Welcome to what will be my last entry into TIE Fighter for a while. I say that because I’ve hit a wall. A wall of difficulty, of frustration and of no patience. The missions in this first expansion, Defender of the Empire, are beginning to feel like they’re difficult for the sake of being difficult, rather than an actual attempt at challenging the veteran TIE Pilot.
So I’m taking a break from the game for a while. It’s becoming a chore, and I’m dreading the missions rather than looking forward to them. When that happens, you walk away for a while, which is exactly what I plan to do. I’m not done entirely, I’m just putting this series on hold for a spell. Therefore, join me as I twice fail the mission:
Tour of Duty IX, Mission 3: Protect Evacuation
And thank you for watching.
This game does come from a time when difficulty ramps were often exponential; most players were expected to stall out somewhere on the way to the end, with only the hardest of the hard core getting all the way through.
It also dates from an era when people were more accustomed to arcade games, with their “keep trying the level ’til you beat it” design.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. While the game’s difficulty ramp is getting particularly steep, I’m also a different type of gamer than I was in 1994.
One of the things that’s become more possible since then is the idea that a mission doesn’t have to be pass/fail. Even before these games, though, Wing Commander and others were doing branched campaigns where mission failure just sent you down a different path, rather than leaving you facing a wall.
Sigh, yeah, the whole pass/fail concept can get really annoying. Make it interesting and force me down another path if I fail. I mean I get WHY it’s so linear, but damn.
I ‘ve also never finished the first expansion. There was this mission that I could not win, even after using the official cheats (infinite shields and torpedoes if I remember correctly). Wing Commander’s Secret mission are also damn hard. Nowdays I try to use cheats to skip missions. I am to impatient and with little time for gaming, to deal with arcadelike design.
Use your tractor beam! You can annihilate those TIE Advanceds in practically no time at all with it — it forces them to fly in a straight line.
Gah, I ALWAYS forget to use my beam! It’s literally the death of my character. ;)