I Do Not Get to Like Tie Fighter

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I’ve got more games than I need, but I still find myself checking the Humble Bundles. Every now and then I see something that is worth a few bucks just to have the (very theoretical) ability to play an old favorite of mine that I sold in some long forgotten garage sale.

And this week I saw it was a Star Wars pack that included TIE Fighter, a game that now regularly makes virtually every “Best Games of All Time” list. A game that I read about with as much attention as possible back in the days when you could only get news on dead trees. A game I excitedly bought brand new, rushed home to play, and then repeatedly failed to get myself to like.

It was so odd to me that there would be a LucasArts game I didn’t like. Some people geek out over genres. Some people go into full on nerd-mode over certain universes. But I was the only kid I ever knew who freaked out over a game company.

As an adult I know I’ll never experience that type of adulation again. They were a company, a good one, but why did I pore over every issue of The Adventurer like it might have the secret to the Holy Grail inside? Why did I hang a Monkey Island poster up in my garage? Why did I have this great idea to set up a VCR to my computer and just record myself playing The Day of the Tentacle?

Why did my love for the company transcend genres? I beat Dr. Tongue (Shooter Action-Adventure). I got a 100% Indy Quotient (adventure games). I built a hell that scared the Powers that Be (Sim). These were radically different games, but I was excited for each of them solely because they came from LucasArts.

And then there was Star Wars.

I’m still a huge enough fan to know that Star Wars takes place in the future and not the past (The Journal of the Whills, the story of the Star Wars, is a recount of the past by R2D2 as an ancient robot long after all the events in episodes 1-9 have already taken place, hence “A long time ago”), but my current fondness for the original trilogy is but a pale shadow of the – obsessive is the right word – level of attachment I had for it as a kid. Surely a LucasArts Star Wars game would thrill my 15-year old self to the bones.

But no. It didn’t. It was, in fact, the biggest disappoint of my gaming life.

I remember it like it was yesterday.

~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~

I’m looking at the box, a box that represents the only new game I’ll play for the next three months, with a hope that rings more than a little hollow. I want to like it, but I’m pretty sure I won’t.

I know, I know, I know. It’s got awesome graphics! It’s got Grand Admiral Thrawn! It’s got secret missions from the Emperor! And it takes place in a morally ambiguous version of the trilogy!

Those things all sound super awesome. I can picture myself swooping my TIE Fighter around and blowing up the “rebel scum” with a wink and a smirk. I can picture being the bad guy and going on the path to the Dark Side. It’s just that I don’t think it’ll happen, because I felt excited about X-Wing too, and I could never get into that game. It asked too much and didn’t give enough back in return. I tell myself that was an entire year ago and that I’m a lot more mature now. Maybe I’ll like it. Maybe.

I turn on my computer and begin feeding 1.44MB HDs into the drive, one after the other. When I’m finally done I still have to fiddle around with the DOS prompts and settings until I get it to work. My SNES is much easier, but I understand: Computer games just take time.

I get it up and running. The first place I find myself is in front of a registration desk with a gruff, no-nonsense lieutenant who asks for my name. "FLT. CADET RALLS, sir!" Yea. That sounds pretty badass.

The game tells me I’ve got 0 Laser Hits, 0 Warhead Hits, 0 Total Kills, 0 Total captures, and 0 Craft Lost. Hmmm. So it’s going to track everything I do? That’s new. Maybe I will like this after all.

I’m inside of a huge space hangar. The harsh metallic architecture lets me know I’m not with the Rebels anymore. In the hangar I get to choose which door to go through. One leads to the Film Room – where I can watch replays of my epic flights, one to the Training Simulator – where I’ll go through an obstacle course to learn the ropes, one to the Tech Room – where I can examine all of the Empire’s ships in glorious 3D polygons that spin and twist, and one to the combat chamber – the place where I’ll actually play the game.

I could go to the Training Simulator, but doing some sort of lesson to play a game sounds like school, and I get enough of that. I don’t have to train to play any other LucasArts games, so I’m not going to do it now. I’ll figure things out as I go. Time to play.

Except it’s not time to play. It’s time to get a briefing, apparently. Another stern officer begins to tell me that my objective is to inspect cargo. What? I just wanted to blast the Millennium Falcon! Why is this game not giving me instant action? I make myself relax. I knew that this game was a flight simulator when I bought it, not a constant adrenaline rush like the action games I’m used to. It will take some time and effort.

I click the button and finally I’m in space. I move my joystick to the left and the spaceship moves left. But it’s not just any spaceship; it’s a TIE Fighter. I always pictured myself in an X-Wing, but I’m still playing inside of a universe that I sometimes literally dream of.

