by Trish
Star Wars: Rogue Leader – Rogue Squadron II
December 25, 2009 in Gamecube by Trish
Amazon.co.uk Review
Rogue Leader has some of the best graphics ever seen on a home console and it’s proper, old-fashioned, Star Wars–if that doesn’t raise at least an eyebrow of your interest then there’s probably not much in the world of video games that will. Thankfully, the jaw-dropping graphics are matched up to a very playable shoot ‘em-up that works as a slightly more in-depth version of the PS2’s Starfighter, except without any of that Episode I nonsense; instead it recreates everything from the Death Star trench run to the Battle of Hoth. 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 origin… More >>
Star Wars: Rogue Leader – Rogue Squadron II
What can i say, when i first got it going it was amazing. to choose your plane you walk around the hanger, seeing all the detail on the ships. Practically everything is the same as in the films, apart from a few mistimed gaps in the speech(but who cares anyway?).
Giving commands to your team-mates couldn’t be easier, although they sometimes ignore them for a few minutes before following them.
Everything is tuned to perfection, the music, the graphics(except for a few jumping when things get really heated). To make up for the lack of levels they are very hard though, level 6 is all but impossible!
I give this 5 ewoks out of five.
Rating: 5 / 5
well well well. ive been waiting to do this for ages. in a few words, this game is totally amazing. to start with, the graphics are soooo good! the textures are amazing and everythings smooth as hell, no more rough edges. if you sit back and squint a bit you may think you are watching tv.
the gameplay is great. the missions are action packed and loads of fun. loads of replay value too. get it now! its ace!
also, there is only one really annoying thing which is not being able to skip intro’s and that. but whats that to moan about, thats how good he game is, thats the only downer of the whole thing.
Rating: 5 / 5
This game isn’t particularly good.
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.
Rating: 2 / 5
When you first look at this game you are completely taken aback by the stunning graphics and animation you are faced with.
If you like Star Wars this game has everything, all of the ships (some hidden) and various characters and soundbites which will make fans of the epic series moan like a wookie.
However, that is basically all this game is about. It lacks any further depth and gameplay is, to be polite, decidedly weak.
I found myself being completely bored with this game after about 10 minutes playing.
When your flying the ships you just don’t get any sense of speed and everythig seems to be slow, the radar system is poor and enemies can be very hard to find.
This game really stands for everything i hate about todays developers, concerntraiting soley on graphics and ‘nice’ features they just forget to make it a good game.
In short, the cube has far better games available which play like a game should.
This one is for Star Wars geeks only
Rating: 2 / 5
I’ve heard that Ronseal: Quick Dry and Wood Stain does exactly what it says on the tin. You buy it and you know exactly what to expect. Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader? Same thing. No, I don’t mean that it dries in a matter of minutes and protects surfaces for five years, nor is there a renegade general roaming the streets stirring up rebellion, shouting, “POWER TO THE PEOPLE” every once in a while. But if you’ve played any of the previous Rogue Squadron games then what you expect is exactly what you’ll get
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.
Rating: 3 / 5