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As the family's newest pilot, you fly tutorial missions at first, under the supervision of your sister Aeron and the droid Emkay. But even as you are training, the situation heats up. Before long, the family has been betrayed, your space station has been seized, and you're forced to turn to the Rebellion. Though the game's focus is on combat, the development of this story is tight and suspenseful.
The story and the merchant/smuggler setting give the game plenty of variety. One mission may have you piloting a loaded freighter through an Imperial blockade, while another may place you in the cockpit of an X-Wing on a hit-and-run raid against an enemy battle station. Every ship, every weapon, every sound effect is pure Star Wars, totally faithful to the look--and feel--of the movies. This extends to the missions themselves: nothing works as planned, but somehow you and your Rebel allies manage to make it all the way to the climactic Battle of Endor. If you've distinguished yourself in the earlier missions, hot pilots will get the chance to take the controls of the Millennium Falcon and cram a torpedo into the gut of the Emperor's second Death Star.
Controlling the fighters, freighters, and transports in X-Wing Alliance is easy, with all the options you'd expect in a Star Wars simulation. Shield, engine, and weapon power levels are all adjustable, so you, too, can transfer all power to front deflector screens while attacking, or shut down power to weapons to outrun a swarm of TIE fighters. Novice players may find it difficult to control wingmen or to keep track of the changing objectives when missions go sour. But practice makes perfect, and the truly frustrated can simply skip up to three missions without penalty.
With a modest learning curve and graphics that put you right in the milieu of the Star Wars films, X-Wing Alliance will have you flying combat missions for the Rebel Alliance in no time--and loving every minute of it. --Alyx Dellamonica
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
XWA: Extended fun for all,
By Evan Hinton "Critic for Hire" (Red Bluff, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: LucasArts Archive Series: Star Wars X-Wing Alliance (CD-ROM)
I don't remember this game when it first came out, but I just recently got it, and it still packs a punch. With a truly gripping plotline that follows from just after the events of The Empire Strikes Back to the end of Return of the Jedi (And yes, you even get to play a scene from Shadows of the Empire), X-Wing Alliance (XWA) is a great game. While the graphics aren't exactly stunning to today's audience, in my opinon, the gameplay more than makes up for it. I came to XWA from Rogue Squadron, really wishing I could take my X-Wing up against a Star Destroyer. Well, I got my wish, and let me tell you, be careful what you wish for: those suckers are hard! And while Rogue Squadron (RS) has beautiful graphics, you never go into space. In XWA, every mission is in space. Also, the controls are more realistic. RS's big kick was the graphics, so the designer's didn't worry about really complex and realistic controls. In XWA, you don't just fly around and fire at stuff, you can control how your shields recharge, how your guns fire, strengthen your shields in one area of the ship, or reroute everything to the engines and fly like crazy.Another bonus for those of you who liked RS but wanted something more is hyperspace. To get to the areas where your missions take place requires you to jump into hyperspace, which, like in the films, doesn't always work. (Especially when there's an Interdictor Crusier around; you'll learn to hate those.) So, in conclusion, XWA is a great game if you have a lot of time, there are over 50 missions, not counting the single-player skirmishes you can create in the simulator room (A simulator in a simulator, eh?), and multiplayer options abound. Have fun. Now get to your fighters!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Everything X-Wing vs. TIE should have been...and more,
By Ethan D Van Vorst (Salisbury, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: LucasArts Archive Series: Star Wars X-Wing Alliance (CD-ROM)
I'll be blunt when I say that this is the finest space sim I have ever had the privelige of playing. A lofty claim, no doubt, but true nonetheless. What urges me to make this claim about X-Wing Alliance? Let's examine.Now I don't know why this game didn't seem to make a bigger impact than it should have. It might be the market is flooded with first-person shooters and cheap StarCraft knock-offs. It might have been lack of proper advertising...I remember seeing ads for it in PC Gamer, but never many. But truth be known I think it was the timing. