Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike
The N64 Rogue Squadron and its Gamecube-debut sequel, Rogue Leader, brought unprecedented professionalism and flair to Star Wars flight simulation. But developer Factor 5 still had a lot of ideas left. After a period of relative silence, they blew the lid open on what promised to be the magnum opus of Star Wars gaming: Rebel Strike.
On-foot missions. Multiplayer. Even better graphics than before. Somehow, they'd managed to improve on the formula in every way. At least, that was the picture they painted. Demos left a few players wary, and when the game came out, the verdict wasn't as one-sided as everyone initially thought it would be.
The story scheme of Rebel Strike is identical to that of Rogue Leader - they don't cover the same missions (the only event they share is the battle on Hoth), but they follow the same pattern of borrowing some from the movies, and fabricating some others to fit in the scheme of things. Rebel Strike splits its "storyline" into two paths: Wedge Antilles' and Luke Skywalker's. They both start at the same point, but from there they go in different directions. While Wedge works supporting the Rebellion in a number of skirmishes, Luke ends up on his own on Dagobah and Tatooine. And between those are Endor missions, which have you controlling a variety of characters to climactically bring down the second Death Star's shield generator.
The flight simulation is the same as last time: good old fashioned TIE-blasting fun. The biggest difference here is that there are more of them. Rebel Strike sports an improved game engine, and they've taken advantage of it with swarms of TIE fighters that would make Admiral Ackbar cry. There are a bunch of new ships this time around, too, including a Jedi Starfighter and the TIE Hunter, and you can pilot some craft you couldn't before (like AT- walkers and speeder bikes). The experiences and skills involved with piloting each of these craft is usually varied enough to keep it interesting. Each mission has a mixture of craft - for instance, in one you'll start out in an AT-ST infiltrating an installation, then you'll get into an AT-AT on rails and whale away on vital targets.
Unfortunately, not all of the new stuff is for the best. A significant portion of the game - not as much as half, but still a good amount - is on-foot. While it does offer a new experience, it isn't very easy to control, nor a very solid engine (even ignoring the uncontrollable camera). You don't aim while on foot, so shooting Stormtroopers is less a matter of skill and more one of moving around while simultaneously mashing the A button. There are some perks (like taking control of an E-Web blaster turret), but for the most part, the on-foot missions just aren't fun.
Graphically, the game looks even better than Rogue Leader - and there are routinely more ships flitting around in a Strike mission than Leader ever had. The sound and music is the same story as last time. These are perhaps epitomized in the game's introduction, which features various on-foot character models on a dance floor with a Death Star disco ball and a Star Wars theme disco remix.
Restoring balance to the Force, Rebel Strike's replay value counteracts the on-foot missions. While the mission campaign is still rather short (though longer than last time), there are still medals to earn, bonus missions to unlock, upgrades to find, and secret ships to uncover. But there's more: multiplayer. Rebel Strike boasts two amazing multiplayer modes, cooperative and versus. Cooperative mode is the entire Rogue Leader game, replicated without fault, made into a two-player adventure. The difficulty has been upped a bit, since you'll have more help with you, but it's otherwise the same as before with the added fun of a friend by your side. Playing co-op is really a blast.
Versus mode is something completely new. You pick a mode and stage, you and your friend each pick a ship, and then you duke it out in a variety of competitions. There are straight-out dogfights, there are speeder bike races, Mechwarrior-like walker battles, enemy melees, even a capture-the-flag derivative. All in all, the multiplayer is what makes Rebel Strike such a vast improvement on Rogue Leader.
Strike brings both good and bad to the table when compared with its predecessor - but more of the former than the latter. Triumphing over Rogue Squadrons I and II, the added replay value of the multiplayer modes (in addition to other unlockables, like the classic versions of the Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back arcade games) should keep you coming back for more this time around.
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