I should love this. But I don’t.

I veer too far to the left. I veer too far to the right. I never move smoothly; it’s all hard dives and barrel rolls. Maybe I should get a Flightstick Pro … .

No. I’m not 10 years old anymore. I’m not going to blame my lack of videogame skills on my controller. My joystick is perfectly fine; it’s me that is the problem. I’ve got to learn to take it slow. Calm down, JR. Learn to take your time.

And I do. For a little while. I even manage to pass the first couple of missions, which allow me to talk to a cloaked figure. He’s a special envoy of the Emperor and will give me secret assignments, real cloak and dagger stuff. So cool.

Maybe I will like this game after all.

And I do. Kinda. A little. At least until the first missions are done and the game grows into what it is: a flight SIMULATOR, a piece of software that is supposed to simulate what it is like to be a pilot. And unlike the other action games I play, this one wants me to learn skills, not just collect power-ups. This one wants me to grow and develop my talents. This one is not going to hold my hand for every second of the game. It’s going to demand that I work and use patience if I want to play it.

And that’s the problem. I don’t want to PLAY it. I’m drawn into the story. I love hearing the secret missions and I badly need to find out how this tale ends. I love the graphics, I love the visuals, I love the tone. Simply put, I love everything about the game except the part I have to play.

I love the idea of this game, but I don’t like the game itself. The act of flying a TIE Fighter and being barely able to find enemy ships, let alone shoot them down – that’s what I don’t like. I don’t like the level of skill it requires or the sheer amount of time this game wants from me. I don’t like working for my fun. And if this isn’t fun, then ... .

Simple logic dictates how I should end that sentence. I just don’t like the idea of it. I want to become the Emperor’s loyal pilot. I want to get a perfect score on each mission. I want to see if I can crush the Rebellion. But there is no way to accomplish those tasks other than to play the game. And flying a TIE Fighter has become just the price I have to pay to unlock the story. And as much as I like Star Wars stories, I can’t think of a reason not to just read The Courtship of Princess Leia instead.

I tell myself it’s only a game. It’s OK to not like a game. I should be fine with that, but I’m not. I feel like I let myself down.

But that’s silly. Not liking a toy isn't a personal failure. I've just got to accept that there are some games I don't like and focus on the ones that I do. At least for now.

So I pack up the box and put it away and think, "Maybe I'll try it again someday." People do change, and maybe someday my tastes will change too.

~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~

What the heck? The Humble Bundle's only a couple of bucks, and the wife and kids will be out for at least another hour. So I click the Humble Button, put the key into Steam, and start the game with far less effort than it took me back in 1994.
I smile at the intro. I smile at the old graphics. I smile at the cheesy music and hokey dialogue. But I don’t smile when I play the game. So I turn it off after about five minutes.

Same problems. I still don’t like flight simulators. But now I’m OK with that.

15-year-old me wanted to experience everything. He was disappointed and saddened when he didn’t like TIE Fighter because that meant that he would never get to experience the joy of a good flight game. But 37-year old me knows that there are joys that are reserved for some people, that no one person can experience every joy.

I will never experience the joy of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, because I find it to fail at the basic task of literature: communicating meaning. I will never experience the joy of a good grapefruit, because I hate that foul-tasting fruit. And I’m OK with being denied those joys for the same reason I’m now OK with being denied the joy of TIE Fighter.

Because I know there are other joys out there for me. I can have the joy of mangoes and pineapples or the joy of A Passage to India or I, Claudius. And I can even have the joy of the quick and easy LEGO games.

This world, even the small tiny virtual world we often play in, is too big, too wide, too expansive, to experience all of its joys in one lifetime. So I will look at TIE Fighter in my Steam library, think briefly of my youth, smile, and click on LEGO Star Wars instead. It’s a game I know I’ll like. And these days that is a good enough reason for me.

Comments

I’ve got more games than I need, but I still find myself checking the Humble Bumbles.

Interesting typo there. I often bumble on in and buy a ton of games I will probably never play.

PaladinTom wrote:
I’ve got more games than I need, but I still find myself checking the Humble Bumbles.

Interesting typo there. I often bumble on in and buy a ton of games I will probably never play.

Fixed!

Yea, I have that issue as well. "Why do I buy games I have such a tiny chance of playing? " might be a future article of mine.

"Why did I have this great idea to set up a VCR to my computer and just record myself playing The Day of the Tentacle?"

Duh, because you wanted me to watch it. You don't have that video still, do you?