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter can be blamed for this...it's complete emphasis on multiplayer over plot (it didn't have any, or anything remotely resembling a single player campaign) I think ruined it for a lot of the people who really just enjoyed playing the basic game for it's feeling of taking on the Empire from the comfort of your own house. It could be argued that this came out too soon after XvTF, or maybe noone wanted to give it a try because of it's possible similarities, or maybe there's just so many Star Wars games out there now that are outright bad, noone wanted to put out the money to find out. And what a crying shame...this game is fantastic. I wouldn't call it perfect, but it's very close to it. The plot follows the adventures of a family of merchants, the Azzameens, with you as the youngest son of the clan, Ace. The family has it's internal squabblings which can be a welcome amusement or likewise, an unwelcome development as you play. The first few missions allow you to fly freighters like the YT-1300, along with new ones like the snazzy YT-2000, which looks like the Millenium Falcon on steroids. After these training missions (some of which are surprisingly difficult for "training" level) you're eventually forced to join the Rebellion and begin the standard instruction with X-Wings and the other Rebel starfighter complement. The plot is well paced, excellently scripted, and goes as fluid as a dream. Interspersed within these are the occasional Family mission where you assist your clan in some dilemma or scheme to seek revenge against thier antagonists. Success garners you some souvenir from that battle and I must admit that by the game's end it's nice to see your room practically littered with things you've picked up along the way. And I must admit an affinity for having turret guns...they're just plain handy. The meat and potatoes of the game though is your standard Rebel combat assignments. And they are just a blast. Everything from the voice acting, to the music, to the graphics is all top notch. The ambience is perfect Star Wars. So much so that if one were inclined to experience Star Wars, after the movies I would pick this game as the best way to do so. But every game has it's faults and this one is no exception. Multiplayer is a mixed bag. There's no cooperative missions, but rather built missions in which you use an editor and add/subtract ships, and then hop in a fighter and blow em' up. I wish though that they'd have put in the ability to hop into one of the freighters as a pure gunner. Having a YT-2000 with 2 human gunners in multiplayer would probably give you a ten-fold survival rate. As far as some of the single player campaign missions go, I won't lie. Lucas Arts has always made some levels that noone short of Luke Skywalker can finish, and this game is no exception. However they've allowed the option to skip a mission should it prove too hard to accomplish. Flying the Endor/Death Star II mission I must admit is almost Nirvana, although TIE Fighters die rather quickly in comparison to thier Rebel adversaries. Did I mention what a rush it is to fly the Millenium Falcon? The last 4 missions follow the script of the movie almost (almost) perfectly. Beware though: I'd recommend a fast computer for the last one...unless you like wading through that many Star Destroyers on a P2 300MhZ. I won't lie...this game is such a notable improvement over it's forbears that I cannot understand why anyone who liked it's predecessors wouldn't have this game. I think I'll sum it all up by just saying that this game is simply a helluva lot of fun. Just a real good time. Pick up a copy and see for yourself. :)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What X vs. TIE should have been,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: LucasArts Archive Series: Star Wars X-Wing Alliance (CD-ROM)
LucasArts really should have scrapped X-wing vs. TIE fighter and released this instead. It would have sold millions. Unlike X vs. TIE, Alliance has an excellent single-play plot and truly detailed ships- not just the old TIE fighter models with new textures slapped on. You can fly any of a huge list of spacecraft in multiplayer, including the famed Millenium Falcon and the even better YT-2000 transport. If you're utterly insane or just feel like messing around, you can even fly such junks as the Pinook fighter or R-41 Starchaser. The movies are well done and the graphics are better all around. The engine is also improved over the Balance of Power tweaks, so you won't have a critical lack of memory when a Super Star Destroyer jumps in. Capital ships also fire shots that explode into flak like the movies- a really cool effect that might be a bit too captivating. I remember one particular melee where I got blasted by an SSD while staring at the fireworks. The multiplay is much improved as well, with you being able to assign ships to teams and choosing the type of vessels you fly or fight against. With very few exceptions, just about all the vessels from TIE fighter, X-wing, and many new ones are available for use in multiplay. They even have a lot of ships seen only in tech manuals and novels, such as the Cloakshape and Preybird. Even if you're not much of a pilot, it's interesting to see how the new ships handle, and you can always observe things from a godlike perspective via the map mode. This is definitely what I had wanted out of X vs. TIE, and for all those who were disappointed by that game, I hope you'll check Alliance out.
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