| Let's get this straight. On the PC, Rogue Squadron was a bad game.
It was boring and the small textures for the N64 looked horrible on the
PC. The bilinear filtering made everything look bland and identical. Add
to that it's very console-based gameplay, and the game felt all wrong on
the PC.
However, on the N64 (the system for which the game was created), Rogue
Squadron looks good and feels right.
Having said that, we need to address another issue: This review may
be tainted with the nerdish sweat of Star Wars anticipation. And after
seeing the Episode I trailer last month, who could blame us?
That makes it hard to judge Rogue Squadron for the Nintendo 64 on its
merits alone - with Star Wars frenzy spreading into every Internet nook
and cranny these days, almost anything Star Wars-related is bound to fog
up our discerning reviewer glasses.
But, we're professionals, so we'll march on and tell you this: Rogue
Squadron is a fine console game, Star Wars hype or not.
The first to market with support for the 4MB RAM Expansion Pack, Rogue
Squadron in high-resolution (with the RAM pack) is a feast for the eyes,
full of whispy skies and subtle colored lighting, excellent 3D ship models
and minute details, all working together to immerse players in a convincing
Star Wars universe. The only graphic trouble is sometimes-excessive fogging,
but it's not wholly unexpected with the long-distance horizons the game
sometimes must cope with. Playing without the RAM pack, the resolution
and graphics are not nearly as impressive, but still the game looks good,
and all the little touches remain.
Development house Factor 5 and LucasArts have done their homework,filling
levels with all the details that make us feel at home: from Jabba's Palace
and the Sarlaac Pit in a Tatooine level, to storm troopers and speeder
bike riders who will fire at your ship from the ground. And yes, gunning
down isolated storm troopers with X-Wing-grade lasers is as satisfying
as it sounds.
Sound and music in the game is spot on, too, with movie-perfect sound
effects for TIE fighters and laser blasts, and strong MIDI recreations
of the movies' music to get players in the Star Wars mood.
At its heart, Rogue Squadron is an extension and expansion of the best
mission from Shadows of the Empire, the Hoth level. There, the fun was
flying your speeder and taking down AT-AT and AT-ST walkers (a feat you'll
get to repeat in Rogue), but the other missions weren't nearly as compelling.
Here, flying and fighting is the name of the game, and Rogue lets you battle
the Imperial menace in all manners of Rebel craft, including X-Wings, Y-Wings,
A-Wings, the Speeder, and the V-Wing (a new craft that looks suspiciously
like a Cylon Raider from Battlestar Galactica).
At first, flying in the game seems a bit slow, and in larger areas with
multiple enemies, frame rates do tend to drop temporarily. But as players
fight their way through the story-connected missions, it's obvious that
there's so much going on that a faster pace would either cause players
to miss the cool, atmospheric touches, or make the missions too difficult
to finish. After a few rounds, flying these ships seems like second nature,
as does the use of both of the crafts' first and secondary weapons, a touch
that also adds to the genuine feel of immersion. Using a Y-Wing's bombs
to send an Imperial communication array back to the Stone Age is a feeling
like none other.
If there's any complaint about the game, it's that the missions are
all planetary-based with no opportunities to explore the great, black beyond.
Flying X-Wings and A-Wings starts you hankering to battle some TIE in space,
but Rogue provides so many interesting planet-bound backdrops, that even
that trouble is nitpicking.
True to the mantra of game construction, each ship has its requisite
strengths and weaknesses, and each mission is best played with a certain
craft. Any level with AT-AT walkers usually will find you flying the Speeder
(for the trusty, leg-wrapping tow cable), while objectives that require
a heavy hand will put players in the cockpit of a sloth-like Y-Wing and
its impressive arsenal. In the first few missions, the game will force
you to choose one ship, though later levels allow the freedom to pick the
ship you want. After completing the first five or so missions though, pilots
can go back to completed missions to use other ships - and get better medals.
Medal-winning is what the game hangs its hat on for replay value, and
while it's not the greatest reason to keep coming back, it does its job.
Once players complete level objectives, they're given a performance rating
based on how long it took to complete the level, how many enemies were
destroyed, and firing accuracy, among other things. The better you were,
the more likely you are to earn a gold medal; lesser performances garner
silver and bronze. Later in the game, certain combinations of medals will
open secret ships - we won't give the big one away, lets just call it M.
Falcon...no, make that Millennium F.
Chasing medals isn't the most compelling reason to keep players coming
back, but mission-based games have never stressed replay value anyway.
It's more about the experience along the way, and in that arena, Rogue
Squadron delivers in spades.
It is the game's lack of real depth that mark it most appropriate for
a console. PC games usually involve lengthy immersion, and Rogue Squadron
amounts to a great pick up game. At times the missions do become rather
predictable (go and rescue this pilot, then fight off the Imperials) as
well, but Rogue Squadron is not an attempt to recreate a scaled down LucasArts
PC space sim -- a half-baked X-Wing 64. Instead, the game is an action-oriented
gem, a console game crisply executed. Factor 5 and LucasArts set out to
create an action game that makes us part of the Star Wars universe, and
in this, they've succeeded brilliantly. |
