Plans for the imposition of new Visa for international students is now underway as the UK government announced the new development as far as the acquisition of new visa using the so-called points based system (PBS). With this plans of the government…Read more ..Related Student Poker NewsSenior Lecturer/Lecturer in the Sustainable Design of the Built […]

I’ve been reading that Nintendo fans are feeling a bit betrayed by the lack of traditional games and that they feel that because they bought their games since the NES (or whenever), and through times like the Gamecube when Nintendo’s future looked rocky, that Nintendo somehow owe them? Anyone agree with this? (or have I got the wrong end of the stick?)

Granted, it’s usually a bad idea to annoy your customers but personally I don’t think they owe them or anyone anything. I grew up with Nintendo consoles so I do have a lot of brand loyalty but their products were always excellent. I never once bought anything to support them. I bought a game I really wanted to play, that took them (annoyingly) years to make and Iwas always more than happy to spend the money.

just wondering if there’s a debate here..

For the benefit of those that haven’t played it, or any of the Rogue Squadron games:

Rebel Strike is the third game in the Rogue Squadron Series, made by Factor5 under license from Lucasarts. Essentially, these games are based around a formula; they add the Star Wars license, in the form of visuals and missions to spice up the 3D arcade flight-shooter action. Each game allows the user to partake in battles from the Star Wars films, books, and some original missions too, fighting alongside the characters in familar spacecraft.

On the one hand, Rebel Strike is a great game. Yes, it uses the same engine as Rogue Leader, a game that was old by the time Rebel Strike came out, and now is older still. However, it still looks very solid, with a framerate that doesn’t usually dip (though it can on occasion).

It’s very fun at times too, some of the missions are well scripted, and do genuinely look like the films they replicate.

Being a big Star Wars fan, I really like what they attempted to do with Rebel Strike. They tried to pack so much in. Everything from being on the ground on Hoth, to flying around on Yavin, to training as a Jedi with Yoda, along with the speeder bike battle from Return of the Jedi. The game is firmly rooted in the 3D shooter genre, but the type of shooting varies wildly from level to level.

Now, before I start my criticisms, I must confess - I was a massive X-Wing, Tie Fighter and XWAlliance fan. I pray for the day Lucasarts give us another. As a result, my opinions of the Rogue Squadron games can at times be very biased.

My first problem with the Rogue Squadron games, Rebel Strike included, is to me, they’re simply a dumbed down version of X-Wing. Yes, they have low-altitude missions (X-Wing and it’s siblings are purely set in space) but that doesn’t change the fact that you just seem to be doing less. I know it was the intention though, so it’s not really a true criticism of the game, rather a comment on my opinion of it.

An example that might sum up the majority of my problems is this: the game has a feature whereby if you’re being chased by a TIE fighter, the camera pulls back behind the enemy, giving you a cinematic view as you begin changing speed, and spiralling about in a twisty-curvy fashion to get it off your tail. In concept, really fun.

However, when you pilot the Falcon, a TIE gets on your tail, and the camera pulls back. Then you die.

The Falcon’s top speed and lowest speed aren’t that far apart; and it can’t maneuver nimbly like the other ships. As a result, it’s impossible to get the TIE off your tail consistently.

This error is important, as it’s indicative of most of my problems with the game.

Here’s another one (admittedly from Rogue Leader). On the last mission, when you escape from the second Death Star with the Falcon as an X-Wing, you have to fly behind the Falcon to get out. However, you can only go “normal speed”, “fast” or “slow”. Irritatingly enough, the Falcon’s speed is slower than your “fast”, but faster than your “normal speed”. As you don’t have a throttle, you have to keep speeding up, then slowing down, then speeding up, then slowing down… It’s like no-one playtested it.

Factor5 seem to have sat down, come up with a load of really good ideas, implementented many of them, but then forgot that they really need to work consistently well to be acceptable to the player. The fact of the matter is, the on-foot sections are really poor.

This wouldn’t be an issue. However, play the Dagobah training mission and you’ll see the issue first hand. It controls poorly, the camera is terrible - but worst of all - it’s actually difficult.

If they wanted players to reminisce about the films in these sections, if I was their QA I would have offered them two choices:

Choice 1: Make them good. Actually take the time to make a good 3rd person shooter mode, and implement it.

OR

Choice 2: Make it VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY easy.

The reason for choice 2 is the ground sections are frustrating if you die, usually for reasons that aren’t your fault. If they were really easy, people would breeze through them and simply remember the fun “I’m playing Star Wars” aspect of it.

This comes into focus with the medal system. In order to unlock missions, you have to play through the normal missions and earn “medals” based upon your performance.

The system isn’t bad in concept. However, you get penalized for using your ships targeting computer. This I don’t understand. If they don’t want players using it, they should have taken it out of the game. It’s a feature of your ship, why can’t you use it? I personally think that Rogue Leader is lacking a good targeting system as it is; limiting the use of the poor one it has to me adds insult to injury.

This also means that to unlock missions, it forces you to do poor missions (like Dagobah and Tattooine as Luke on foot) over and over again.

The last problem I’m going to mention is the sound. Star Wars games normally excel in this area. They have a vast library of stuff to get from Skywalker Sound, this really shouldn’t be an issue.

The sound effects are good, but the voices are awful. The voice actors are terrible, and often sound nothing like the original actors. Given, some missions are new, so they need new speech, but some are straight out of the films, and they’ve used the new actors in those for consistency. Sod consistency; those actors are terrible; and the points in the game that it drops to MIDI music really aren’t acceptable in a licensed game these days.

This has been quite a rambling review, and for that I apologise. The overall opinion I get from the game is veering towards positive, despite it’s many flaws, but I suspect that is just the license. I’m pretty sure if you took away all the X-Wings and TIE fighters and replaced them with F15’s and MiG’s then people would find these quite average games overall.

Comments to Factor5 I would make for a potential sequel:

Stick to CD quality music and the original actor samples wherever possible
Focus on aerial combat unless you really plan to develop the other elements
Make sure that all of the features of the game and AI support all the game’s craft
I’d dump the medal system too (very much personal opinion)
Consider an X-Wing style targeting system
Consider a 2 sided game, one of the sides of course being the Empire

Altogether, I’d give it 6/10. However, if you’re a Star Wars fan, that’s probably a 7.

The main comment to make in closing however is you can get it for under a fiver second hand. The better parts of the game certainly justify that small expense.