Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike Reviewed!

[Link Antilles]

Yet another review from me. This time it's Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike for the Cube.

My review:

You Game Cube veterans out there remember playing Rogue Squadron II, right? For it's time, it had some of the best graphic you could find on a Next-Gen system. Well, Rogue Squadron III doesn't disappoint in the graphics department. The creators have gone back and pushed the Game Cube's hardware farther with bigger explosions, better textures resolution, and more units flying around than you can a shake gaffi stick at. This doesn't come without consequence. The frame rate has decrease some, but not noticeable to most.

Fortunately, they’ve redone the music too, by booting the Midi stuff from the first Rogue Squadron that was left in RS II. The game’s sound is true to Star Wars, yet the voice acting needs some retouching. This time around, a few multi-player modes have been added such as; one on one and co-op mode which allows you to play 13 missions of RS II with a friend. This is a blast, if you can find someone to play with. For co-op mode the difficulty is bumped up a good bit to add a challenge for two players and the frame-rate is on par with the single player mode. Co-op mode is one of my favorite parts of the game.

Single player mode is divided into 3 paths; the first path contains a training mission, an assault on Yavin mission and several Bonus missions; unlocked by earning a certain number of medals for the missions you complete. The second path is the Luke Skywalker campaign, which contains several on-foot missions. The third is the Wedge Antilles campaign, which contain mostly flying missions. Both the Luke and Wedge campaigns eventually come together with the Battle of Endor.

The flying missions are the games strong point like the last. Now to some, the controls may feel a bit out-dated and are the same as RS II, but that's not a major concern. New ships have been added like a Jedi Star fighter armed with Sonic Charges and an Experimental Tie Hunter. Also, a few ships have been updated with rechargeable missiles. In addition, vehicles have been added to the game. The vehicles range from the lanky AT-ST to the nimble speeder bikes, which equally are fun to drive. The same can’t be said about the on-foot missions, which are the bane of the game and ruin some awesome flying and vehicle levels. Most of the on-foot missions involve just running in a set path and hitting the fire button as fast as possible. The game automatically targets for you, which dumbs down the on-foot missions even more. The camera is automatically controlled and I personally believe the camera is out to kill you. More rants about the on-foot missions: (1) The movement controls are pulled straight from the docking bay’s in RS II, (2) you can roll, which is something you’ll probably never use, (3) the blaster is so inaccurate you have to hit people at point-blank range, (4) jumping adds tedious plat-forming areas, and (5) the enemy AI seems only to run at you and shoot. Likewise, you counter this by doing the same thing. To sum it up the on-foot missions are just void of fun and an unnecessary chore. They just needed to toss out the on-foots and throw in some more airtime with the X-wing.

RS III is like the special addition of you favorite DVD. It’s chock-full of special little features like commentary, making of, near DVD-quality scenes from the Classic Star Wars movies, missions over planets from the expanded universe books, and well…. you’ll have to find out the rest. These unlockable features add great replay value to game.

In short, the game’s strong points greatly out weigh the low, for fans of RS II. Most others, I recommend you rent before you buy.


I give it a 7. 4 out of 10


What do you guys think about RS III?

[Shao Feng-Li]

I WAnna play it!!!