RETRO REVIEW: Independence Day (1997)
Because it's America's Independence Day... obviously...
1996 was an amazing year for movies. That year we got Twister, Space Jam, Jerry Maguire, Jumanji, Toy Story, The Ghost and the Darkness, Romeo+Juliet, The Cable Guy, Mission: Impossible, and The Rock! However above all of those stood one juggernaught of a film that dominated the box office: Independence Day. If you haven’t seen it, the story follows a few main characters:
US Marine Captain Steve Hiller (Will Smith)
American President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman), and
An apparently very skilled cable repair guy/Apple PowerBook user David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum).
All you really need to know if you’ve not seen the movie — which, seriously, go watch it — is this: aliens show up and wreck earth. Humans fight back and eventually win. I don’t think I really need to give spoiler warnings here, seeing as this movie is almost 30 years old and they had a sequel set on Earth.
The movie was a massive hit, bringing in $306.1 million USD while in theaters. For perspective, that would be roughly $613 million today, and with any movie that big there was bound to be tons of merchandise to be found! I for one, as a kid, had some of the toys from Trendmasters including the Alien Science Officer, the Alien Attacker, and the F-18.
But the following year we would get the official tie-in game. I originally had this game for PC back in the day, but for this review I decided to play the PlayStation release.
Background
As already mentioned, this game is “based on” Independence Day from the year before. I use the term based on very loosely here as there is not a lot that is really similar to the movie. It was released on March 11, 1997 in North America, and on June 13, 1997 in Europe for PC, PlayStation, and Saturn.
Overall the game appears to have been poorly received, but as an 11-year-old kid I was just excited to get to fly around shooting aliens like Will Smith did in the movie! However, as an adult, I must say I find myself mostly in agreement with this IGN review from April 23, 1997:
“Fox Interactive has such a great reputation when it comes to making games from movies. Take a look at Die Hard Trilogy - great movies, great game. What happened? Independence Day for the PlayStation possesses no redeeming qualities.”
Well, I will be kinder than that, but the author is not far off…
Story
The story here loosely follows the plot of the movie. Aliens show up. Aliens break stuff. Humans try to blow aliens up. However that’s about where the similarities end. As far as I can tell, you are playing as Eagle Leader, the leader of a squadron and your wingman is Captain Steven Hiller… you know, the main character from the movie who is off saving the world.
There are no real story points, just missions, so there’s not much to say here.
Story score is 1/10.
Gameplay
Basic Premise
Gameplay wise, this game is pretty basic. It’s an arcade-style combat flight simulator. You go on missions in a pretty good variety of locations including New York, Paris, Washington DC, Tokyo, Moscow, the alien mothership, and more.
On those missions you have objectives which usually come down to two things:
Destroy X number of something
Destroy the City Destroyer’s main weapon
Once the first objective is achieved, you have 30 seconds to blow up the enemy’s main weapon. If you succeed the ship blows up and you move on to the next mission. If you fail, the weapon fires and the mission restarts at the plane selection screen.
It’s simple enough, but it also gets super repetitive.
Controls
The controls are pretty dated. It took me a while to get the hang of them and flying your plane definitely comes with a learning curve. The game doesn’t appear to support the Dual Shock controller so you’re stuck using the D-pad for movement. The two back triggers (L2 and R2) are used to brake and accelerate respectively. X fires your missiles and O fires your guns; this threw me off for a while because it’s inverted from what I thought they should have been. Square opens a map of the area, and I can’t remember what triangle does, but I never had to use it.
Overall, the controls are fine. When I play these games I intentionally try to put myself into the mindset of someone playing the game back when it first came out, though sometimes it’s hard to set aside our more modern sensibilities when it comes to gaming.
Power Ups
As you fight the enemy there are numerous power ups scattered around including repairs and missiles.
You can also find little plane pick ups. These will give you a shield for 20 seconds making you invincible to both enemy fire and collision damage. However, there are also new planes to be found like the A-10 Warthog, the F-16 Falcon, the F-15 Eagle, and more. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that apparently if you die in a mission, the plane you were shot down in is gone forever… that kind of sucked.
Enemies
As you start the game there are two main enemies that you have to deal with: attackers (enemy fighters), and laser turrets on the bottom of the enemy ship. The turrets are easy to get rid of, and the attackers aren’t that bad either. The biggest thing with them is their speed and agility which makes them hard to keep on screen long enough to lock onto, but I think that actually serves as a positive here.
