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horrible!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 75
Date: November 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game was so confusing, its all expanded universe, you can't get past the first level without waiting for an hour, you never fly into the death star eather. I gave this game away for 5$. Its a total rip off. You don't know what you are doing. Its stupid. don't buy it, you will hate it.

Do nothing Advance to next level

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 17
Date: May 20, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Apparently the way to win this game is to completely disobey your mission objectives. For instance in the last mission I played (before uninstalling it and throwing it away) I was supposed to pick up a container, protect my mothership by fending off the attacking tie fighters and fly to a checkpoint to meet the rebellion. So I picked up the container and started killing off tie fighters. I got them all. I was killing them as fast as they were replaced. Then I got slammed with a dozen missles from all sides and lost the mission. I never got notification to go to the next checkpoint. The game has a help function after you lose a mission that gives tips on how to win the mission the next time. The tip? Don't protect the mothership. The checkpoint won't appear until the mothership is destroyed. Besides, if you attack the tie-fighters, then your container will get destroyed and you won't be able to finish the mission. That might be okay, except that the game doesn't tell you that you can't complete the mission. Once I just sat there for 10 minutes waiting for something to happen. That was boring. After four hours of finding out that I was supposed to ignore mission objectives and do very little I uninstalled the game and threw it away. My only regret is that now I wonder what would have happened if I had destroyed the mothership myself. This was a definite waste of money and time. After my experience with Rebellion, I am now certain that I will never buy another LucasArts game without playing it first.

game ...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: June 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

all right, lets not get too negative, but what can I say? the graphics are the only part of this game that is good. the levels are ludicrous in the fact that your allies turn on you. then there is a little thing i like to call a storyline, which this game lacks. bottom line, don't spent money on this junk.

Promise squandered on loyalty to out-of-date gaming engine

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 11
Date: February 08, 2000
Author: Amazon User

On the face of things, "X-Wing Alliance" has the makings of an extraordinary entry into the Star Wars franchise. The characters are engaging, with enough backstory given in the accompanying written material to start a small movie. Conveniently, there *is* actually a small movie which opens the game off with a real narrative bang. It makes one wish that Lucas himself had taken a page from the game producers when he was making _The Phantom Menace_.

Unfortunately, after this high point, the game soon degenerates into endless missions which advance the plot--painfully slowly. Oh, there are cool points along the way. The cut scenes are interesting, and the sound environment throughout the missions is superb. But the in-play graphics engine is fairly ordinary by LucasArts' own standards. The missions themselves are endless variations on the same themes. And the game's conclusion is less than satisfactory.

But there's another side to the game--multiplayer action--and for this the game deserves some praise. As a vehicle for capturing the gaming possibilities of the Net, "X-wing" is worth the purchase price. There's a large, loyal player base for the whole "X-wing" series, so you'll never be alone on the Net.

Still, there are better options to get what you want out of a Star Wars game. "Rogue Squadron" is an infinitely better single-player space game. And the upcoming "Force Commander" promises to be something of a new standard in multiplayer action. By comparison, "X-wing Alliance" merely feels like a solid update to an aging series.

Good, but not great

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 06, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've been played about all of the Star Wars sims games, but this one just isn't my favorite. Yes it does have absolutly great graphics, nice original music mix, and force feedback support (yay). But I found some of the mission designs to be just not credible, and the storline was definatly lacking. They didn't even finish it! Also, the big "Death-Star" battle in the end wasn't very good.

A Good Star Wars Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: November 15, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This is not the most challenging game I've ever had but this game is good for the star wars fan.

Better than X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and XW vs. TF combined!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: June 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of LucasArt's best. It is possibly the last in the X-Wing series, because of the new SW movies, but it is great. First off, there is a good plot. I was a little dissapointed with the other games in that you seemed so much like a mindless drone. In this game, you start off as the youngest in a family shipping company. You are "Ace" Azzameen. You start off with basic missions for your family's business, with a few feuds with your rival company, Imperial partnered Viraxo. A few of these might be a little dull, but there are only a few, and the last couple before you join the alliance are definantly the opposite of boring. Next in the plot, you end up joining the rebellion (explainied in game), and eventually get to participate in the destruction of the second Death Star. The game has alot better graphics than the other games, and the sound is superb. The only complaint I have is that they used different actor voices in the Battle of Endor to be those of characters like Lando and Ackbar. They should have just taken the voices from the movies. The music is also great. The music will change as different events take place. For instance, when a Star Destroyer hypers in, you will likely hear the Imperial March. Some of the missions are tough, but you have the option to skip up to 3 missions. Now, I actually got this game when it first released in 1999 for [price]. I thought it was definantly worth it. And now look at it here, for [price]! You have nothing to lose! Buy it!

