Continuing on my crusade of all Star Wars space combat games
I moved on from the PC games to the console, or though technically I’ll be
going back to PC ones at some point. I finished Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire not too long ago so that's two down of the 4 Star Wars Games on the Nintendo 64, the other two being set in the prequel years. I have always been more of a
fan of the Jedi lightsaberin’ rather than space combat so when I saw Star Wars:
Rogue
Squadron 3D with its simplistic controls and gameplay and arcadey feel I
was interested to give it a go. I had previously purchased the game on GOG.com and decided to play on PC rather then
the Nintendo 64 version mainly so I could use my joystick. When I booted it up
and saw that excellent intro with the LucasArts and Factor 5 logo I was really
impressed. I’ve always liked the Lucasarts and other logo intros especially in
the Jedi games but this one was something else: You see a Rebel Snowspeeder
speeding its way through what looks like a shallow canyon on Hoth and firing on
some AT-PTs
and TIE Fighters but then the camera pans out and you see that it’s the Lucas
Arts Logo made into mountains resembling Hoth, then in the next scene you see
an X-Wing flying through what looks like the Death Star trench avoiding the
lasers then shooting a torpedo then it pans out and you see it’s the Factor 5
Logo before exploding, I don’t know why it’s just so good, they just don’t make
things like that anymore.
The amazing intro sequence
The story to Rogue Squadren is set during the war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance six months
after the Battle of Yavin, you fly as good old Luke Skywalker with his buddy Wedge Antilles as you fight the empire
across a number of different planets some known and some new and run into some
familiar faces voices along the way as all you can see is the ships as
there are no cutscenes in the game just voice acting. It’s somewhat fun playing
games that take place in the interim of the movies as you get to see what
events happen between them, some bits that I enjoyed were rescuing Wedge and
the defection and recruitment of imperial pilot Kasan
Moor. The game culminates (sort of) with the battle against the antagonist MoffKohl
Seerdon which I unfortunately couldn’t finish but felt that was enough.
Oddly there was only one last mission after that on the Mon Calamari world of Dac, set after the Battle of Endor
where you played as Wedge.
Liberation of Gerrard V
When completing missions you are giving a rating and receive
bronze, silver or gold ratings, with gold ratings unlocking the secret missions
which I won’t spoil but are from famous battles in the movies, you can also
unlock new craft via codes. Starting the game I had a bit of a slowness issue
with the main menu but managed to fix that. You start off with creating your
pilot then you view the intro for the mission and then you get to select a
craft! It’s pretty cool the way the camera swings around the docking bay when
selecting a craft as it makes you look forward to when you can access the
others. Starting off with the trusty X-WingI unfortunately had some trouble trying to use different controllers
with the game, the times I tried to use my joystick it just didn’t work, which
kinda sucked as it’s probably be the ideal controller and my gamepad didn’t
work either, then I tried with the mouse but that was less then ideal. Then I
remembered I could fly and shoot perfectly well with the keyboard in the
Battlefield series so I just did that and it worked fine though aiming is a bit
of a bother, I was getting pretty bad hit ratios at the end but it got better.
You see your objectives in your briefing so you basically just fly around
following your radar which very helpfully points to the next objective.
A few levels of gameplay, I only noticed now but for some reason the CPU controlled vehicles look like buzzing flies, was it always like that? I can't remember.
Most of
the time you are flying around destroying things, escorting things, locating
things, or defending things and while most of the attacking is done with lasers
you also have things like proton torpedoes, concussion missiles, ion cannons
and space bombs to play with and you can also upgrade them by finding various
powerups hidden throughout the map. There is a default craft for every mission
and most of the time you are using the X-Wing but I did enjoy using the Y-Wing with
its increased shields. You did use the T-47
Snow/Airspeeder and V-Wing Airspeeder
a lot and they were a bit hit and miss, I came to dislike doing that damn
grappling hook AT-AT takedown as the way it as set up was that the camera angle
changes making it kind of hard to see how far away you are from the AT-AT and
how close to turn but then again it’d be just as hard in third person I spose.
There were also some secret vehicles like the Naboo
N-1 Starighter and of the course the Millennium
Falcon and also a Chevy Buick for some weird reason as it was just a V-Wing
with a different model but it looked hilarious especially the “cockpit” view.
Eeyurgh this was difficult
As you’d expect the game is packed with Star Wars, ships,
locations, terminology and quotes, there even cameo’s from other well-known
characters. You blast away while listening to what is happening around you with
occasional cutscenes of events in the battle. You get a finite number of lives
depending on your difficulty, on easy it’s usually about 3, usually I just died
to stupid things like crashing into things I’m shooting at and not slowing down
though the trick was to put on the brakes while you were zero’ing in on an
enemy so you don’t surge toward them so fast. I mostly played in third person
view but cockpit view was sometimes fun and useful especially when trying to
dodge things. The graphics were pretty good for the N64 though it’s difficult
to judge by today’s standards, distance fog featured
heavily in the game as the N64 just wasn’t powerful enough, while it was nothing
compared to Superman 64’s
level of fog it was still noticeable but otherwise it was good enough. Like Battlefield 1942 the main menu was stuck in 800x600 through the resolution went up to 1280x960 there didn't seem to be any way to make it higher so I just settled with that.
The distance fog was particularly visible in some levels
The
music and sounds were pretty spot on to what you would expect from a Star Wars
game, all official sound and licenced soundtrack and everything, the voice
acting was pretty good too. I swear it sounds so much like the actual actors,
do they keep doing this voice acting stuff forever? Or is there like a
recording archive that all these spin-off games and toys and other things refer
to, but then again there is stuff that is relevant to the game so I dunno, did
good old Harry Ford do a couple of lines of voice acting for this game? Surely
not.
The search for the Nonnah, I quite enjoyed this level
There really isn’t much more to it, you just fly around and
blast things and try not to get blasted yourself, it does get more difficult in
the later levels and there are many more dangers including more of those pesky
missile towers that are quite dangerous, there was only a few missions where I
struggled but I got through it, as I mentioned before I didn’t end up finishing
the game, I may go back and have another crack at it but really I’ve had
enough, it’s been like Star Wars overload for a while but I’m up to the last
one which is X-Wing
Alliance. Well the last one of the Star Wars games I have, technically I
haven’t played X-Wing yet but It’s pretty damn old and maybe I will when I want
something very retro. Of course the next iteration was Rogue
Squadron II on the GameCubewhich
I remember seeing all that time ago, I
don’t think I’ve ever played the Gamecube actually, it wasn’t really that
popular. So to sum up if you want a Star Wars Space shooter and don’t want it
to be all technical or you’ve been playing X-Wing or Tie-Fighter and want
something a bit simpler like me then Rogue Squadron is the way to go.
