Star Wars: Rogue Leader
Rogue
Squadron II
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the Rebel Alliance calls on the
hotshot pilots of Rogue Squadron for the toughest assignments - and that means
you. You and your wingmen take on the defenses of the Death Star, buy time for
a Rebel retreat from Hoth, beat Imperial forces away from Cloud City, and take
on other high-risk assignments. A variety of ships is at your disposal, though
initially you start out with a choice of the trusty X-Wing and the robust
Y-Wing; if you advance to later missions, A-Wings and B-Wings become available
too, along with a few others.
(LucasArts, 2001 - for Nintendo GameCube)
It was hard to decide whether this game should be reviewed in the Phosphor Dot Fossils Retro Revival Reviews section, or in the Pixel Fiction area where most recent SF-inspired games land,
because in so many ways, the early stages of this game are the
1983 Atari Star Wars
arcade game, resurrected with the benefit of 18 years' worth of graphical
advancement.
On that note, I may as well get this out of the way - Rogue Leader
looks fantastic. If you're a fan of the Star Wars universe, and especially the
original trilogy, this is the game for
you. Light years ahead of the aforementioned arcade game that drew everything
on the screen as crude line art - a sacrifice made to give the game its
breakneck speed - Rogue Leader is like putting yourself into the movie,
at DVD resolution. It looks that good. The surround sound treatment is
no slouch either.
Where game play is concerned, Rogue Leader is a flying ace there too.
In some respects, if anything, it's almost a bit slow at times, but speeding
the game up too much might have made it too difficult to play - a lot of us
don't have Jedi reflexes, after all. Your control may be a little bit
sluggish if you're trying to make minute adjustments to your course, but there's
nothing quite like going in and going in full throttle. Blasting away
TIE Fighters is a big thrill, but I have to admit that going down the trench may
be the best part of any level of the whole game - there just isn't a more iconic
space battle scene in the Star Wars universe than the Death Star trench, and
they could've gotten away with that being the whole game, and I would've still
eaten it up. Even though I always wind up spreading myself all over the walls
of that trench like a thin layer of "bantha poodoo." There are also
unlockable "side missions" aboard the Millennium Falcon as well,
including the asteroid field chase from The Empire Strikes Back
and the post-Death-Star-escape TIE Fighter dogfight from Star
Wars. There are several unlockable vehicles as well, at least one of
which is an interesting "holdover" from the prequel era.
In short, Rogue Leader is that rare combination of a good game
and a good franchise license. Star Wars lends itself naturally to
good gaming scenarios - again going back to the original arcade game, The Empire Strikes Back
on the Atari 2600, and even more recent
fare like Episode I
Racer on the N64, but there are just as many misfires that just
impacted on the surface (I'll direct you to our existing review of The Masters Of Teras Kasi for more details). Rogue
Leader is a solid new entry in the former category, for sure - raising the
bar considerably for what a game set in the Star Wars universe should be, by
remembering some of the best elements of past games.
Now that I'm finally catching up with the current generation of consoles and
I've found this gem, I wonder what Rogue Squadron
III is like...
A whole dollar - trade it in for more quarters, you'll be playing this
game a lot.