Impressive

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: June 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Besides being the latest (and likely last?) of the X-wing games, "Alliance" is also the best - bringing the series back from the hole it sat in after "X-wing v. Tie Fighter" to the epic trail blazed by the original "Tie Fighter". The real question though is whether its improvements make it worth getting to players who bought the older games. In "Alliance", you play the youngest son of family that owns an intergalactic shipping business. Moving stuff from system to system, you pilot freighters through lawless tracts of space. In a time of civil war, your family tries to stay neutral, even as it's split along pro-rebel and imperial-loyalist sides (guess which side you're on.) Despite its seemingly civilian trappings, the family business is all about combat - your ships come armed with turbo-lasers and ion-cannon and equipped with deflectors. Though you won't face imperials immediately, combat will come quickly - forcing you to fend off the Viraxo, your family's hostile rivals. As the war progresses, the Viraxo leap to the Empire's quarter, essentially forcing you to side with the rebellion, and making you trade your Corellian transport in for an X-wing fighter. Until then, the game offers a series of missions that modestly test skills you may have amassed if you've played the older SW Fighter's games, but are more likely intended as a tutorial. (On an interesting note, sci-fi fans may note a resemblance between the Viraxo fighters and the Angel fighters from "Captain Scarlet".) The game climaxes with the epic battle of Endor, in which you take on the 2nd Death Star from the inside (in a mission I like to refer to as "Operation watch-that-overpass!") As in older games, you fly alongside and against AI pilots, though they're more chatty than before (including a motor-mouthed droid named M-Kay who makes C3PO sound positively mute) making the dialog sound more natural than it should.

"Alliance" is a bit of a disappointment - its ties to the original "X-Wing" of 1994 are painfully clear in terms of graphics and gameplay - this is still about flying canned missions in linear order in which you must complete by fulfilling a set of specific goals (i.e., no matter how many Tie Fighters you swat down, all Lambda Shuttles must dock with the medical frigate; all of the Correlian cruisers must survive; you must inspect every container; etc...). Some of the mission-critical goals seem counterintuitive - resulting from pre-scripted twists in a given mission. For example, when a friendly ship becomes disabled, its crew is forced to abandon it, and you to destroy it - you only figure out that second part after numerous post-mission-failure messages. Even so, once you've figured out what to do and begun blasting the abandoned friendly to space-dust, your wingmen warn you that you're firing on a friendly, and that mission critical craft are under attack. Because a lot of in-game dialog is pre-scripted, which means that it's the same no-matter how you're doing, it's harder to tell whether you're doing well or not.

Graphics and sound are improved, though I guess we expected that. The big news is that you can now pad-lock those enemies or mission-critical craft - which is great not only for improving your situational awareness, but also because you can view the insides of your ship's flight-deck (this is a huge leap over previous games which essentially gave you 2-D renderings of the same flight panels we've seen since 1994). While shading and lensing effects are also added, I usually get to focused on the enemy to really appreciate them. I'm also not enough of an audiophile to comment on the sound, though the sound effects and John Williams score remain as expectedly faithful to the films as we've come to expect. The mission areas seem larger, and you now seem to have even larger numbers of enemies to fight against (clouds of fighters instead of just swarms). Also, you may now have to zoom into different areas (via hyperspace buoy) in a single mission - although I just find that increases the chances of running into bugs that make missions unwinnable.

The game's most revolutionary improvement isn't technical at all - relying on a story that (at first) makes you more than just another faceless rebel flyboy. (Looks like somebody at "Totally Games" fired up a copy of the orginal "Tie Fighter", and was reminded why that game was so much more popular then "X-Wing".) Instead your fight is for survival against greedy competitors, soon to become a personal vendetta against the empire. Characters you meet between missions, including M-Kay and other vengeful relatives, advance the plot and keep it focused throughout successive missions. If anything, the story could have kept you out of the rebellion a bit longer, or at least made the transition a tad smoother - the story loses something once you become a rebel pilot, though manages to hold onto you anyway.

With the passage of time, most PC's should run this game without problems. I played it on my P4, having no WinXP compatibility problems. The game probably supports OpenGL graphics acceleration (if it doesn't, it's doing the greatest impression of hardware acceleration I've ever seen). In short, an X-Wing battle-sim that's guaranteed to please, though obviously pleasing most those who've never tried one before.

correction

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I apologize greatly for my, shall I say, "disturbing" review before, I was having a rough day. not only that I find the fact that I did not use proper grammar appaulling. I also did not give my name to the review. But, anyway, I am still correcting it. the game isn't all that bad, once you get used to it. the multiplayer is incredible, for, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in just plain fun. the fact htat if an X-Wing gets shot by you and then starts attacking you shouldn't be that hard to concieve for many people.

Good Space Flight Sim

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 10, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A space simulation game like 'Wing Commander', Alliance throws you into the Rebellion between 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi' films. As with all such games a good flight controller is strongly recommended. The real innovation is there are two games in one. You play a a space merchant whose family business is attacked and almost destroyed by a rival merchant. After you join the rebellion mission are split between family and the rebellion with about one family mission for every three rebellion ones. While at the end you save the family business there a couple loose threads aren't wrapped up. The rebellion mission end with you destroying the Death Star's reactor in the Millennium Falcon.

I did have one issue: As a DirectX 6 game it would only use software rendering on my DirectX 7 box until I manually changed the game's ini file.

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