[Music] [Applause] [Music] Star Wars Shadows of the empires was one of my first Nintendo 64 games I didn't get the console right at launch rather I got it a few months later that Christmas and with it I got three games Super Mario 64 Star Wars Shadows of the Empire and Mortal Kombat Trilogy that was a terrible parenting decision I played a crap ton of Shadows of the Empire and everybody ever talked to who has played it has really fond memories of this game and I absolutely see why this was the first console Star Wars game that looked and felt like Star Wars I remember booting this up seeing the scrolling text and hearing that music and my dad was like which movie are you watching son and I got to proudly say Dad you dumbass this is the game got grounded for that one worth it the very first level is the battle for Hof let me tell you something this level is so good it's the reason that every Star Wars game after this had to have a Hoth level and they could never compare look at this this is Star Wars it looks great has music and sound effects right from the movie and it plays awesome you got to understand that before this the best version of the battle for Hoth came from the Super Nintendo Empire Strikes Back game and that game you know tried I cannot stress enough how fantastic this level is from shooting atss to using the toe cable to take down at-ats start off a video game with this kind of quality and polish and you know you've made a good choice by the way the main character in this game is Dash renar friend of Han Solo and fellow Smuggler he brought some supplies to the Rebels on hot and he agrees to help out with the defense of the base because he'll get paid more money Dash is cool even if you've never heard of him before which I sure didn't before this game you instantly know yeah this bro is cool he's like if someone took the Han Solo meter and cranked that [ __ ] up to 11 of course the shield generator gets destroyed and dash heads back to base to escape and this is where we see the main gaml on foot with the Blaster missions these levels were oh God what is this were the controls always like this I don't know exactly how to explain it but it's similar to the Resident Evil style tank controls where up moves you forward and you can turn left and right but if you run and turn at the same time it's so slippery every time Dash turns to the side he goes into a sick Tokyo Drift it's even worse if you try to turn and jump at the same time while this is all offputting you can get used to it pretty quickly even if it's definitely not the best a lot of this is fixed by strafing but I didn't remember how to do that until much later in the game is it just me or is Echo Bas looking a little deserted youd figur there'd still be some Rebels trying to escape or at the very least some dead ones instead all that's left is snow troopers probe droids and sweet Jesus a herd of waffas one of the camera options you can select is this cinematic mode as if this was actually playable shooting dudes with a blaster feels good though it has the right blend of Star Wars sounds visual effects an impact to make each shot landed on a snow trooper to seem authentic it's too bad you shoot like a stormtrooper let's talk about the absolute worst part of this game the aiming it's atrocious unreliable and will make boss fights extremely difficult Dash fires his blaster in a massive spread so much that you can see his entire body shift around while firing this makes it hard to land a good shot on anything as the more you fire your blaster the weaker the shots are you fix this by holding the ZB button which greatly increases your accuracy and you can manually aim while holding it two issues with this the first is that holding the Z button causes you to firmly plant your feet to the ground there is no way to move while aiming because of this shootouts end up being you standing still and taking Blaster bolts to the chin while rapidly firing back hoping you hit them this is troublesome a tougher fight with more enemies since you can't effectively run and Gun between cover or fire smartly two you can't actually tell where you're aiming there is no indicator or anything on the HUD to let you know where you're shooting you basically need to rapidly fire just to get an idea of what you're even shooting at holding Z also causes Dash to slowly lock on to enemies slowly drawing his fire over to them emphasis on slowly so basically when it comes to shootouts the only way to accurately hit anything is to hold Z let the aim slowly drag over to them and do this until everybody else is dead and because of this you're standing completely still sucking down shots that they fire back the whole time and if the auto aim isn't cooperating you're left trying your damnest to awkwardly shoot back at them with zero indication of where even aiming in the first place there it is at least they were smart enough to make the First on foot level easy to figure that [ __ ] out it's wide open not a lot of tricky jumps and not many enemies all at once it doesn't make the control gos any better but it does give you time to realize what you'll be wrestling with for the next 6 hours Dash gets the generators back online so that the ship bit doors can open and he easily makes his way back until Metal Gear this is an awesome first boss fight just a blaster at your side versus an atst that's badass complete with cover that it easily destroys it's intense Until you realize all you need to do is stay behind it and shoot it in its ass no wonder Ewoks could beat them Dash escapes