May the Force be with You
Rebel Strike could almost be treated as a second act of a play that Rogue Leader started. Rebel Strike contains a lot of missions based in similar scenarios to ones found in Rogue Leader, but the player may be in a completely different location, or undertaking a completely separate objective. For instance, Rogue Leader had you playing as Wedge Antilles fighting in the Battle of Endor, whereas Rebel Strike has you playing as Luke Skywalker on the surface of the Endor moon. Basically, combining the two games will give you the full classic trilogy package.
Rebel Strike has seen some significant additions due to its much longer development period. Player's will find that there is more variance in the way the game plays, due to the fact there are now ground based missions, both in vehicles and on foot. Ground missions tend to revolve around piloting the Imperial AT-ST walker (the one that walks like a chook), but there are a few other missions where you get to ride speeder bikes, Luke's land speeder and an AT-AT. The AT-ST missions are well designed, and controlling the walker is quite natural. The speeder-bike missions are quite exciting due to the sheer speed, but handling can leave a little bit to be desired in some sections. Flying through the dense forest on the Centralli Moon is an excellent showcase for use of a speeder, though.
The ground vehicle missions may be good, but Rebel Strike's on-foot missions leave a lot to be desired. In fact, some of them are downright awful. Bad camera, terrible animation, repetition and horrid control mechanics are a few of the bad things that come to mind. The on foot missions that take place in wide open spaces (Battlefield Hoth) are a lot better than the more enclosed ones (Death Star Rescue), but they should really have been left on the cutting room floor. Luke's Jedi training on Dagobah may result in a lot of gamers giving up on Rebel Strike.
The unfortunate thing is that the horrid on foot missions really take a lot away from the more polished parts of the game. Rebel Strike's flight engine has seen a lot of work in the last two years, with nearly all of the bugs ironed out, and a heck of a lot of improvement. Rebel Strike's flight control is tighter, the lock on systems are more intuitive, the radio no longer bothers you every 3 seconds, and there are more enemies on screen than ever before.
One minor complaint about Rogue Leader was that the game lacked multiplayer modes. Rebel Strike rectifies this by offering both co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes. While the competitive multiplayer offers a variety of match types, it's harmed by the fact you can only play against another player. On the other hand, co-operative is a much more welcomed addition, especially considering the fact it includes the entire Rogue Leader campaign, slightly redesigned for two people. Rebel Strike also features a variety of other extras to extend the experience, including unlockable missions for single player and multiplayer, developer commentary tracks, and the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back arcade games from the 80's. These help to compliment what is otherwise a very short gameplay experience. Rebel Strike will only take the average Rogue Squadron veteran a mere 4-5 hours to complete, while the uninitiated will probably take about 8 hours to polish it off.
Twin Suns
For a launch title whipped up in 9 months, Rogue Leader was a fantastic looking game. Factor 5 has outdone themselves again, as Rebel Strike greatly improves on the graphics we saw in the previous game. The graphics team went back and completely re-wrote their rendering software. This results in higher polygon models and longer draw distances. The quality of textures and bump mapping has also improved dramatically. A new lighting technique has also been used by the team to create more realistic shadows and visual effects, such as the heat haze on Tatooine. The new graphical techniques have been applied to the existing Rogue Leader levels in the co-operative mode, which makes them look better than ever. Even more impressive is the fact that Rebel Strike rarely skips a beat, as it boasts a much smoother frame rate than its predecessor. The game's full motion video scenes are now in DivX quality, thanks to compression tools created by Factor 5. Finally, Rebel Strike features a 60 Hz display mode for full speed play.
Factor 5's sound team is renowned for being gurus - they were the studio which developed the tools for Dolby Pro Logic II usage on Gamecube - Rogue Leader won them a special achievement award from Dolby Labs, as they never thought that Pro Logic II could be used in such an impressive way. The quality continues into Rebel Strike, which now boasts even better sound separation, as well as more sound channels. The game also contains all of the usual John Williams music pieces that fans associate with the series, as well as a few unique ones. Unfortunately, none of the voice actors from the series have been retained, with all voices provided by sound-a-likes.
Rebel Rebel, the Place is a Mess
Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike is really quite disappointing in the end. The vehicle based combat is enjoyable, and the aerial combat is better than ever, but the on foot action is completely dire - enough to take away from the player's enjoyment of the other portions of the game. The presentation is top notch, and there's enough to keep the player interested after the relatively short single player experience is over. Had the on foot missions been worked on for longer, or completely scrapped, Rebel Strike would have been a more enjoyable game. Recommended for Star Wars fans only.
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