Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter (PS2)
Throughout the Star Wars franchise, the Jedi find all sorts of uses for their Force powers. They’ll use them in a battle to push people around or grab an object, they’ll use the Force’s influence to cloud the minds of enemies or even trick them into believing falsehoods, and they even use it for simplest of tasks like picking up a cup. However, whenever a Jedi pops into a starfighter, it seems almost like they forget the Force even exists. A few characters like Luke Skywalker use their connection to enhance their senses to be a better pilot, but it really does feel underutilized when you could be firing lightning at an enemy pilot or shoving their starcraft out of the way. This oversight is what Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter aims to rectify, its leading lady making sure to keep her connection to the Force in mind in this space combat action game.
Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter expects a good degree of familiarity with the franchise and its concepts, but it’s not too hard to follow the general ideas and understand the threat posed by the enemy. Taking place concurrently with the film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, the plot follows Jedi Master Adi Gallia and an alien resistance member named Nym as they fight against the Trade Federation, a group that split from the peaceful Galactic Republic that most planets in the galaxy are part of. The Trade Federation are working on an extremely powerful new superweapon so they can become the dominant force in the galaxy, but Adi Gallia, Nym, and other pilots all join together in their efforts to prevent the weapon’s creation, take down those individuals responsible, and try to balance these efforts with their contributions to the early stages of the Clone Wars.
Adi Gallia and Nym both fly space fighters with different capabilities, Adi being the one who can tap into the Force during flight. The titular Jedi Starfighter is her capable craft, its built-in lasers a good tool for taking down enemy fighters and wearing down the shields of larger spaceships or defenses, but her Force powers give her additional options to help her turn battles in her favor. Force Lightning is your first power unlocked, this allowing you to pick a target and generate an electrical field around them. If they’re small enough this is an easy instant kill and the electricity will arc off and potentially destroy other nearby spacecraft as well. This isn’t usable on large enemy ships though, but those tend to be part of larger objectives and thus harder to destroy as a form of challenge. The little ships are what gradually wear you down, so a quick zap you can use any time your Force power has recovered is a good tool to have for managing the enemy numbers. If you time your button release for using it well you can make it more potent too, these features of Force lightning true to different degrees for her three other skills as well.
Force Shields will shore up your own craft’s defenses briefly. Normally your craft has a shield to protect from damage but if it is weakened, you start taking direct damage, and since recovering shields is a slow process, this Force power can help you out if you find yourself suddenly in the middle of an unexpected barrage. The last two Force powers come a little late to make a huge impact, Force Reflex slowing things down so you can aim and fire your lasers freely and Force Shockwave destroying craft near to you, but these do all give you more options than just trying to outmaneuver enemies and whittle them down with lasers.
During certain missions you’ll find yourself instead controlling Nym’s ship the Havoc, the split between it and the Jedi craft almost even although not to the degree it’s always alternating with every other mission. This alien pirate turned freedom fighter has no Force powers to speak of so he gets a set of explosive options instead, the game allowing you to use these more liberally but with the caveat that only your weakest set of bombs regenerate. The Energy Bombs are still a strong tool for taking down tough enemy vessels or carpet bombing groups of droids and alien mercenaries, but your other options are incredibly powerful to make up for their limited supply. Proximity Mines are certainly situational, but the Cruise Missiles with their homing feature and the Cluster Missiles that fire off a burst of smaller rockets all can tear through heavier craft or targets like encampments and equipment with ease. Your limited rockets will likely make you wary of using them until you know the lay of the mission or find a rough spot you need help with, but basically Nym is a better fit for heavy duty tasks while Adi Gallia can better manage the smaller enemy ships, ensuring the two feel like they play differently while still having the enjoyable basics like smooth flying and effective lasers so they aren’t too big a departure in play style.
Missions in Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter manage a lot of variety, mixing together battles out in the reaches of space with fights above the planet’s surface. Mission objectives are constantly changing as well to help these stand out even more, and the way you’ll approach the mission as Adi or Nym will shake up your play style as you need to consider the goals at hand. For example, one level requires you to clear a path for demolition boats heading to an enemy base, the player needing to fly ahead to break up future concerns like mines but also defend the ally craft from submarines rising out of the water. Another mission might find you trying to repel enemy craft as they try to pilfer parts from a damaged cannon, clear out the skies above an island city, or destroy all of the equipment at a mining facility without getting destroyed yourself. Defense focused missions are pretty common but the game often gives you enough leeway that you can break off and bring the fight to the enemy frequently, and there are even special objectives to complete such as destroying special enemies or perfectly protecting allies that will unlock new spacecraft to pilot or special missions to play if they’re completed.
