Star Wars Galaxies:
Jump to Light Speed
The new expansion to Star Wars Galaxies adds what that
on-line RPG was painfully obviously missing: space ship
combat. What's Star Wars without TIE fighters, after all?
Jump to Light Speed is really only going to be of interest
to people who already love SWG, but it's an expansion, so
duh. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, like the
thrill you get from the first time a TIE fighter passes
you at close quarters and makes that SOUND. Except possibly
the second time it happens. Overall, the game is kind of
reminiscent of the old TIE Fighter and X-Wing games.
Basically, JLS adds four new character professions to
the thirty already available with the basic SWG game, though
three of them are really the same thing. There are three
kinds of pilot; Imperial, Rebel, and Privateer. (If you
want to grow up to fly the Millennium Falcon, then Privateer
is the way to go) There's also a shipwright artisan-type
profession. The pilot professions have the bonus of being
"free" in terms of skill points. Not money. See, even if
you're an Imperial pilot, you're going to be required to
pay to build your own ship. That's one thing that seems
a little off. You do get given a basic runabout when you
start, though if you've been playing SWG for 180 days, you
get a 'veteran's' upgrade.
Just like most other MMORPGs, you do your training, you
work basic missions, you slowly gain levels. One thing you
do have to watch out for in early runs is getting rammed
by enemy ships that just come straight at you as they attack.
The AIs do improve as you go on, and groups of fighters
will try to outflank you. Your biggest problem, though,
is going to be ships that are better equipped than you.
Combat is real-time and twitch-based, and you're probably
going to want a joystick, though the game works okay with
mouse control. You won't have to worry too much about flight
operations - the ships basically launch and land themselves,
for instance.
PvP is offered, in special zones, and is purely consensual.
So you don't have to worry about being constantly harassed
by players in better-equipped ships, but you can still fly
round blowing other players apart. In non-PvP zones, though,
you will see the rather odd sight of X-wings and TIE fighters
ignoring each other.
The graphics are pretty damn great. One thing they do
well is scale: planets look really BIG. Star Wars fans,
and really, who else is going to be playing this game, are
going to love the 'authentic' effects like the switch into
hyperdrive. Sound effects ditto: with headphones or good
speakers, you're going to HEAR ships fly past you, or debris
banging into your hull on the appropriate side. And the
samples are straight out of the movies.
There are narrative missions in the game, but despite
that, some players may find it gets a bit repetitive. A
lot of on-line role-playing games are like that, of course:
doing the same thing over and over. Reward is a bit slow
coming with JTL, though, and levelling-up can really feel
like a grind. The game does offer more for players of SWG,
though, and fixes some of the annoyances from that, like
having to wait for shuttles, and really, as an expansion,
that's it's job.
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