Worth the Price of the Console Review: Rogue Leader by Cap'n Andy Published 7/8/02 It's not playing a game anymore. For those moments, you are in the movies.

The first next-gen console I bought was a GameCube. I deliberated over all three consoles. Each had two games I would sell my spleen to play... for PS2 it was MGS2 and GTA3, for XBox it was DoA3 and Jet Set Radio Future. For the GameCube, it was Super Smash Brothers Melee and Rogue Leader. (By the way, the $100 price difference at the time was what sold me.)

Yeah, Rogue Leader really is as good as everyone is telling you. It's one of those killer apps that are worth the price of the console to play: there is nothing wrong with this game, and everything they do, they do to perfection.

Let me say one thing right off the bat: If you've played Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo, or either Starfighter game, you've essentially played Rogue Leader. You fly around in space and over planets, the camera stays firmly behind your ship, you have wingmates you can issue commands to, and there's a medal system.

And that's the only negative comment you're going to hear out of me, because this game is freaking brilliant.

Rogue Leader takes you across Episodes 4-6, hitting every major battle along the way. You're bookended by Death Stars... the very first mission is the Battle of Yavin, and you end with the Battle of Endor and the destruction of the second Death Star. Along the way, you'll fight the Battle of Hoth, pay a visit to Cloud City, and even take on a fully rendered Imperial Star Destroyer. By the way, flying a snub fighter against an ISD, with TIEs chasing you and every turbolaster battery on the ship lighting you up like a Christmas tree? It's intense.

Graphics

True story: George Lucas ordered that Rogue Leader's graphics be made worse than they originally were. He didn't want a video game looking better than the movies did.

Everything, everything in this game looks exactly right. That ISD I talked about before? Each bump and groove on the ship is modeled... not texture mapped, actually modeled. Every turbolaser battery can be seen sticking up from the hull, with the guns themselves swiveling to track you and recoiling slightly as they fire. And while I'm not sure just how many turbolasers an ISD carries, each one of them is firing on you at the same time. Meanwhile, a TIE could go screaming past, and you can see the green light of the turbolasers reflecting off of its glossy black paint. Oh, and your fighter is rendered right down to the paint job. You can see the astromech and the pilot, wearing (of course) the orange Rebel flight suit. Now keep in mind that there's about another ten TIEs on screen, plus your two wingmates. It all runs at a standard 60 fps... the action can get blisteringly intense.

My favorite moment in this game is a triumph of graphics. It's the beginning of the Battle of Endor, and you and the rest of the Rebel fleet (including the Falcon) are flying towards a perfectly-rendered Death Star II. As Lando and Admiral Ackbar realize that it's a trap, you swing your fighter around. The capital ships of the Rebel fleet can be seen, with Corellian Corvettes, Mon Calamari Star Cruisers, and a medical frigate there in all their glory. Beyond them is the Imperial fleet... dozens upon dozens of Imperial Star Destroyers, and in the middle of them, the Executor, its sheer size dwarfing the other Star Destroyers into tiny little white dots. You've never appreciated the size of a Super Star Destroyer until you've seen that... and then the space between you and the Star Destroyers seems to fill with dust. Soon enough, it turns out to be a literal wall of TIE fighters... hundreds and hundreds of them, streaking towards you. It's impossible to miss if you start firing and collisions are a very real threat, and as both sides begin firing, the score kicks up and you've just witnessed one of the finest moments in Star Wars gaming.

Voice Acting:

Outstanding. Denis Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles, records all of Wedge's lines. The voice actors for Luke, Darth Vader, and Lando are spot-on, and Admiral Ackbar sounds a little off but very believable. Your wingmates aren't annoying, which is all that you need out of wingmate voice acting. The one sour patch is the woman who recorded the lines for the captain of the Redemption, the medical frigate Rogue Squadon is attached to. She has a horrible, grating voice, and comes off as an annoying, whining, and demanding bitch. Every mission with the Redemption in it has a mission requirement that the Redemption survive (even the Battle of Endor... come on, who CARES if a medical frigate gets blown up? It's got no firepower, why was it even brought to the battle?), which means that as soon as the frigate starts taking fire, she'll be on your comm, whining about the lack of fighter support. Hearing her harpy whine of "Rogue Squadron, where are you?" when you're right next to the frigate, dogfighting with three dozen TIE fighters, is enough to make you start screaming back at the TV. Most of my replies to that cow are unprintable, and you're a better person than I am if you don't let the Redemption blow up a few times just to kill that woman. However, she generally keeps her yap shut, and wouldn't stand out so much if all of the other voice actors weren't so good.

