| X-Wing Alliance
by Gavin Bennett |
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The reason I play Falcon 4 today is because, once upon a time, I spent far too many nights playing X-Wing on my old 486. So, I was expecting some nostalgic kicks from X-Wing Alliance. "Alliance" is the last of the Star Wars games, and it almost passes as a combat simulation. But is it any good? There is one glaring problem with space combat sims. Unlike flight sims whose term of reference is a century of warfare, from the first days of 1914 to the high-tech stand off warfare of Desert Fox and Allied Force, space combat sims have only one point of reference: Star Wars. Yes, Wing Commander, I-War, and Descent: Freespace all owe their paradigm to Star Wars to a very large degree. There has been a smattering of smaller movies of a similar type, but none have had the lasting impact of THE trilogy. So any space combat simulator with X-Wings in it is going to wipe the floor with the competition. The Falcon Experience You set up your system, then you go off into a mission, and whoa…. This is sooo cool. You are in the cockpit of a YT-1300 Corellian Freighter, that's a Millennium Falcon type ship to you and me. And you are IN the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. The game now sports 3d cockpits for all its many flyable craft. The game now supports proper 3d view padlocks and with a flick of your coolie hat you can look around the cockpit. The first training/story line mission involves dropping off some cargo to a client, and then having a brief space battle with some bad guys. So far so good. Then the weirdness begins. The next training mission involves you going off and learning to shoot in your YT-1300 space ship. And you get to sit in Luke's gunnery seat in the Millennium Falcon, all 3d modeled, looking gorgeous, firing a quad laser that works EXACTLY like the one in the movie. Cool! However, the voice actor playing your brother, Emon, is from somewhere along the Falls Road in West Belfast, and it's a bit disconcerting to hear such an accent complimenting you on your shooting skills. No matter, the Millennium Falcon rocks.
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 And now, the meat of the game, flying the X-Wing. The old X-Wing game was mind bending: the missions were nasty, devious, and plain old difficult. In fact I have not seen anything of this nature until F-22 ADF came out. X Wing Alliance has that same character. I won't go into the details here, but the missions are just as nasty and brutish as I remember them, only now they look better. There are some problems with the scripting of the missions, but the game can be completed. Just. Sitting in the 3d X-Wing cockpit is great. When you fire your lasers the cockpit lights up dynamicly. The padlock view, especially when there is a baddie behind you, inspires you to say: "I can't hold him!" to which someone should reply "stay on target!" Remember the trench run sequence, with the TIE fighters charging up behind the rebel fighters? Just like that. The X-Wing now behaves as I remember it only now the game supports such fripperies as throttles, coolie hats and rudder commands. This is one of those games that the MS Sidewinder 3d Pro is born to play. A lot of work was done on those 3d cockpits. Externally, the game does not look much different from its older cousin, such as the 3d enhanced Balance of Power missions for X-Wing vs Tie Fighter. But inside the cockpit of your Tie Fighter, your X-Wing, your Z-95, it's a whole different story. Did I mention you can fly just about every star fighter in the Star Wars universe? And they all have nice 3d cockpits. Go to Part II
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