The enemy resistance comes in a good variety of forms that ensure the space battles never lose their appeal. Regular fighters are of course the bulk of what you’ll face, it being fairly easy to take them down with sustained laser fire but they can still be pesky if you don’t do so quickly enough. Bigger crafts come with more interesting considerations though, such as the large destroyers who are too sturdy to simply be shot down. Instead you often need to clear the way for an ally effort, blasting off the turrets and weaving around the huge spaceships so you can make them vulnerable enough for the attack. Some spacecraft are still larger and sturdier than yours but can be taken down with lasers or missiles, these often having their own defenders or built in attacks so you need to be canny or find a blind spot to wear them down. The mission structure is what often gives the opposition its bite, such as the missile launchers on planet surfaces being particularly dangerous since they’re so close to objects you need to destroy and let out powerful salvos once you come in close. When you’re doing something like protecting ground troops, taking down every enemy counts as they can thin your allies’ ranks and make surviving the more difficult enemies later in the mission less likely, but only the last two missions feel like the balance is a little too skewed against you.
Losing a mission requires a full level restart, and when Nym’s final level has a boss fight who can blast you out of the air with missiles while you have to stay close to even have a chance of hitting, it can grow a little bit frustrating to replay the stage. The final level with Adi Gallia instead cranks up the number of small enemy craft to the point you’ll likely be drained when its time for the final battle, and since there are time sensitive elements, you might run yourself ragged trying to balance things. For a difficult finale though they do definitely present mostly interesting challenges and the levels before them do a good job of structuring stages that are fun despite truly testing your ability to handle your craft and special attack options. You’re even able to give commands to ally fighters or special weapons, some objectives easier if you manage your assistants well, and while there are occasional stutters and other minor graphical problems, more of the game works with you instead of against you.
On top of the typical single player offerings are a few multiplayer options such as playing through the campaign in co-op. Some missions have both players flying starships while others feature the second player as a gunner firing a turret instead. Competitive multiplayer includes options like a deathmatch competition for the most kills, but the bonus missions you can unlock in the campaign vary things in interesting ways for both the single player and cooperative versions. Focusing more on ideas like survival challenges or destroying as many enemies as you can in an on-rails section where the flying is handled for you, these and the multiplayer add a bit more life to the game after you’ve made your way through the campaign. The bonuses aren’t quite as tight as the main adventure and players can be hard to pin down compared to AI enemies, but the extra content does add a few new ways to play to make the package a bit more robust.
THE VERDICT: Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter is a well balanced space combat game where each mission manages to feel distinct even when they might nominally sound similar. Defensive objectives still allow for aggressive pushes and offensives still require a good approach and flying skill to ensure you survive to the end. Adi Gallia and Nym both play close enough that you can master the basic flight controls and combat flow while having different tools for different situations, the multiplayer and unlockables injecting extra options into the experience so that there’s more to do once you’ve wrapped up the challenging but enjoyable campaign.
And so, I give Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter for PlayStation 2…
A GOOD rating. The flight fundamentals are already a nice fit for the battle style of Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter, but add in some extra attack options on top and the way objectives and level designs come together and you have a game that manages to feel diverse even though a lot of it spent flying about and firing your basic lasers. You need to target the right enemies to ensure a victory, learn how to respond to enemy strategies and attack methods, and use what edges you do have with your allies and special abilities to come out on top. It’s just as much about effectively managing the state of the battle as it is about having the skill to fly your craft and bring down targets, and while some elements like the heavy defense focus and some late game levels cranking things up a bit too much can get in the way of making this a smooth experience, Star Wars: Jedi Starfighter still serves as a nice starship fighter with the right amount of substance that it won’t overstay its welcome or feel too lean.
While being able to whip out the Force powers while flying by enemy spaceships is certainly a satisfying addition to the regular Star Wars space combat formula, that formula is actually enjoyable enough that Force powers are simply a cherry on top. Blasting apart Trade Federation ships and droids is easy to get into but avoids being too simplistic with the havoc of the battlefield and the objectives your starfighter needs to attend to. It’s plot may be the same simple Star Wars fight to stop a superweapon, but flying through the galaxy far, far away’s space battles and in the airspace of its planets still stays exciting and fresh until you’ve won the day for the Galactic Republic.