Around mission 3 or 4, you start getting introduced to newer enemies, including ground turrets that have some wild weapons that really drove me crazy. The Blinder is the less annoying of the two ground weapons I had to deal with. It’s basically a flash of white light that makes it hard (but not impossible to see). The Tumbler on the other hand was absolutely terrible and I got extremely annoyed anytime I was hit by it. It basically causes you to lose control of your plane and spin out of control (usually causing you to crash into a forcefield, the ground, or the destroyer that acts as a ceiling for each level.
As the missions progress, you also get introduced to new types of attackers with different stats. Needless to say, none of this was from the movie. While the variety of enemies was a nice addition to the game, the way they implemented all of this could have been better.
Side Missions
In addition to the 13 main missions you have to play through, there are also several side missions. To access these, look for a strange object in the sky that looks like a metal tube. Fly through it (and presumeably in to a portal) to be transferred to a side mission of destroying the aliens and then flying back through the portal.
Overall, the game does a good job of giving you a variety of planes to fly (each with its own pros and cons). It also does a good job with the concepts of the enemies in the game. However, the overall gameplay is kind of boring after a little while, and while I got used to the controls, they really did make the game more difficult than it needed to be.
Gameplay score: 2/10
Graphics
In Game Graphics
The visuals in this game are pretty standard for early PlayStation titles. The problem here is that this was not an early PlayStation title. This game came out in 1997, the same year as Ace Combat 2 which was a better arcade-style fighter game in every regard.
The graphical fidelity actually didn’t bother me that much, but what did bother me was the low draw distance causing you to not be able to actually find your objectives as you went along. For instance, on the first mission (Grand Canyon) you have to destroy 4 shield generators on the underside of the city destroyer ship. Doing so will activate the enemy’s main weapon for you to destroy.
It’s pretty straightforward and isn’t that hard in theory. What makes it hard is that the draw limitations artificially inflate the difficulty. You can’t see the generators until you are just about on top of them, and at that distance it makes it very hard to hit the generator with 3 missiles to destroy it. If you fail to destroy it, you’ll have to fly out and turn around, but often times you lose sight of the generator anyway. Beyond that, you will always have to fly away longer than you’d expect in order to get far enough away to not still be right on top of the target, even at full throttle (which just compounds the draw issues). The radar isn’t really very helpful either, so you just kind of have to guess. Unfortunately, that’s not even unique to the first level.
Other than that, the graphics aren’t great, but they aren’t the worst I’ve ever seen on the console, but for a 1997 title. it really should have been better.
Animations and Cutscenes
There aren’t any cutscenes unless you want to count the brief animation of your plane taking off before each mission. The other scenes you do occasionally get are cut from the film itself. They’re super compressed and don’t look great, but they are FMV which is a nice touch. However, I don’t think I can really take those into consideration when it comes to the overall graphics score.
Graphics score: 2/10
Soundtrack
There is none. There is no music playing while you are in missions, however there does appear to be an actual soundtrack that someone pulled from the Saturn version and that music is actually pretty good! Honestly, it’s good enough that I’d add it to my game OST libraty.
With that said, it’s a shame it wasn’t playing in the game itself as it would really enhance the overall experience. In fact, later on in the game I put on a YouTube playlist of the soundtrack while I played and it was SO much better.
I would like to score the soundtrack higher because it does deserve it, but the fact that there are only a few songs and they’re not playing during missions, really hurts the game in my humble opinion.
Soundtrack score: 3/10
Overall Rating & Final Thoughts
Rating: 2.2/10
Story: 1/10
Gameplay: 2/10
Graphics: 2/10
Soundtrack: 3/10
Nostalgia Wild Card: 3/10
Final Thoughts
I’ll be straightforward with you. This game is not good. If you get a chance to play it, do so, If for no other reason than to just say you did. For me, I gave it a 3/10 for the nostalgia wild card factor simply because I loved the movie and have fond-ish memories with this game on our family desktop back in the late 90s. Playing it today though, I really didn’t care for it. I actually gave up after the fifth mission because I was actively starting to dislike the game, which doesn’t usually happen.
If you want to play a good arcade flight sim, go play one of the Ace Combat titles. If you want a good Independence Day flight sim, go play the Katina mission on Star Fox 64.
In closing, I can’t recommend this one. I really wanted to, but it’s just not a good game. Unless you have some nostalgia for it, or you’re building out a collection (I got my copy loose [disc only] for $4), don’t waste your time or money on it.
I’m telling you though, if they’d put the music in the missions, the game would have probably faired a little bit better.
Loved this article. Hit me smack in the nostalgia centers of the brain… and heart.