Hoth and goes into space where you need to fight off a bunch of Tie fighters and let's call this level what it is a turret section sure it's in space and against other space ships but this is a lame ass turret section through and through but you're on dash renar's ship the outrider and this ship is cool how cool is it so cool that they included it leaving moss eely in the Star Wars on New Hope special edition that means Dash rendar is Cannon except they said all of the expanded universe no longer anymore which includes this game and the novel it was based on but Dash still appears in the movies which means he is Canon but he's not but he's in the movie but which is it George the game story jumps ahead until after Empire Strikes Back and we meet the game's main villain Prince Shor of the black Sun gang he's trying to Swindle his way into Power by becoming the emperor's right-hand Man by making Darth Vader look like an idiot which if he wanted that all he has to do is show the emperor the prequel movies Yi just how evil is Shor well he makes this face Dash is trying to find the Frozen and Carbonite Han Solo and learn that Boba Fett fought with ig88 and tracks the robot to or Manel this stage is a train level where Dash slowly makes his way to where ig88 is it's hard to remember for certain but I can't help but feel that this level is pretty technically impressive for its time you know for the Nintendo 64 and all at least during the times when the frame rate isn't eight this lead into the next real boss fight against ig88 itself and let me tell you this is where the game starts showing how sucky it really is the obvious is that you can't see where ig88 is the graphics are so muddy and dark and ig88 all black body gets easily lost in the horrible textures this alone makes the fight extremely difficult simply because you never know where to shoot back at him now add to that the already mentioned awful aiming controls the safest bet would be to shoot at him for from a safe distance but you can't aim worth a damn if you can even see him in the first place I lost more lives here than I should have because of how awful everything is designed defeating ig88 gives Dash a lead on Boba Fett's location which is at an imperial Spaceport the stage is all right I guess nothing special just a lot of mountains and Stormtroopers and what the f another wa yeah just another plain Old Stage that doesn't really holy crap a jetpack this was a defining feature of Shadows of the empire being able to jet pack around in 3D space was kind of a big deal at the time this kicks ass at least at first it's because of the jetpack the dash rendar's entire control scheme is so floaty it's so that when you're Airborne with a jetpack you feel floaty and flying this still makes jetpacking around a bit on the awkward side because you never quite feel like you have full control still I can't deny how badass this is speaking of badass the boss fight for this stage is Boba Fett and it sucks this fight is pure [ __ ] remember how sucky the ig88 boss fight was now it's all of those problems plus the jetpack Boba Fett freely flies around to wherever he wants and you're busy figuring out how to try not to look like an idiot the floaty jetpack controls makes it difficult to get away from him or Dodge any of his fire and the slow unreliable aiming makes it difficult to fire back so I didn't even bother flying around I just awkwardly strafed around on the ground hip firing and hoping maybe a blast bould or two would actually hit him well you could just use secret missiles on them do you even remember shooting those cuz they don't seek [ __ ] so I beat him by running around and using random Blaster fire it took me 20 minutes and then you immediately fight him again in slave one at least this part's easy but a whole additional boss fight after a difficult annoying boss fight unfair game unfair according to the next cut scene even though I straight messed him up Boba Fett still escapes somehow again this game was based off the Shadows of the Empire novels that came up before this game so a lot of the plot in the cut scenes is missing oh maybe it'd be better if I played the PC version which came out a year later they worked for job of the Hut and they had orders to kill you but something's not right you know what never mind Luke is at Obi-Wan's Hut on Tatooine and a swoop bike gang hired by Jaba the Hut is on their way to kill him Dash catches wind of this and thus starts a level of Dash oh baby I remember this SW Bike level being awesome it's still is on a technical level and by that I mean the frame rate stays consistently High even though you very clearly lap around the same parts of moss Heisley a few times but really this level sucks I've got to stop these swoop Jockeys Before They reach Luke you can't handle all of them dude he's a Jedi you hold the a button to move forward and you go so damn fast that it's near impossible to not hit walls coming into a complete stop or blowing up entirely you're supposed to race against the other swoopers and knock them into walls which somehow works because every time you shoulder into one it feels like you're just slapping them with a wet tobel it's actually way better to take this whole section really really slowly because it isn't that difficult to catch up to them but that's lame and you won't be going fast enough to hit those sweet ramps and get those challenge points and extra lives but there are sarlaac so we're supposed to forgive them Dash saves Luke and Luke says they're going to the ship Supra that has the Death