The news came out recently that Sony is, after eight long years, finally shutting down Star Wars Galaxies entirely. While I haven’t touched the game in about seven and a half years (and my recollections are a bit fuzzy now), it’s still a little sad to see it go. I will always remember it as a promising, yet flawed, attempt to really bring the Star Wars universe to life in a way no one had before.

I have been a huge Star Wars fan since as far back as I can remember, and after the, shall we say, unsettling nature of the prequels, I was looking for some solid re-affirmation of all things Star Wars. When Galaxies was announced, I took the classic gamer position of “cautiously optimistic.” On the positive side of things, the game was to be set during the time of the original trilogy, and not involve anything from the prequels. On the downside, it was going to be an MMO.

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It was in the northeastern wilds of Pennsylvania, sometime around the year 1985.  We were heading to the family cabin in the woods for a summer vacation.  In addition to the things you would expect to find at a cabin in the woods — trees, streams, swarms of angry hornets — it also held one very important thing: my cousins’ old Atari 2600. While I had an Intellevision at home, there was something different about playing the Atari.  Being able to play it was one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips. Perhaps it was just the simple fact that it was something new and different to me, or maybe the fact that it had an honest-to-goodness joystick.

On this particular trip, my cousins upped the excitement by telling me they had brought a new game with them: The Empire Strikes Back.  The game was actually several years old by that point, but it was new to me. I loved Star Wars, and the idea of actually being able to play out the movies as a game absolutely blew my six-year-old mind.  As soon as I had a chance, I claimed the TV and the Atari and gave it a try.

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After spending time over the weekend advancing plotlines in Persona, almost all of this week has been spent in various dungeon-crawling games. The boss in the 4th Persona dungeon didn’t even give a second though about handing me my own ass, so i decided that I needed to get my levels up, especially that of my healer. One thing I like about the Persona games is the “rush battle” option…if I know i’m going to win, hit triangle and your dudes will just attack over and over, until the enemy is dead, while I sit back and watch something on TV (truly, I am a great leader). Also nabbed “Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony” for the PSP…I loved the PC games (and am a huge sucker for that style of game), and I’m enjoying the PSP outing as well…not a lot of depth there, but it’s good for a diversion when I just want to play something for 20 minutes. I also finally got around to hopping on the Left4Dead train, and almost immediately hopped back off due to my PC’s complete inability to play the damn thing at a decent framerate, which has angered me to the point where I’m finally considering biting the bullet and getting a new PC – anyone have any recommendations for the best gaming machine I can build on about a $650 budget?

-Jeff Feeser

My gaming time was extremely limited this week, to the point that I think all I’ve actually played was a short bout of Team Fortress 2 and some Hoshigami Remix on the train.  Hoshigami Remix, it should be noted, was designed by beings from another plane of existance with a deep hatred for humans; the coinfeigm engraving/evolution system makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  On the TF2 front, I put some more time in with my map (currently, ctf_inspiredname), and started trying to get a handle on playing Scout in preparation for the pending update.  Scout is the one class I have always studiously avoided, due to my really sucking at it – now is the time to remedy that.   Finally, I found myself suddenly missing Star Wars: Galaxies crafting system yesterday completely out of the blue; this is grounds for slapping me.

-Joel Haddock

Last time, we looked over some of the games from the days of yore that dealt with issues of morality. This time, we’re going to hit the more recent past and deal with some titles that have come since the turn of the century.

Let us begin in a far-off time known as 2003. War was in the air, the Hubble started deep fielding the universe, and the first-ever (non-pen&paper) Star Wars RPG was released: Knights of the Old Republic.

Now, as any Jedi worth his salt can tell you, the moment you bring the Force into the equation, one must invariably face the issue of the Light Side versus the Dark Side. That said, the previous 15 years of Star Wars titles had managed pretty solidly to avoid ever doing that. Either you didn’t play a Force user, or you played someone locked into the side of “Good” with no questions asked.

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“Wow, that wasn’t the worst Star Wars game I’ve ever played.”

That was the exact message I sent a friend after I finished “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”. Of course, playing through that game made me want to do one thing: Dig out the SNES, and play through the original Star Wars platformers again. Which lead to me to thinking about playing Dark Forces. Which lead me to, for some reason, want to dig up Rebel Assault and play through that canyon training sequence again. Which lead me to wanting to inflict the pain of all the other awful Star Wars games I’d played over the years on other people. So, without further ado, join me as I drag myself through twenty years of painful Star Wars videogames that I thought I had drank out of my head!

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