Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike user review

One of my most anticipated games.

Review written by
Nova

With the colossal domination of the previous game, Rogue Squadron, Rebel Strike got me excited. I had already owned the two previous games and I thought they were gifts from the heavens. I remember the day I heard the news of a third installment. I was going crazy. I'm almost sure I bought this game the day it came out and as soon as I got home I popped it into the unappreciated but overly enjoyable GameCube and was pleasantly surprised.

The look is very similar to the second game, as the menu has clips of the films and the level selection was still in a briefing room. One of the biggest thrills of this game was multiplayer option as I had always wanted to have dog fights with my friends. Another plus was the on-ground action. Although that could have been a bit easier to control.

The graphics remained as good as ever with extremely complex polygons and hardly any rendering problems. The sound was great as it has always been and the voices were clear unless clearness was unwanted. The lifespan was short if you don't get stuck on certain levels. But all levels get easier with practice and harder when you don't play them for longer periods of time. But the shortness is settled from by the extra levels that you are rewarded with when you get enough of the medals from the game's ingenious medal awarding system.

I found this game to be less challenging than the previous one. I never once needed to use the unlimited lives cheat to get past something hard. Plus, I enjoyed the fact that some levels included film footage from the movies during cutscenes.

Some things I didn't like were (and this was probably just me) new ideas for ships and planets, the almost cartoony aspect of the gameplay, the difficulty of the land action, and the way the game kept explaining the new ideas in a way no one would in real life. Some examples of the ideas include the Tie Hunters and the weird long shark-like ships.

One thing I dislike about all ship using star wars games is that the way these ships work is always different from one game to the next. What I mean is that in this game there is a chance to use a tie bomber. The ship doesn't have lasers but has heat guided missiles. But at the same time, Battlefront 2 has Bombers that have lasers, but no missiles. I think LucasArts should settle on one concept instead of several different types. But these are minor problems that may bother me because I think I am slightly obsessive compulsive.