Star Wars: Rogue Squadron trilogy

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series (Star Wars Rogue Squadron, Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike) for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Buskalilly]

There's plenty to love in many of the Star Wars films, but I think the tension and pacing of the original Death Star run is still something pretty special. Rogue Leader captured that scene perfectly and I've played it again and again since shortly after I first got my Gamecube.

Then in Rebel Strike that level was included as a co-op experience! My brother and I played it as many times again now that we could do it together. Glorious.

The rest of it's alright too.

[Rumpole]

Of the 3 games in the series the stand out instalment has to be Rogue Leader on the Gamecube. The graphics were terrific at the time and the controls felt smooth and intuitive. Fun and varied level design with some strong nostalgia and call back made the game very playable and with the medals based on performance I found myself drawn in to play it over and over again. This is my most played Star Wars game and probably only behind Goldeneye in terms of hours played on a Nintendo system.

[AndrewElmore]

I spent a few hours late last night playing Rogue Squadron on N64 to revisit it for the first time since childhood. I played a great deal of that game back in its day. I remember the first time I beat Rendezvous On Barkhesh early one morning, I was so excited that I ran into my parents' room to wake them up and tell them. Needless to say, they weren't particularly thrilled by that. I learned the word "rendezvous" because of that game though, so that's something. It must have made quite an impression overall, because when I sat down to play it last night, I still remembered the two main cheat codes I always used; "FARMBOY" and "TIEDUP", unlocking the Millennium Falcon and TIE Interceptor, respectively. I then spent some time exploring menu options such as the High Resolution mode, which shifts the game from 240p to 480i (or PAL equivalents, I presume), which chokes the life out of the framerate enough to make me motion sick, but did at least aid in my ability to see what I was looking at, which is nice. The instant-failure conditions of many missions can be a bit daunting, but the actual action and dogfighting is quite nice! I certainly have a much easier time with it now after years of Ace Combat games than I did as a child, though the N64 controller isn't doing any flight games any particular favors.

Truth be told, my prevailing feeling about that game (and its sequels) is a reconfirmation that Chris Huelsbeck is a genius. I think his work in that first game alone is my favorite Star Wars music in general, and the system he developed for making use of multi-channel surround sound on the N64 is an absolute marvel to behold on period-correct hardware. It may not be as vast of an effort as his work on the N64 conversion of Resident Evil 2, but last night I had an absolute blast sitting in a small dark room, lit by the glow of a 36" Trinitron, surrounded by speakers and hearing TIE fighters screaming all around me in old-fashioned Dolby Pro Logic I.

Speaking of technical achievements, I think that may be the surviving legacy of this trilogy. The GameCube games in particular were and are a masterwork of engineering and art direction for the otherwise-unassuming "Little Purple Lunchbox", as magazines loved to refer to it back in the day. Factor 5 really were a phenomenally talented studio made up of brilliant people, and the world is worse for their loss. And since this is likely to be the only chance I'll ever get to mention it, Lair may have had some severe framerate issues and an unfortunate adherence to a questionable motion control scheme, but after a few patches and forcing your PS3's output down to 480p, it's a pretty neat Rogue Squadron game!

Three word review: Chris Huelsbeck rules.

[Nyx-Fontana]

I tried out Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader for the show and i'm bummed out to say that I didn't really enjoy my time with it. Maybe i'm spoiled by modern gaming but I thought the game did a poor job communicating information to the player in the heat of battle, especially when you need to escort smaller vehicles like in the "Prisoners of the Maw" mission. It's easy to lose track of what you are supposed to guard since there's no indicator and it can be just as hard to pick out TIE fighters from the background if you don't use your targeting computer in certain levels. I found myself wishing there was a tiny bit of leeway, maybe having a slightly less harsh margin for error on the escort missions or something simple like keeping the targeting computer active with the press of a button instead of having to hold it down.

In the end I put the game down after the Vengeance on Kothlis mission. The fun factor just wasn't there for me on this one.

