Independence Day

The Good
A 3d action game that capitalized on the summer blockbuster film Independence Day where a cable guy, Will Smith and the president of the United States save the world from an alien invasion... yeah, let's skip the plot shall we?

The gameplay premise has you freeing up cities that have been overtaken by the alien motherships by blasting their shield generators and in the end taking down their main weapon before they fire it. To do so you have to jump in the cockpit of several aircrafts from around the world and fly around a la Rogue Squadron shooting down alien ships, avoiding enemy fire and collecting power up items and secret stuff (like warps to secret levels and fighter planes). The levels themselves are determined by the motherships, providing the ceiling and edges (via a force field that extends from their outer perimeter) and you have a series of allied fighters to back you up, but usually it will be up to you to clear out the levels.

The controls are tight, and responsive enough and...well, this is as far as we go here folks.

The Bad
First of all the graphics in the game scream "first generation playstation game" with those horribly giant flat graphics you knew from Die Hard Trilogy as a main interface and some very, very crude polygonal graphics (that still use sprites every now and then) to display the gameworld. The textures are extremely low-res even for a game of that time, and the special effects are absolutely non-existant, with the lack of any lightning effects being one of the major dissapointments.

However the main problem in Independence Day is the poor gameplay. The game is a repetitive and boring affair that provides only bland action and unexciting appeal. Each missions is the same as the last one with little to no variety in the form of the various planes, and the 3D dogfighting isn't as refined as in other 3D flying games, making it very hard to shoot down enemy ships and/or have any fun at all in the game.

The Bottom Line
The classic problem behind all those quick cash-in licensed games:crappy generic gameplay slapped on a lackluster game concept. With a little more polish this could have been the predecessor to Rogue Squadron, but unfortunately it ended up being a generic and forgetable action game. Don't even bother.