Star Wars games

[Medic_wheat]

It's sad that so few of you seem to have played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, or X-Wing Alliance.  They're excellent space flight "simulators."  The main gameplay mechanic was the ability to shunt energy between thrusters, shields, and weapons.  The games had a fantastic UI, great controls (with a flightstick), and a definite lean towards arcade more than simulation.  The CD versions also had excellent voice acting.  X-wing is a pretty early game that suffers from repetitive missions and some janky limitations (a space station is like 4 cargo containers roped together, lol) but Tie Fighter is beyond excellent and features a story campaign starring Admiral Thrawn, the only good character to emerge from the shit pile that is the extended universe.  Alliance was a return to form after the misstep of the vs. game, but Tie Fighter still gets top billing as the best of the Star Wars flight sims.

I honestly can't recommend Tie Fighter enough.

If you find you really like space flight sims, there's also the Wing Commander series and Descent: Freespace 1 and 2.  Freespace especially is just a shameless rip-off of Larry Holland's games but does bring something new to the table with branching story paths from mission failures.  Good stuff!  I guess we will also have Star Citizen some time in the distant future...

N64 Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo, and GC Rogue Squadron 2 were also very good games.

Those where all pc games werent they?

Sadly I have never been mich of a pc gamer. I really should with things like steam I have no excuse.

[BlueBMW]

Speaking of Dark Forces again...  When I was a weee little one playing that game I used to get totally freaked out by those Dianogas in the third level.  Creeping through dark sewers and randomly seeing one of those eyes pop up in the distance only to have it show up behind you attacking you a second later!  Gahh!!

[blueraven]

It's sad that so few of you seem to have played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, or X-Wing Alliance.  They're excellent space flight "simulators."  The main gameplay mechanic was the ability to shunt energy between thrusters, shields, and weapons.  The games had a fantastic UI, great controls (with a flightstick), and a definite lean towards arcade more than simulation.  The CD versions also had excellent voice acting. 

I beat all three of these, and got the B-Wing addon, and of course used the entire keyboard as my control panel. Quite possibly the best flight simulator of all time imho.

[HailingTheThings]

When I was a weee little one playing that game I used to get totally freaked out by those Dianogas in the third level.  Creeping through dark sewers and randomly seeing one of those eyes pop up in the distance only to have it show up behind you attacking you a second later!  Gahh!!

Dianogas still creep me out because of the level where you take the sewer entrance to Xizor's Palace in Shadows of the Empire.