[Nyx-Fontana]

I feel like most of my criticisms of Rogue Leader were addressed in Rebel Strike, you get this big carrot cone on your map that guides you on where you need go for your next objective and when you need to protect an ally ship its coated green when you look at it in your targeting computer. Such a small thing yet i felt less friction from the game as a result, in fact id say the game overall felt more lenient in terms of the margin for error when you are in your ship.

Also is it weird that i kind of enjoyed the on-foot missions? Don't get me wrong the controls here are really bad and you can literally either stand or jump in place as you shoot in order to defeat the stormtroopers in front of you, but i found them to be charmingly weird and silly. With how many of these missions there are though it does beg the question if this game sacrifices feeling like a proper rogue squadron game as a result since the experience becomes more diluted rather than focused. I personally had more fun with this game because of the variety but i can see some people really disliking their presence here.

[jgucker]

The Rogue Squadron series is a bit of a tragedy because its best title is still fun to play, but it didn't reach its full potential for those who love it best. Flight combat games are a hobbyist genre and fail to generate mass appeal without tying into something more universal. It's why Top Gun features a steamy love affair, and Star Fox 64 has players chasing the ghost of Fox's father.

Star Wars's flight combat also taps into the imagination of people living in the wake of the two world wars. The action of X-wings, TIE Fighters, B-wings, Y-wings, and capital starships is closer to the action in the Red Baron or Midway. Rogue Leader gave Star Wars' space combat fans the total package with faithful movie moments that were better than the N64 and it expanded our minds with original levels. It allowed us to experience each mission from the seat of different ships and gave us secrets and unlockables months after release.

For Nintendo purists, the scenes from Star Wars playing in the menus were a revelation about the value of disc-based consoles. We didn't even have the original films on DVD yet!

The second sequel was more like an expansion pack. The on-foot missions were wonky, but acceptable only because we had yet to play Resident Evil 4. Fortunately, cooping the original game and making the suicide run on Vader's flagship satisfied me. It's a shame that a unified version of both games was never released even though it was essentially complete.

[Kinketsu]

I had a lot of fun with the original on N64. I had grown up playing Wing Commander and, later on, X-Wing and Tie Fighter on PC, always looked on with distain by my father who loved Star Trek and had no time for Star Wars. I borrowed Rogue Squadron repeatedly from another guy at school who never cared for Star Wars and, N64 games being the price they were, I had no means to buy it myself. So luckily, he didnt really mind if I never gave it back on time and was happy enough playing my copy of Body Harvest or whatever he got in exchange.

Anyway, the recreation of Star Wars lore was spot on and gave it that extra edge. While the X-Wing games still had a bit of a foot in old flight simulators, this was definitely going for the action / arcade action rush and while the controls were far from fantastic, they had come on a long way from even Shadows of the Empire and let you do a bunch of moves in a somewhat forgiving flight system and in a variety of Star Wars enviroments.

Sure, you often couldnt see what you were firing at but, that being said, you often couldnt see what you were firing at in X-Wing or Wing Commander either, just generally looking at a map or shooting blindly at a green diamond or square indicating where the enemy was. So it didnt strike me as particuarly odd. One thing I did miss from X Wing / Tie Fighter were the story beats, as I felt the text and brief..."cutscenes" in those games did a better job of setting you in the universe and tracking your progress, although they had to do the heavy lifting as the visuals just were not there otherwise.

I havent gone back and did not play any sequels though, so my reactions are all memories of the time. I did see my cousin play Rebel Strike on a Gamecube shortly after release and maybe it was the New Years wine but I was totally blown away, it looked as good as the redone dogfight scenes from the Special Editions to me. I was glad to play Squadrons a few years ago on PSVR and felt they did a pretty good job of mixing the better parts of the X Wing and Rogue Squadron games, but without a headset the experience would be much different.

Rogue Squadron basically took the only part of Shadows that anyone liked, swinging around the AT-ATs, and made a whole game of it. The third person camera lent so much to the sense of ducking and diving, swooping in to attack, and a general feeling of acceleration and kinetic energy to your movements that could make even mundane missions feel exciting. A great achievement at the time and still a stand out Star Wars game, coming out in the same great era as games like Star Wars Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight and Star Wars - Rebellion.