Star Wars: Best of PC

Cafe Society
1

On a whim, I picked this up at Target. I figured that it was probably worth it at least for Knights of the Old Republic (realizing that I could get that game itself for much less than $40) and if any of the other games were fun, it’d be a bonus. At $8 a game, it didn’t seem too bad a deal. So I’ve installed and played parts of all but one of the games (it comes with Empire at War, KotOR, Battlefront, Jedi Knight II, and Republic Commando) and had fun so far. It’s kinda weird playing a Star Wars game based on the 3rd ed. D&D system, I’ve never played a RTS game before (I prefer turn-based 4X) and I keep getting my ass kicked in the third mission for the Rebels, and I’ve never been that good at FPSes, so I haven’t made it far in Battlefront or Republic Commando.

Republic Commando reminds me of the few times I played Ghost Recon but with better AI. Battlefront–I keep respawning and dying. You wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to take a few command posts on Tatooine, but I guess I’m wrong. Or I just suck. It’s probably the latter.

When it comes to KotOR, I’ve played lots of NWN, a little Baldur’s Gate, some Oblivion, and Jade Empire. None of them prepared me having to deal with that interface–I blame the existence of the XBox version, while Jade Empire, while a port, at least has an interface that works well on the PC. Either give me a top-down view like NWN or let me drive the character like Jade Empire, but not this two-button mouse thing.

The one I haven’t tried yet is Jedi Knight II. I haven’t played a game in the series since Dark Forces, so I hope there’s at least some explanation of the previous game.

So far, though, I’d say it’s probably worth the $40. It adds five more games to my already too-large collection of LucasArts games, which now includes:

Maniac Mansion
Loom
Secret of Monkey Island
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (first five from the LucasArts Classic Adventure collection, which I still have all the floppies for)
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3, when I bought it, came with a CD with Monkey Island 1 and 2 on it as well–noticing a pattern in my buying habits here?)
Escape from Monkey Island
Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine
X-Wing (CD version with all expansions)
TIE Fighter (CD version with expansion)
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (with expansion)
Dark Forces
Empire at War
Knights of the Old Republic
Battlefront
Republic Commando
Jedi Knight II
(There are a lot of the adventure games I still want to pick up and maybe a few more of the Star Wars games.)

That far outstrips what I have from any other publisher, which says something about me, though I don’t know what. Anyway, I suggest getting the collection while you can, since most of these games are pretty good and Star Wars games have always been pretty good in general (much better than any released Star Trek games, for instance.)

2

If it doesn’t include Rebel Assault II it’s not the best of. I have battlefront II for the PS2 and it is hard as hell. I get to the last section of a 30 min long mission and die nearly every time. It’s like Jesus’s love raining down when I actually complete a mission. I don’t know why they don’t have any easy setting.

3

I think they meant best of as in the best of the last five years or so. I’ve never played Rebel Assault or Rebel Assault II, though both are on the list to pick up some day.

Oh, just for the sake of completeness, I realized I left Rogue Squadron off my list of games in the OP.

4

You don’t have Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? Day of the Tentacle? Sam and Max Hit The Road? Full Throttle? Grim Fandango? Dude, you’re missing out.

5

I’m trying, but those things are expensive these days. Why LucasArts doesn’t release a multi-DVD compilation of everything from Maniac Mansion to Monkey Island IV is beyond me.

6

Hey, sounds like a good buy to me. But I already have Republic Commando and Empire at War (both pretty good games). Oh, and I have the Xbox versions of KotOR and KotOR II. There pretty awesome (though I’m with the fans who feel the original plans for 2’s ending, some of which is intact in the game’s code and can be found with extraction, was far superior to what we actually got).

Oh, and Gentle Robot, I agree with you, but you forgot TIE Fighter. No SW best-of game collection would ever be complete without TIE Fighter.
…
God I loved that game! I still play it in my dreams :stuck_out_tongue:
(I really need to get one of those old DOSbox or Win95 emulation programs so I can go back and replay stuff like that, Warcraft 2, Mechwarrior 2, and SimCity 2000 some day)

7

Rebel Assault II…isn’t that the one where very other mission was “fly into the exhaust/maintenance tunnel/whatever to blow up the big ship/factory/whatever?”

8

Oh, dude!

You’re so lucky… you haven’t played some of the classics yet? They’ve gotten new lives thanks to ScummVM, a program that lets you play those old Lucasarts adventure games on everything from your Windows XP PC to your cell phone. These games are so old and Lucasarts hasn’t re-released them in forever that they’re basically abandonware. You should be able to find them with minimal Googling.

By the way, Sam & Max has become an ongoing “series” at Gametap.com, with new episodes being released every few months.

As for Jedi Knight II, its playstyle is similar to Dark Forces, but Kyle is a Jedi now and can use the Force (and the lightsaber, of course) in addition to the regular weapons. If you want to catch up on the story, you can either read about it on Wikipedia or just buy Jedi Knight I and its expansion… both should be bargain-bin material.

And KotoR: If you can get over the interface issues, it’s one of the best RPGs and best Star Wars games ever made. Definitely worth the effort.

9

I knew about ScummVM, but I prefer to just run DOSBox. It seems to do a better job in emulation or maybe it’s just the ability to increase the cycles going to the emulation.