The screenshots were so beautiful. Looking at the back of the box, Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon looks like a low-res Rogue Squadron, an amazing accomplishment on the Game Boy Advance. Not all Star Wars games can be as good as Rogue Squadron, but Flight of the Falcon plays more like Rebel Assault 2. Nobody wants to relive that horror.

Flight of the Falcon takes a not-bad idea, that of flying the Millenium Falcon through some occasionally-original missions taken from the original Star Wars trilogy. There's as much variety of mission and vehicle as the Rogue Squadron series. There's the requisite blow-up-the-Death-Star missions, as well as some missions that play fast and loose with the events of the movies. I don't recall a high-speed chase through the streets of Mos Eisley, for example.

The stages boil down into essentiall three types, regardless of the ship involved. There are space shooter stages, where the Falcon (or whatever) needs to destroy X number of enemies, sometimes before something bad happens. These are usually the one that work out the best, as they put little strain on the 3-D engine. There are also evasion stages, where the player needs to escape something or reach something, and must manuever through a crowded stage to get away or get to the destination. These missions are timed, and are not, in any way, fun. The last type is a combination of the two, with a destruction goal in a cramped environment. These are a bit more fun, but tend to have the worst technical issues.

Of course, by now, there's little new or original to bring to the table when making a Star Wars-themed shooter, as Factor 5 has mined that vein quite heavily. Instead of innovation, the real test is execution. Flight of the Falcon absolutely flunks this test. It's not for trying; Pocket Studios has a fairly cool 3-D engine here, one which has the potential to take the GBA some new directions. Unfortunately, this game is completely beyond its abilities. It clearly strains in simple space shoot-'em-up stages, then bogs down completely in complex stages. Flight of the Falcon might have made a good tech demo, but the technical issues absolutely ruin it as a game.

First, and foremost, is the handling. Every ship slips and skids on its plane of movement, making it hard to keep control. This is part of the problem for evading enemy fire, but not all of it, and makes the high-speed chase stages absolutely horrific. Getting through each stage is basically an issue of luck or memorization, but stage elements are so repetitive that it's almost impossible to memorize most of the stages, and the vehicles often handle too poorly to evade any of the on-coming obstacles.

Secondly, hit detection...well, there isn't any hit detection. It's possible to fly through walls, be hit by enemy fire that didn't even come close, and crash without warning into things that come flying from behind the ship. For example, in the Mos Eisley chase, it's possible to drive through the corners of buildings, but not slim pipes or low rises. Laser blasts are just as bad; occasionally the ship will be hit by invisible blasts or shots that had already passed, but visible shots will pass through harmlessly. All of this contributes to a general feeling of glitchiness.

Despite the bugs, this is a true 3-D engine, and occasionally Flight puts it through its paces. Star Destroyers, for example, look incredibly cool, and the Millenium Falcon does look pretty sharp, despite slipping and sliding around the screen. Everything else...eeeh. Stage elements are pixellated and bland, each stage has only one enemy, and nothing seems to move very realistically. More than ugly, the graphics are non-functional, occasionally even obscuring the action. Some things look nice, in still images, but watching things move is pain itself.

All the laws of the universe are invalid. Flight of the Falcon is a Star Wars title with horrible sound. The standard TIE Fighter howls and laser blasts are all acceptable, but the theme music obliterates any good from those. The problem starts from the beginning, with an atrocious MIDI version of the Star Wars fanfare, and only goes downhill. Every mission gets worse and worse; nothing is technically unproficient, but the quality of the orchestration is unlistenable. In practice, Flight is just another game to play with the sound off.

Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon is pretty in screenshots, but weak in every other possible measure. There isn't any clear reason to play this game, and precious few reasons to own it. Star Wars completists might want to inflict this mess on themselves, but everyone else will probably be happier with the infinitely-better Iridion 3D. Avoid this disaster at all costs.

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