Welcome to another edition of Modern Gaming and we head to the Game Boy Advance for a different Star Wars title. I figured a game involving Han Solo should become my next review considering the Solo film is about the former smuggler. It's called Flight of the Falcon, a rail shooter that got released in 2003 for the GBA. Occasionally, Lucas Arts would outsource their license to other companies and in this case the defunct THQ. I don’t believe THQ has any experience with developing rail shooters and usually they produce console style games. So the question is can THQ replicate what Sega did in the late 90s? Gameplay You figure a game starring Han Solo, and the Millennium Falcon would be awesome. Well you thought wrong as this is worse than Star Wars Episode 1 the game and every level has the same challenge. The gameplay takes place during the Original Trilogy as the player pilots various ships and performing missions for the Rebellion as Han Solo or Luke. The objective for each stage is to gun down as many imperial forces (mostly Tie Fighters) who’s represented by the green bar at the bottom. The same thing applies to the levels that has you race through a stage with the challenge being to avoid crashing or getting shot down. Once the green bar becomes emptied you move on to the next level. The biggest issue comes from pushing the B button often to get rapid fire from your lasers. I pushed the B button so much that my wrist started to hurt as you need to do this to hit the targets. There isn't even an option to hold the button down as it only fires one laser at a time. Of course, the powerups do get dropped randomly by destroyed enemies. These include a single missile and a shield replenish which restores three blocks of the Falcon’s shields. Unfortunately, that doesn't make the gameplay easier or better as the missiles are so rare that I hoped the enemies would drop them. I always had to save these only when the Star Destroyers appeared since each blast takes out a few targets. However, the player shouldn't have to wait until the larger ships appear so they could use it. Every so often I would get overwhelmed by the wave of Tie Fighters and had to resort to the missiles. Then the Star Destroyers would show up and causing me to get blown out of space. THQ clearly didn't study other titles from Lucas Arts, Factor Five or even Sega on game design. Similar to Rogue Squadron, the player can control other vehicles aside the Falcon. Its too bad that Pocket Studios decides to give every vehicle from the Falcon to the X-Wing the same mechanics. I know there's so much you could do with a rail shooter but after Sega released Star Wars Trilogy, there's no excuse. At least Sega had the initiative to change it up through their stages with various challenges. A thing that constantly got on my nerves is at certain points ships will come from behind. That leads to another problem and sometimes I won't catch a glimpse of them coming and accidentally bang into one. Take the Tie Bombers and they would come from behind the Falcon. Even when moving across the screen still didn't make these enemies appear thanks to the crappy programming. It always leads to the Falcon getting blown out of space because of the enemy placement. Just when I thought that was the end of it, there’s more to scrap from the bottom. The next issue is the powerups moving very slowly to the Falcon especially when I needed them. It also doesn’t help that the enemies constantly fire at me when I tried to get in line with the powerups. In other rail shooters all you have to do is shoot each item and the player obtains them instantly. So, why wasn't that feature programmed into the gameplay? Rating: 5.2/10 Graphics/Presentation I have seen many 2D Star Wars games from the Super series on Super NES to even the Game Boy Color titles like Obi-Wan's Adventure. However, this is the worst looking Star Wars title I ever came across. The game is a pixelated nightmare as every texture is blurry with some of the worst 3D effects ever attempted. We begin with the ships and they have by far the worst designs I ever saw. I don't understand how THQ could screw this up as they already had the concept. If it's not the designs of the sprites then it's the horrible pixelation from a distance. There were even times I confused a rebel ship like the A-Wings for the Tie Fighters because of the pixelation. Remember the image from Doom on the Super NES with the Imps, well this is worse. It's also hilarious how that port of Doom suffered the same problem too. Yet, somehow Flight of the Falcon made it look so much better. Even environmental models of the moons and other structures in the distance had terrible placement issues. These structures and models can even glitch at times when moving across the screen. The soundtrack is downright terrible and the worst rendering of the official Star Wars Album. The problem with the music is it sounds muffled and grainy at times. Just listening to the Main Theme and the Imperial March getting butchered this badly really gets on my nerves. The GBA is known for its crappy sound chip that produces muffled noise. However, after listening to the music from Golden Sun and Metroid Fusion, that only proves a soundtrack on GBA can sound decent. The presentation is generic and lazily put together as any Shovelware game I have reviewed so far. The screen is literally shots taken from the trilogy in three colors of red, blue and green. The missions start does have scenes of ships moving about in Space when picking three of the episodes. However, just like the in-game graphics these scenes were moving still images with blurry texturing. Why THQ didn't follow Lucas Arts’ standards from previous entries in the 90s puzzles me to no end. Rating: 4.8/10 Features/Content There are many levels among the three episodes but good luck completing them without losing many times. The point of content is to engage the players and not to make them get bored by doing the same damn thing. I have no reason to play this awful game ever again, and they think this will make me come back. Of course, there is a password system to get to any of the episodes and even one that unlocks everything. I'm still not going to care if it's the same repetitive gameplay and challenges as the last. I did try finding some cheat codes in the form of passwords on sites like GameSpot but they all came out invalid. The only password that seems to work (that's not a cheat as listed) is the one that unlocks everything. However, it doesn't allow access to the levels individually of any episode. So, what's the point of having it anyway? Of course, I can't forget the 2D arcade style shoot'em up that's an unlockable feature. Unfortunately, much like the rest of the game, it was also lazily designed. A studio knows this is a pathetic attempt to pad the content up when you include a cheap flash game even a regular gamer could design. I literally quit it in five minutes after boredom sunk in thanks to this worthless shoot'em up. Rating: 4.5/10 Final Rating I'm baffled there is a Star Wars title so bad it makes Episode 1 the game look amazing in comparison. How do you make Episode 1 seem alright, just how? The problems with the gameplay stems from the repetitive level design and challenges that were no different from the previous ones. The objective to shoot down Imperial ships or race through an area while avoid taking damage until the green bar becomes emptied. In other rail shooters like Star Wars Trilogy Arcade included different challenges for each mission. If they were going for a rail shooter of that caliber then why didn't they take notes down from it? The graphics makes this among the worst looking GBA titles as it comes off like a pixelated nightmare. The supposed "3D" models were extremely hard to make out at first until they moved closer. The worst part is the way the soundtrack literally butchered what made this iconic album a classic hit. THQ might as well have ripped the 16-bit soundtrack version from the Super series on Super NES and placed that in this game. I mean if you are going to produce crappy music then they at least could’ve ripped it from another Star Wars game. The content essentially has the player replay the same repetitive stages once everything becomes unlocked. I honestly saw no reason to want to play these stages again because of what has already been stated. It's obvious THQ cared more about making a quick buck over the Star Wars name then developing an actual good game. Gameplay: 5.2/10 Graphics/Presentation: 4.8/10 Features/Content: 4.5/10 Final Rating: 4.7/10 Terrible
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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