This Old Neon Forum

Han Solo wrote:I don't know if this is accurate, but the on-rail sections (which is mostly why I play these games) certainly felt like they were shorter than they were in the SNES and N64 entries.

I think levels overall were longer, but we saw a lot more all range segments in this one compared to SF64.

I beat the game yesterday, it had some pretty good final levels and a satisfying final boss. In terms of controls again, but the end of the game I finally felt like I had a pretty good handle on them, but really you kind of have to blunder your way through each level before feeling comfortable, which isn't the best thing when you're talking about controls. I do think though that in most scenarios the second screen isn't the problem, it's the camera on the main screen.

In all range mode when fighting a boss, or just regular enemies, you can lock onto them. The camera then follows the enemy, so your movement is a little different because the camera is no longer behind your arwing. Once you get used to it it actually works well and gives you a better view of the area and makes it easier to track bosses and enemies - especially dog fights. But there are times when the game forces you to lock on, and then it can be hard to move in the direction you want to move, because usually you'll switch between locking on and off. Usually half of these segments are spent trying to figure out how to maneuver with this new camera.

The second screen itself I found worked well, it lets you shoot a little bit off screen at times (in comparision to the TV view) so you do have a greater range using the gamepad screen, and more accuracy. Being able to fly in one direction and shoot in another feels great, but I think this could have been done with motion controls alone (with the option of using the right stick), rather than needing to look at the second screen. It almost seems like they tried their best to make sure you do use the gamepad, because when you aim on the TV and then look at the gamepad, you'll see where you thought you were shooting is actually about an inch off from where you're actually shooting. This is kind of ridiculous, if they would have made the reticle on the TV accurate then you really wouldn't need the gamepad.

The game has cool concepts though, I love what they did with the landmaster. You can now swap between a landmaster on the ground, and a flying landmaster (different from hovering) which makes for really smooth gameplay with a lot of options. I just wish there were more opportunities for these options. Early in the game you're forced to use certain vehicles, but later on you have more options, which is where the game starts to really feel good. Switching between the arwing and the chicken wing feels great once it's your choice to do so. Would love to see these options in a bigger game.

More than anything though, I feel like the visuals hold the game down. The character models look great, but the enemy ships and obstacles look very blocky and you can tell SF64 was the base for this game. Ultimately it makes the game look barren at times, which is a shame because an on rail shooter definitely benefits from having good dynamic looking scenes.