Dakuna wrote:

Duh, because you wanted me to watch it. You don't have that video still, do you? :)

No, it never happened. I was working on it, but my Dad and Step-Mom intervened and had a talk with me about how no one would ever want to watch someone else play video games.

jrralls wrote:

No, it never happened. I was working on it, but my Dad and Step-Mom intervened and had a talk with me about how no one would ever want to watch someone else play video games.

You could make a heartwarming film trailer about that premise these days.

As for the article, I know there've been games I felt like I should like, and might have even written about 'em, but I cannot for the life of me remember one. I think I've gotten better at figuring out what I'll like. Or perhaps I'm just more open. There are some games I've gone back to and realized I was completely wrong about the first time.

~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~

Great article. I had a pretty much identical experience with Half-Life 2! Well, the first part of the article, anyway. I never bought Half-Life 2 again. On the bright side, Half-Life 2 came with Steam, which has been rather handy over the years.

Great read. I'm the opposite in that I loved that the game was more sim than action game. It made it feel more "real" to me. To that end, I haven't liked most Star Wars space games since X-Wing Alliance (*cough* Rogue Squadron).

I am however right there with you though for games like Dark Souls.

So I will look at TIE Fighter in my Steam library, think briefly of my youth, smile, and click on LEGO Star Wars instead.

Oh, that just hurts to read, down in my core.

*Legion* wrote:
So I will look at TIE Fighter in my Steam library, think briefly of my youth, smile, and click on LEGO Star Wars instead.

Oh, that just hurts to read, down in my core.

I also legitimately, in all seriousness, do not like the movie, The Godfather.

I absolutely loved TIE Fighter but for reasons too long to list right now.

What's funny is that despite how much I loved it I read your piece and oddly found myself nodding in agreement.

X-Wing and TIE Fighter were bafflingly punishing, especially coming off other space sims like Wing Commander, which was also difficult but without all the secret objectives and incredibly long training tutorials. I remember doing the training missions just because I wanted my pilot kitted out with all the qualification badges. TIE Fighter was a slightly lesser offender in terms of secret tertiary objectives but it was still there.

I wondered as I played it and immersed myself in the story and setting that was the TIE Fighter game, with its surprising amount of intrigue for a space sim and constant sense of peril due to the fragile nature of Imperial fighters, who was this game designed for? For the hardcore Star Wars enthusiasts who were masochistic enough to want to still fly a TIE Fighter after shooting down a dozen in one mission alone in an X-Wing it was the best thing ever. Outside that tiny niche? Seems like the game is more fondly remembered than it deserves to be.

I really think so many of us loved Tie Fighter because the story was quite good. I mean, the gameplay was pretty damn close to X-Wing, but I never loved X-Wing the way I love Tie Fighter.

It's the same reason I have fond memories of Dark Forces, but not so much the Jedi Knight games.

Or maybe that's just my incorrect memory.

garion333 wrote:

I really think so many of us loved Tie Fighter because the story was quite good. I mean, the gameplay was pretty damn close to X-Wing, but I never loved X-Wing the way I love Tie Fighter.

It certainly helped. For me, simulations are what made PC gaming great. Space sims like the X-Wing line, all those Microprose flight/tank/sub sims, Falcon 3, even MechWarrior II... that is what "PC gaming" was to me in the early-to-mid '90s. It's what PCs could do that you could not get from a little piece of Japanese consumer electronics plugged into the living room TV.

Elite: Dangerous and American Truck Simulator are happily dragging me right back there.

I wanted so hard to like the original X-Wing. I bounced off of it once, but with perseverance, I learned to fly the damn things and I loved it. For me, Tie Fighter did hot have the same learning curve, and it has always been ranked below X-Wing in my mind.

garion333 wrote:
~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~
~Doodeloo~

:lol:

Heh... I didn't get it until the second set. I thought the author was making R2 noises...

ccesarano wrote:
jrralls wrote:

No, it never happened. I was working on it, but my Dad and Step-Mom intervened and had a talk with me about how no one would ever want to watch someone else play video games.

You could make a heartwarming film trailer about that premise these days.

You never know what's going to become a thing. Not that one VHS would have made anyone famous, but I bet Ron Gilbert or Tim Shafer would have gotten a kick out of it if it existed and you'd sent them a copy.

Richard Garriott regularly gets people telling him they finished Ultimate games; he retweets a lot of the ones he gets on Twitter.

Crazed Java wrote:

I absolutely loved TIE Fighter but for reasons too long to list right now.

