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May 8, 2006
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 Golden Oldie
by JediJef
It?s hard to believe five years have gone by since the release of Nintendo?s GameCube, and harder still to imagine that one of the greatest Star Wars video games of all time is about to celebrate a similar birthday. Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II, released in November of 2001, looks and plays as good as it did half a decade ago, holding up quite nicely even when compared to similar games half its age.
The sequel to Rogue Squadron, a hit on the Nintendo 64 from 1998, Rogue Leader puts the player in the shoes of both Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, as the two lead the titular fighter group through the timeline of the original trilogy. Players will command the legendary squad on ten missions spanning several theaters, from the Yavin IV Death Star attack, to Hoth and Endor, and several smaller engagements that lead to the dramatic ones seen in the films. For your flying pleasure, the entire Rebel starfighter fleet is at your disposal, complete with some nifty hangar and pilot animations that allow you to swing your camera around each craft while a narrator fills you in on each ship?s history and vital specs.
The graphics are still impressive even by today?s standards, particularly the detail evident on the various starfighters. The ships come alive, looking every bit as good as they do in the films, and the fact that they are rendered with virtually no load time is astonishing, even for current generation consoles and hardware that boast many times the processing power of the GameCube.
Gameplay is tight as well, with a primary and secondary fire, directional control via the thumbstick, and secondary abilities such as rolls, an immersive first-person cockpit view, and a targeting computer filling out the rest of the GameCube controller?s button map. Basically an old-fashioned shooter with wings, Rogue Leader eschews the complexity of flight sims such as X-Wing and TIE Fighter for an arcade-style approach that is at once more accessible and faster paced.
Additionally, some original takes on classic Star Wars scenarios, such as a raid on a crashed Star Destroyer, as well as the challenge of bringing down Imperial walkers trudging towards a beach while you skim the surface of the surrounding lagoon add some much needed variation to the tried and true Star Wars battles that we?ve all seen hundreds of times. Rogue Leader?s mission/level design is a notch above most Star Wars titles, and though the game may initially seem short, it is a rare player indeed who can see all the game has to offer on the first play-through.
Thankfully, the game?s immersion factor is extremely high, particularly for a console title. Each of the missions are tightly scripted and packed with both in-game cutscenes and top-notch voice acting (occasionally sampling lines directly from the films). The missions fill in the gaps between the engagements seen in the films, and provide a bit of explanation for those continuity freaks who wondered how Luke goes from a green X-Wing pilot at the end of A New Hope, to a Commander in charge of the elite Rogues at the battle of Hoth.
Throw in veteran Star Wars actor Denis Lawson reprising his role as Wedge Antilles, and a bevy of secret ships and missions waiting to be unlocked, and you?ve got yourself a must-have Star Wars gaming experience. Though Rogue Leader was one of the Nintendo GameCube?s launch titles, you?d be hard-pressed to find a higher quality game for the system even now, five years later. If you?ve never played a Factor 5 Star Wars title, this is the place to start. If you?re an old hand, the graphics and gameplay will keep you occupied while waiting on the first Star Wars title for Nintendo?s next-gen system.
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