Smile UK Store - Star Wars: Rogue Leader - Rogue Squadron II (GameCube)

The game is actually a sequel to Rogue Squadron on the N64--an excellent game that many only remember from the rather lacklustre PC version. It's structurally very similar to the original, with a dozen or so levels and a Star Destroyer full of secret levels and ships. There are a few new ideas, such as controllable wingman and ground troops, and some of the levels are set in deep space instead of just planetside, but at its heart this is still Rogue Squadron Deluxe.

What elevates the game to an object of worship is the graphics--they really do look almost identical to the movies, with several scenes being copied exactly, and move with a fluidity and grace you wouldn't have thought possible from a £150 console. The only flaw is that the missions are needlessly short, but there's plenty of replayability, and by gosh there's those graphics...--David Jenkins

Many of the levels see you taking control of wedge antilles carrying out missions that are not featured in the films such as the capture of the imperial shuttle tyderium. But of course there are also classic scenes from the films such as the death star trench run and the battle of endor.

It is extremely satisfying hitting your target after a long dogfight and the ship sounds are straight from the films. Get this before rogue squadron 3 as it is better in many ways. This is one of my favourite games ever and definately one of the best star wars based games around!

Rogue Leader was showcased at the industry events as some kind of benchmark game for the Gamecube. It had to. There wasn't much else to show. I'm sure all of us will remember that first tech demo we saw the surface of the Deathstar, lifted straight from the final moments of the first movie. It was spectacular. Witnessing all that enemy fire coming up from the surface and the swarm of Ties flying all over the shop, it was enough to convince you that the Gamecube was the future of videogaming. But no, Rogue Leader is nothing more than a lot of hullabalooza and not much else.

If you've never played a Rogue Squadron game before let me summarise: you, as a pilot of the Rebel Alliance, fly various missions directly associated to the films or related ones the developers have thought up of - those ones are usually rubbish. Controlling all the craft of the rebel fleet, you fly missions either in space or on planet surfaces and most revolve around initial objectives which are deflected through circumstances that crop up - invariably it's Tie Bombers appearing from nowhere and attacking the target you're supposed to defend.

If I sound a little bored about the whole experience then you'd be right. Factor 5 knew exactly what they were doing when they developed this game. It's developed as a launch game. It's looks nice but it pushes no boundaries what so ever. In saying all this, though, it's still an enjoyable experience.

The game takes you from the Battle of Yavin, where you destroy the Deathstar, to the epic Battle of Endor. The power of the Gamecube (along with any other consoles out in truth) allows for some pretty impressive polygon shifting, texture licking and whatever else those eye-candy people like to talk about. The Battle of Endor typifies this with a tremendous effort, throwing a substantial number of capital ships around and near a hundred fighter craft into one area of battle. It truly does look spectacular. If I'm being fair, there isn't much that doesn't look at least impressive, but the sheer scale of the Battle of Endor puts it on a higher pedestal.

But apart from that it's 'as you were' with this franchise. There's no real stinker missions, you blow up lots of stuff and you get into the Star Wars mood, you might even go 'phwam... phwom...' a bit with your imaginary lightsabre. Basically Rogue Leader is all about how quickly you can kill stuff. The computer fighters don't have any A.I. they're just there to be shot at. It mostly depends on how quickly you can kill them which denotes the success of your piloting skills. You might have to zig-zag a bit when it comes to capital ships but that's the extent of the skill quota required.

So I suppose this would be the best time to tell you that the game is pretty easy to get through. You'll have knocked the original ten missions of the game within a week or so, so it's a good job there are some excellent extras to play for. The replay value comes from completing the missions within strict time limits, accuracy rates, number of enemies killed on so on. These can get very hard, but very rewarding. Succeeding in these missions will get you new ships, new levels and a commentary on the game and its levels. The commentary's pretty rubbish but the idea of all these extras is a good one and should be used more often.

Oddly, the extra levels are arguably the best bits of the game because, conceptually, they're different to the main missions in the game. One finds you in the cannon controls of the Millennium Falcon, while other gives you control of a Tie Defender and let's you wreak havoc on an rebel base. Factor 5 should have been more bold and implemented these ideas into the main game. From the outset you would have had a more diverse game to enjoy.

Rogue Leader is an enjoyable game, the Rogue Squadron franchise always has been, but it's nothing more than that. It never climbs beyond or even tries to go beyond the sum of its parts.

The game also has the capacity to annoy; the enemy ships will literally fly into you and cost you a life. Yes, it's their job to attack you, but that just struck me as stupid. Cut-scenes, the first time you see them, look good, but until you complete a level and return to it, if you die during a level, the game forces you to watch the cut scenes again, and again, and again, without letting you skip them. Why game testers didn't raise a hand and say 'you know, that's really quite irritating the fifth time around,' I don't know.

However, there have been a lot of Star Wars games produced opver the years, most of them pretty poor, and Rogue Leader is one of the better ones. If you're a Star Wars fan you'll probably love it, but if you just like playing good games, you'll enjoy it about 70% of the time, but might not feel all that compelled to return to it once you've finished the last mission.

Like I said at the top; get hold of a copy cheap and you probably won't complain.

Space levels are very confusing because it is hard to keep track of where you are in them since the bacl backdrops scroll and there are few placeholders.

Not as good as some early flight games such as Starfox on the Super NES.

Not really recommended.