I played X-Wing sooooo much. I played it for years. But I never got a chance to play TIE Fighter. David Savini gave me his discs and the fifth disc was damaged and wouldn't install. I'm just so happy I finally get the chance to play it after all these years.

Worry not, JR Ralls. I'll love it for you.

Someone didn't like Tie Fighter?!? B-b-b-but...

1. Fantastic, authentic integration with the Star Wars world.
2. An improvement in gameplay from X-Wing.
3. A great story.
4. Clint Bajakian and the iMuse engine.
5. yadda yadda yadda

I picked this up the day it came out in the summer of 1994. I was 14, had nothing else to do, and was completely swallowed up by this game. I remember the first time the music dynamically changed as I shifted from casually meandering in space to moving to attack Rebel scum and I almost fell out of my chair at how awesome the moment was. There were specific motifs for nearly everything that happened in the game, all informed by John Williams's original works. Definitely for me one of the best Star Wars games ever made.

Loved X-Wing - still a top 10 for me. Bought Tie Fighter. Played just one hour. One reason. The radar change. Didn't like the radar change then, don't like it now. To track your eyes from one corner to another of the display when you roll an enemy over your beltline? GTFO.

I think I've posted this before. When do I get my "Curmudgeon" badge?

Tomorrow night (3/17) we're playing X-wing vs TIE coop campaign over at spacegamejunkie. Ping me on Steam if you want to join in. Username = AlienPickle

I loved reading this. Thank you so much for writing it up.

I now feel so much better about games I hate that everyone loves and games I love that everyone hates.

So much useful insight.

I am not going to slag you at all for not liking it.

I loved it and it's a chunk of fond memories of PC gaming "back then," playing it with my Dad and brother and cousin. That's probably the last game my Dad ever really got into - he just doesn't play games anymore. We used to have that common war against the Rebel scum that we could share. No more.

I love the tone of the article because it really resonates with the sadness I feel for someone who couldn't enjoy it. I had so much fun with it and it's kind of a sad wake-up to realize that that feeling isn't universal.

Nicely done.

I will never experience the joy of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, because I find it to fail at the basic task of literature: communicating meaning.

How did this get through wordsmythe without a seven page editorial response and mandatory contextual analysis classes?

kazooka wrote:
I will never experience the joy of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, because I find it to fail at the basic task of literature: communicating meaning.

How did this get through wordsmythe without a seven page editorial response and mandatory contextual analysis classes?

It's actually my major complaint about High Modernism.

This hit a little home. Although I loved TIE fighter I never liked X-Wing (one reason was that I couldn't beat one of the early missions. I was so excited for it too (because Wing Commander). For me this was high school and I got the game for a gift and never touched it until I had a night to myself. I found TIE fighter to hit just the right difficulty level; afterwards I was able to return to X-Wing and go through the campaign without a problem.

One thing I do remember about TIE Fighter though was that in the story everything gets turned up to 11 (or 12) with the Defender and the Missile boat with missions that have you destroying shipyards. There was a little shark jumping there but I liked it!

Just wanted to chime in a say "great article". I love the X-Wing/Tie Fighter Series of games but for me, nostalgia really plays a big role in my enjoyment level when I replayed it recently. I also remember how many times I was so frustrated at a challenging mission that I quit playing for days at a time....

This was a good article. It reminds me of one of the very few games I actually returned to a store, which was a game that apparently everyone else loved: Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.

I had played flight sims before SWotL, and have played many since then, too. This one, for some reason, just didn't click with me. At the time I was in my early 20s and working my first job after college, so this game represented a non-trivial portion of my discretionary budget. I decided to return it and use the funds to get something more to my liking. The person working at the store (either EB or Babbage's I think) stopped just short of accusing me of pirating the game and returning it.

Ironically, SWotL was the grandfather of TIE Fighter, as Lawrence Holland designed them both (and X-Wing as well).

Despite this, I really loved TIE Fighter and played through the campaign a couple of times. I never did play X-Wing, though I'm not sure why. Like JR, I was really into Star Wars as a kid. When I was in school, I would spend a lot of time doodling ginormous X-Wing/TIE battles in my notebooks, instead of using the notebooks for their intended purpose.

SWOL was hard to get into, especially if you played "Their Finest Hour", which was the predecessor to Secret Weapons.

Their Finest Hour was exploring the Battle of Britian and also covering a period of aviation history where things had advanced well beyond WWI air superiority but the aircraft themselves were still not refined. The period of history and the oft ignored point of aviation history.

Interestingly enough, there was a Pacific theater since before that which is probably the original of all of these. The name escapes me right now but Their Finest Hour was leaps and bounds better.