STAR WARS™ Starfighter™ Reviews

It's okay

If you slow down, speed up, or get hit, the camera shakes. Now combine all 3 constantly when you have to fly into the Trade Federation hangar and you'll be disoriented and not even know what to do or what to shoot at. I had an easier time in Rogue Squadron 3 flying the Millennium Falcon in and out of the Death Star than playing the final level of this game. Game runs well but will always run at a stretched 4:3 even if you set your display to any 4:3 resolution. There's no .ini file to edit or mod to install to fix this, instead you'll have to go into your Windows directory to change something which I'll never do and never had to do for any game from that era

Rogue Squadron 1 (obviously using the same engine) except it’s set just prior to The Phantom Menace with more limited gameplay despite coming out a few years later. I would’ve been all over this if I played it when it came out. Sadly, I get the vibe that nostalgia is required to truly enjoy it, although it isn’t an objectively bad game by any stretch. The game is from the era of manuals, and playing it without having read the manual does feel like I’m missing key information crucial to enjoying it. It does feel a bit slapped-together, with obvious concessions made for the consoles that it’s optimised for. Things like enemies coming in very small waves and tiny play areas. The sound mixing is all over the place too, regardless of what you do with the settings. Speaking of settings, there is no way to remap your controls. The story feels like it could go places as of around 5-6 levels in, especially if you’re a SW geek, but I have many other (better) games in my backlog. I’ll read the Wookieepedia page instead. (Edit: I read it and it's basically an excuse plot that doesn't add much lore at all.) If anything, this game shows how ahead of its time the N64 was minus the cartridges. This came out on the PS2/XBox, while RS1 was on the PC and N64 and is *miles* ahead of Starfighter in pretty much all aspects, including technical. Positive… if you have nostalgia for it. Even having never played it before, Starfighter does take me back to being 10 purely down to the aesthetic and theme. But without that Star Wars theme, nah, it would've been forgotten about within a year. Also note that Starfighter’s Deck/Linux compatibility rating is total BS. It runs, but you won’t get any cutscenes regardless of what Proton version you use. It also DOES NOT support the Deck’s native resolution at all - it’s 4:3 or nothing. Yet more proof that Valve's compatibility ratings mean almost nothing.