Star 2 plans and he's like Dash bro you want to come and dash says I the Sosa level is completely forgettable as in I forgot this level existed until I played it again it's a cramped up ship interior with nothing spectacular about it even the final boss sucks it's just a loading Droid that's easy as balls come on you go from Boba Fett who is a completely [ __ ] boss but he is Boba Fett to a dumbass robot many bothans died to bring us this terrible level this is actually true you can look it up so Leia got kidnapped again finally living up to her title of Princess so Luke Lando tuaca and dash renar go to Prince Sear's Palace to rescue her and [ __ ] meur level this is the absolute worst level and it's so long the entire stage is darker and muddier than the ig88 fight and there are times that you need to Jetpack around in poo water it's impossible to see things or what's firing at you everything is reactionary I only know to fire after they've already shot me and the final boss is a d NOA you know that garbage thing this means awkwardly trying to fly in poo water while not being able to see while using shitty aiming to try and land shots all at the same time poo water the level after this one is shor's palace and this level sucks too there are dudes everywhere so it's a lot of standing still and getting shot while trying to shoot back and it's a lot of not being able to see look how dark everything is I had to fire my blaster just to tell what's a wall and what isn't in the final boss of this stage another lame ass Droid a big one that has three phases I can't even describe how incredibly difficult he is it took me at least 10 tries to defeat him which includes the 15 minutes of stage leading up into him and I'm fairly certain that the only reason I was able to do it is because his AI bugged out on the second phase at least this brings us to the last level of the whole game after a brief turret section against black Sun ships you get full control of the outrider against Shar Skyhook and you know what it's fun again this is another welldone vehicle stage you can freely fly the outrider around go up down around and you destroy the Skyhook by blasting turrets at the end of the arms and then fly inside to shoot the core with a missile because it isn't Star Wars unless you destroy something from the inside and with the final hit the palace begins to explode and you need to fly out to escape but boom Dash doesn't make it out and his story ends with that explosion or does it if you play on at least medium difficulty and successfully fly out you're treated to an additional Cuts scene of Dash making a light speed jump at just the right moment so that the Galaxy thinks he's dead and won't come after him and thus the credits roll on an excessively frustrating game and oh my God is that a Freakazoid reference I didn't remember the main game being as bad and as irritating as it actually is what I do remember was how awesome the cheat codes are who doesn't remember putting in Wampa stampa look at you can activate a cheat on every stage to play as different things Board of the Hoth battle tried as an ATS team I walked around shut down snow Speeders other atss and myself once Board of Dash randar now play as a stormtrooper what's bizarre is that you control him with the d-pad and the control stick still controls Dash this means you could feasibly create an incredibly awkward Co-op game with this don't want to be the out rer on the final battle boom now your next Wing Bor of that for some reason do the code again and boom boom you're a TIE fighter it's a minor thing but the inclusion of these cheat codes really did improve the replayability of this game at least for when I was a blind young fool anyone who has ever played Shadows of the Empire that I've talked to always mentions how great this game is and how it's one of the best Nintendo 64 games everybody said this game was good and the harsh truth is it isn't that's why my final rating for this game is an ig88 out of 10 you know how everybody said that ig88 is cool even though he's never done anything cool and everyone just said it so much that we came to accept it that's Shadows of the Empire we all thought it was great and kept telling ourselves that it was great and to each other but that is definitely not the case the movement while awkward can be adjusted to but the aiming is absolutely unforgivable it's atrocious and practically forces you to take damage against enemies and dash his own giant Rus shaped torso blocks your own view if you do try to aim the jetpack while a cool and Theory mechanic is unbelievably floaty and is especially difficult to utilize during boss fights without punishment on top of all this the level designs are awful low visibility often pure Darkness way too hard boss fights the soup bike stage sucks and unfair enemy placement makes the majority of the game just playing bad it's bizarre to realize how quickly the quality drops off in this game because that opening Hoff stage is really really good and the ending Skyhook battle is pretty good but everything in between no no it's not good but at least those cheat codes are ra I'm a wamp thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this video please click that subscribe button it would mean a lot to me and if you want to watch another one of my videos you can check out this one I did on an old Doss game known as high seas Traer or in the mood for more Star Wars my friend The completionist Who 100% a game every week did want on Star Wars the Force Unleash 2 which I highly [Music] recommend