Review by Oliver Lan

Name:            X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter
Publisher:       VIE
Format:          CD
Type:            Space Combat

Requires:

O/S:             Win95
Processor:       P90+
RAM:             16Mb+
Graphics:        SVGA
CD-Rom:          X2
Soundcard:       All major cards supported

Tested on:

O/S:             Win95
Processor:       P120
RAM:             32Mb
Graphics:        Matrox Millenium 2Mb WRAM
CD-ROM:          X4
Soundcard:       SBAWE32

X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter

First, there was X-Wing. Then came Tie Fighter. Now; X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. Gosh, they don't half come up with imaginative names for games these days, don`t they?

But anyway. The days of merely salivating over screenshots are at an end (which is probably a good thing, seeing how difficult that is with an electronic magazine). It's time once again to start humming the Star Wars theme music (go on, you know you want to), start making deep breathy noises, and then, when you're really getting into it, make that noise Tie Fighters make when they fly past.

Wrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh

X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter uses the same (brilliant) flight engine/control system as the previous two games (though with the addition of anti-missile countermeasures and new beam weapons), but it's a bit more... 'gamey' in style; there's no epic plot and no 'fancy purple bits in your arm' any more. Instead, the game is based around 5 different ways of playing, all of which are selected independently depending on how you want to run the game: Training, Melee, Tournament, Combat and Battle. Training missions are similar to the ones from the first two games - you fly around for half an hour before some bloke tells you to throttle up, by which time you've destroyed your own space station. They do get better though - the 'Take out a Star Destroyer' one is quite good fun. Melees are basically arcadey shoot-em-ups, where the aim is simply to rack up points (usually by blowing away your opponents, but there are some variations). Tournaments are simply melees strung together, with scores kept from match to match. Combats are old-style missions, complete with a load of different goals, and those dreaded words: mission critical craft. And finally, Battles are all the combats strung together to form a sort of 'campaign'. And that's pretty much it. The missions/matches themselves are pretty configurable in terms of what you fly and how hard they are, and you generally have a choice of 9 standard craft: TIE Fighter, Interceptor, Bomber, Advanced and the Gunboat; A-Wing, X-wing, Y-Wing and Z-95 headhunter (you know, the cr*p one) - sorry, you can't fly the B-wing or the TIE Defender.

Anyway, this open-ended style is one of the game's strengths - you simply decide what you feel like doing, and choose your mission type accordingly. This gives the single-player game a certain spontaneity that the other games lacked, and is excellent for a bit of light relief (if that's what you call frantically dodging T-F shots and missiles, struggling for a lock and then screaming with frustration as one missile too many hits home on your capital ship...). As Luke Skywalker probably didn't say to Princess Leia, you can just pick it up and play with it.

Little really needs to be said about the gameplay itself, especially if you've played X-Wing or Tie Fighter. It's quite simply the best space combat engine there is. It's just so immediate, so direct, so smooth, so immersing - and it just feels 'right'. The force is strong in this one. Every ship handles in its own unique way - the A-wing's zippiness, the Y-wing's hard-ness, the Tie-bombers bombyness, the Z-95's puniness; and it somehow manages to convey the sense of movement and tension that other games just can't achieve. When you add to this the newly souped up and texture mapped graphics, finally doing justice to the Star Wars world, the brilliantly managed music, which adjusts to how well you're doing (with the wonderfully rousing Star Wars themes), and the sound effects which are suitably meaty, you get a space-flying experience that's as good as you'll get.

The inevitable 'it's even better in multi-player' bit

Yes, of course there's the inevitable 'it's even better in...' - you get the point. There's just something about blowing away real people, even if you've never met them in real life and probably never will. It just adds a whole new dimension to it all - you don't feel quite so silly swearing at the screen for one thing.

But... well, I dunno. It is better, no doubt. But it's not quite the same as in Quake, or C&C. There's just not the same level of interaction (there's a novel word for blowing the cr*p out of each other) in a space combat sim game. I find this especially in co-operative; it sounds great, calling for help, covering each-other, etc., but in practice it's hellishly difficult. For one thing communication is next to impossible except for the pre-programmed commands like 'attack my target' and 'cover me' - typing messages mid flight is, lets face it, just not going to happen. It's a shame they can't get voice-microphone communication in, especially as they've now got more pre-recorded sound-bytes from computer pilots just to give the impression it's all real. In short, multiplayer is good, but it's not the supreme experience we might have hoped. The fact that the internet side of things is limited to only 4 players and doesn't have the most stable of connections doesn't really help either.

I also have my doubts about the longevity of the game. It's great to be back in the cockpit of an X-Wing when you first start up the game, but in exchanging the strict linear passage of the old games for the more flexible delights of XWvsTF, I don't actually think they've gone far enough.

The missions are a bit customisable, but you can't radically change them. In single player this is worse, because you can't choose options for the computer controlled pilots. So you all fly exactly the same ship, and your only control over game difficulty is Easy, Medium or Hard. The in-flight options have also gone, so you can't make yourself invulnerable or give yourself unlimited 'ammo' any more - OK, it would have been silly in multi-player, but it all contributes to the feeling that the single player bit is just a bolt-on extra. The fact that the AI is excellent ensures that it's still damned good, it's just that there's so much potential.

I wanna fly the Millenium Falcon!

Make no mistake, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter is not a bad game. It could not be a bad game - the flight engine and the way it all works are just too good. The thrill of shooting down TIEs, of patiently locking your missiles and then ramming them into the back of your quarry, then pulling sharply up, diverting power to shields, executing nifty maneuvers around a capital ship... it's undeniable. But there's the inescapable feeling with this that it just could have been so much more. It's very much Tie Fighter with a twist, and while the twist is good, it's not quite enough.

XWvsTF just doesn't quite have an edge - multi-player isn't enough nowadays. And yes, what I'm basically saying is "I wanna fly the Millenium Falcon!." If only...

Oliver Lan for Game-Over!