Camera/Controls:

Zero camera problems, as it's fixed behind your ship. You can also toggle a cockpit view, which treats you to a stunningly well-rendered interior of the ship and a sense of motion real enough to give people motion sickness. The controls are completely intuitive, and work well with the design of the GameCube controller. They become second nature about thirty seconds into the first mission.

Music/Sound:

Perfect. The sound is flawless, with everything sounding just like it did in the movies, but I defy you to name me a Star Wars game that doesn't pull that feat off, as the designers always have Skywalker Sound providing them with clips. The music is great... it's all tracks from the Original Trilogy, and tied dynamically into the game. A slow cruise in a nebula might have fairly mellow music playing, and then the TIEs appear and one of the great space fighting tracks, like TIE Fighter Attack or Here They Come, starts playing. It really gets the blood pumping. The levels that portray battles shown in the movies have those tracks playing, which means you will hear the tracks from the Battle of Hoth while you're fighting the Battle of Hoth, which vastly increases the immersion. All of this comes together most perfectly when you're making your trench run during the Battle of Yavin... the music starts getting more and more tense... Ben Kenobi chimes in with "Use the Force, Luke!" accompanied by a bit of the Force Theme... General Dodonna remarks that you've turned off your computer, and Luke assures him he's all right... Darth Vader ominously intones "The Force is strong in this one" and starts pursuing you down the trench, and the music just keeps racheting up the tension, bit by unbearable bit (my brother, while playing this part, actually yelled at the game to stop making him nervous), until Han Solo bails you out with a jubliant "Yahoo!" and you fire off your proton missiles.

It's not playing a game anymore. For those moments, you are in the movies. You are Luke Skywalker and you blow up the Death Star. That's really what it feels like... the ship you are controlling doesn't blow it up, you don't just beat a level... YOU BLOW UP THE DEATH STAR, and if that doesn't give you a rush, you may want to contact your local mortuary, as you are a corpse. The graphics make that level of immersion possible, but it's the music that you remember from your youth and hearing actual sound clips from the movie that make it happen.

Replay Value:

Medium. There's a medal system like usual, and the medals give you points that you can use to unlock secret missions. The best of these, by far, is Triumph of the Empire, which lets you play as Darth Vader during the Battle of Yavin. You even get to rewrite history and wipe those pesky Rebels away like the vermin they are, winning the day for the Empire. In a great touch, the level ends with you shooting down Wedge, Biggs, and finally Luke as they fly down the trench.

Also, collecting ten medals of the same color (bronze, silver, and gold, natch) unlocks a ship you can then use in most missions. Ten bronze will net you the Millenium Falcon, ten silver get you the Slave I, and ten gold earn you the reward of Vader's advanced TIE fighter. However, what really crimps this feature is that the ships are utterly worthless! Yes, you heard me... worthless. The Millenium Falcon, for example, is slower than a Y-Wing. Much slower. Come on, everybody say it with me... "Fast ship? It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs!" The Falcon should NOT be slow! Slave I is just as bad, and Vader's TIE is about as useful as an X-Wing. It's a shame... giving you the ability to unlock some truly powerful ships would have been great. You can also get the Naboo Fighter, which is far and away the best fighter in the game, but you get it by doing the training level a bunch of times. Sigh.

Still, going for medals for bragging rights contributes some replay value, especially when you're trying to get enough points to unlock the next secret mission, and the levels themselves are endlessly fun. I've blown up the first Death Star at least thirty times and I'm not sick of it. Blowing up the Death Star NEVER gets old.

Light Side features:

• Movie-caliber graphics
• Fun levels that never get stale
• Getting to fight in all the battles you remember from the Original Trilogy
• Perfect sound and music
• Intuitive and easy to learn controls

Dark Side features:

• Having to put up with that banshee from the Redemption

Overall grade: A+

Purchase Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II for GameCube

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(Cap'n Andy has read every NJO book so far. When he's not reading, he's usually playing games, messing around on his computer, or roleplaying. And he's seriously stoked about Galaxies coming out soon.)

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