more towards the realm of serious simulation, or at least as serious as it could be when it came to simulating fictional spaceships.

The game is played from the cockpit of one of the Rebel Alliance's iconic fighters: the X-wing superiority fighter, the A-wing fast interceptor and the Y-wing medium bomber. The B-Wing expansion (included in most editions of the game) adds the B-wing heavy bomber to the roster as well. Each ship has a different role. The A-wing is lightly-armed and armoured, is relatively fragile and has a small missile load-out but is also lightning fast and highly manoeuvrable. The Y-wing is slow and lumbering, but has hardier shields and armour, a large warhead magazine and has a secondary ion cannon which can disable enemy ships rather than destroying them. The X-wing falls between, being fairly fast and having a reasonable torpedo payload, but is also quite manoeuvrable and its four laser cannons make it an excellent dogfighter.

Each fighter has three energy systems that the player needs to manage: engines, weapons and shields. Keeping your weapons charged is necessary if you want to fire them, shields need to be kept up (or recharged after being hit) if you don't want to explode and the engines need to be charged to allow you to move fast. This sounds complicated but in practice all that is needed is two buttons which control how much power is diverted from the engines to the other systems (along with a third for rapidly dumping power from one system to another). This adds a more tactical element to the game, since you can retreat from nasty fights (by dumping all power to the engines and speeding clear), recharge your shields and weapons and then rejoin the fray. As the game continues and you gain additional ranks, you also gain the ability to give commands to wingmen in battle. Some later, complex engagements depend on your forces engaging several enemies at once. This is all handled through some pretty logical and instinctive keyboard commands.

The latest version of the game allows you to play in two flavours. The original 1993 version of the game has much more primitive graphics but better music which adapts to the changing fortunes of the battle. It also allows you to play with a mouse. The 1998 version has vastly superior graphics but a simple looping music track. It is also only playable with a joystick or gamepad. I prefer the latter for the stronger visuals, but some swear by the original.

Almost twenty-two years on from its original release, X-Wing holds up remarkably well. The gameplay is fast, enjoyable and surprisingly deep. The game's systems are relatively primitive - the energy balancing and wingman mechanics are handled through just a few button presses each - but in combination with one another provide a variety of different responses to dire situations. Dogfights are fast and furious, but the game does a good job of providing you the information you need to manage even complicated situation effectively. All in all, the game has withstood the test of time very well.

There are, however, several problems. One of these is that it's simply not as good as its sequels. X-Wing feels like a prototype for a style of game only perfected in the later TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, particularly mission structure and in-mission story events. The storyline is fairly bare-bones (all of the character stuff is handled in the manual and strategy guide) and missions tend to become fairly predictable, especially towards the end of the game. Although there is a reasonable variety of craft on hand to both control and fight, X-Wing has the smallest roster of ships in any of the games and it won't be long before you have seen all the game has to offer on that front. The game also arguably fails to live up to its billing of allowing you to recreate the iconic X-wing vs TIE Fighter battles from the first film: all too often you are controlling a fragile A-wing or lumbering Y-wing and fighting Imperial Gunboats (which are more durable than TIEs due to their shields). Enemy AI is also not fantastic in this game, with the computer only having a small number of manoeuvres it can pull off which rapidly become predictable. Most irritatingly, whilst the game unleashes the main Star Wars fanfare when you've fulfilled your objectives, it doesn't provide any such notification for a mission failure. Concluding a half-hour mission only to find the ship you were escorting got blown up ten minutes ago and you need to start again is not fun.

That isn't to condemn the game fully. It's shorter and more focused than its sequels, and its opening tour of duty serves as a reasonable introduction to the series and its mechanics. It's also surprising how fully-formed the compelling gameplay of the series is in this first title

X-Wing (***½) is available now on PC from GoG. The GoG release includes both the 1993 and 1998 versions of the game, along with the game manual and strategy guide. Both expansions, Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing, are also included. Its immediate sequel, TIE Fighter, is also available now with the multiplayer-focused X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and the much more epic conclusion to the series, X-Wing Alliance, due to follow soon.

X-WING and TIE FIGHTER re-released

GoG have teamed up with LucasArts to re-release the classic space combat sims X-Wing and TIE Fighter. The games will be available from GoG within the next day.

Released in 1993, X-Wing was a blatant attempt by LucasArts to cash in on the success of Chris Roberts's Wing Commander series by deploying the heavy firepower of the Star Wars universe. Employing then-cutting-edge 3D graphics and a finely-tuned power balancing mechanic, X-Wing managed to be better than its rival and was a superb - if extremely tough - game. Released a year later, TIE Fighter was even better, with a gripping storyline casting the player as an ordinary pilot unfortunately employed by the bad guys.

The series continued in 1997 with the multiplayer-focused X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, although it did feature an excellent, story-based expansion called Balance of Power. In 1999 the series concluded with the epic X-Wing Alliance.

At this stage, only the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter are being re-released from the series. Both games have been updated to work with modern PCs and the GoG editions include both the original versions and their 1998 re-releases, which are the same but use the much more advanced graphics engine from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. X-Wing will include both its expansions (Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing) whilst TIE Fighter will include its Defender of the Empire expansion.

Both games are excellent and I can recommend getting them both. However, they require joysticks (or, at the very least, gamepads) to play properly.

In additional news, LucasArts classics Sam and Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Knights of the Old Republic are likewise being re-released tomorrow. Knights of the Old Republic is highly recommended, as the previous PC version required a little bit of tinkering to get working properly (its sequel generally works absolutely fine). This version should work with modern graphics cards and operating systems out of the box.

GoG have said that they will ultimately be releasing thirty LucasArts titles over the coming months, suggesting that the overwhelming bulk of the LucasArts archive will eventually be available.

Rumourville: PS3 turn-based classic Valkyria Chronicles is also, curiously, getting a PC release many years after the original release.