Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

"A must-buy for Star Wars fans, and great game for others too!"

Star Wars must be one of the few films that has spawned games that are actually good (Goldeneye being another), but they have always been pretty complicated. Factor 5 (Famous for Turrican on the SNES) developed Rogue Squadron, however, unlike x-wing Vs Tie fighter, couldn't give a Bantha where you are hit, the engine, the wing or the cigerette lighter, it's all the same. No ''rear shield power failure'' or ''laser power low'' in this game.

The story is a bit patchy, but it fits in with the Star Wars universe, as it could have taken place in, ooh, a couple of weeks. At first there is no story, just a couple of missions by the newly formed Rogue Squadron, led by Luke Skywalker. Then there are missions crippling the forces of Moff Seerdon, and then saving the rebel alliance's bacta supplies (an important medical chemical). The last mission is strangely tacked on, and involves the comic book Dark Empire (set after Return of the jedi) and destroing the enormous world devestators. For some reason, all the missions are listed in the manual, which kind of spoils the surprise.

One of the best bits of this game are all the different ships you can pilot as Luke Skywalker. Here they are:

X-Wing- Surely you've heard of this? The good allrounder, and common in the movies. Can close it's wings (or s-foils, fact fans).

Y-Wing- A slow thing that can drop bombs. Which it cannot do according to books and stuff, but it doesn't matter since it's not real. No, really, Star Wars is all made up. Anyway, attack the death star in the first film. It was just as rubbish then. A ''Y'' shape.

A-Wing- A quick thing. Shaped like an A. But not much. Lightly armoured. In Return of the Jedi.

Airspeeder- Better known as the snowspeeder from Empire Strikes Back. Can trip up AT-ATs with it's tow cable. Stangely, can go into space. If it has air flaps to help it turn, how could it work in space? Again, not that it matters.

V-Wing- From the comic book Dark Empire, and you can tell. It just doesn't have the look of the others. It can also fire cluster missiles, which are great.

The game has a great Star Wars feel, as you take out Tie fighters, chicken walkers, AT-AT and tank droids (which strangely, are really tiny, in the books it was twice the size of an AT-AT). It is not on rails like StarFox64, but set in a free enviroment. There are loads of planets, taken either from the books or the films. Strangely, there are no levels set in space, which is a shame. The missions range from search and destroy, protect, disabling stuff with ion cannons and more. Tripping an AT-AT is as satisfing as watching it in the film.

The graphis are brilliant. This is one of the few titles, along with DK64, that actually use the expansion pack with any noticable difference in performance. The graphics are good without it, but become very smooth and detailed with the pack in, making Star Wars fans cry at all the detail. There is, however, a disappointing amount of fog. It doesn't effect gameplay much, and you can always see the ground (unlike something like body harvest, which could be very hard to fly around in).

The sound is terrific, with some brilliant music (and the orginal theme, of course) and tonnes of speech, thanks to Factor 5's clever new sound compresion techniques.

The big problem with this game is it's lifespan. If your any good, you'll finish all the missions in under a week. There are bronze, silver and gold medals to get for each level, but the prize for these are some rather tacked on bonus levels. The death star trench for instance, has turns in it (it's round the equator! Equators don't have turns!) and feels about as much as the climatic end of A New Hope as Sesame Street feels like Pulp Fiction. You can get the bonus levels with a cheat anyway. I played this for a month or so, and got all the silver medals, but was missing a couple of golds. Then I forgot about the game, picked it up months later, and put the cheat in to play the last bonus level. I'm sure this is what many people did. I would certainly tell all fans of the films to buy this, and non-Star Warsians to give it a look if they enjoyed StarFox64.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/23/00, Updated 01/23/00