For many a year have Star Wars fans of the N64 title Rogue Squadron been yearning for a sequel. Finally, that day has come. Nintendo Gamecube owners can enjoy Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2 in all its fighting glory. I have the game and can vouch as an official STAR WARS Freak that is is worth the money. Now for the details of the game
For starters, the games graphics are superb. It's being showed as one of the Gamecube's best looking games so far, and it's only a 1st generation game(!) It runs at an almost full-time smooth 60 fps, and has a tremendous draw distance. It supports all different sorts of techno graphic thingys, like bump-mapping and volumetric fog and smoke. EX: On the Battle of Hoth stage, all the hills of snow are beutifully bump-mapped, and the smoke from destroyed anti-vehicle guns curls up and whisps away. Factor5 has really done a great job, using the power of the Gamecube to good use. FX movies blend seamlessly into gameplay, and sound is excellent.
In my opinion, the controls are realy an improvement over Rogue 1. In this game, the main stick controls the basic movement. The D-pad is used to tell your wingmates what to do. You can tell them to fire at important targets, form up, or flee, a very useful feature. The fire control button A is used in a unique way. Holding down the button fires quick low-power shots, tapping fast does slower, more powerfull shots. Tapping slower charges the lasers up to a dual linked mode, and just tapping once does a powerful quad-link burst. This is more convenient than cycling with a C-button. The small B-button is used for firing the secondary weapon, ex. proton torps or bombs. The X button is used to switch views to inside the cockpit, witch is a really fun view. The C-Stick is used to look around inside your ship. The frame rate stays the same the whole time. When in the cockpit, the Y button is used to bring up the new targeting computer display over your eye. This "computer screen" gives everything a yellow tint, and highlights different ships and targets different colors depending what priority target they are (Yellow- mission critical, Purple- extra enemies. This is useful on the Ison Corridor and Razor Rondevue levels. In the Ison Corridor, you enter a big gas cloud and are attacked by TIEs that you can't see until you almost run into them. At the Razor Roundevue, a Star Destroyer attacks one of your frigits, and the TIEs are almost impossible to see against the black of space, so the monitor comes in handy. To control the speed, you use the analog triggers, right to go faster and left to slow down. The digital click-through is used in a very cool way. On the right, when you click through, you speed up really fast and your S-foils close, and the left trigger makes you slow to almost a stop. The Z button allows you to do rolls. Another awsome feature of the controller is the rumble. It is used to help you know when you've been hit. If you are only hit one small time, it vibrates very softly, and a short vibration. But if you are hit many times, it will vibrate with more force, and in time to the sound of lasers striking shields and your hull. This is quite helpful, sense sometimes while dogfighting, you cannot look at your hull gauge to tell if you were hit.
The first level is the Battle of Yavin (Death Star 1). The level is split into 3 parts, each over a different part of the space station. The first third requires you to destroy several deflection towers, just like in the movie. I figured out that you actually have a time limit in which to do this (DUH) and ended up restarting once (*slap slap*). A neat effect here is that all around their is the famous hail of fire from seamingly hundreds of turbolasers, but it's actually hard to get hit, unless you fly right at the gun. In the second part you must destroy all the TIEs in your area. It takes a little while, but the TIEs are extremly stupid and fly in formation the whole time. I've discovered that Factor5 has taken the standard fireball crash of the TIEs in the old game and made a heck of a lot more. All the crashes are based on where you hit the ship and how hard your blasts were. Very cool. The third and final part is the actual trench run. The trench is quite narrow and filled with obsticles, and the controls are tuned so you don't run into the walls all the time. When the camera pans back to show some TIEs on your back, you hit the brakes to let them fly by, and blast them to smitheriens. When you get to the end of the trench, you pull on the targeting computer, fire your torps, and get out of there. But if you miss, you're transplanted back before you reach the end to give it another go.
In terms of sound, Rouge Leader has got some of the best. All people talking are either rips from the movie, or good fakes. It's awsome when you're going down the trench with TIEs on your tail and you hear Darth Vader saying "The force is strong with this one," and Ben telling you to "Use the Force, Luke!" The backround music is a very good mixture of new MIDI compositions, and rips from the actual movie soundtracks. The coolest thing is that Rouge Leader is encoded in Dolby Pro Logic II, a new format from the guys who made DTS and Dolby Digital Surround Sound. DPLII gives the simulation of 5-channel surround sound with only the left/right AV cables on the Gamecube, which doesn't have any optical out. A good example of this being used is when in you are in the Death Star trench, hearing the different TIEs coming up behind you before they even start shooting. Pro Logic II is better then standered ProLogic in that it provides full 5-channel sound, while ProLogic gives only four (Left, Center, Right, and Rear).
In my opinion, Rogue Leader Rogue Squadron 2 is an excellent game for a great system. It has many extra DVD-like features, including a creation documentary and level commentary. For those of you looking for a good Star Wars game, and wanted a Gamecube anyway, get the game. For those of you who are looking for a new Star Wars game, and have the system, get the game now. You don't know what your missing.
Shooting down an Interceptor at Cloud City
Amazing...Look at the smoke and people!!!
Beautiful bump-mapped hills. I love the shadowing.
