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November 03, 2003 -
Halloween is over, but I'm still battling with my internal personalities. Obi Don is now here to tell you about Rogue Squadron 3. This will be a short review, because anyone who really cares about Star Wars has probably already Skywalked to the store and purchased this one blindly (although the countless hours of watching pre-release video footage isn't -blind-, is it?). The game was hyped as one that used Star Wars movie clips as cutscenes, taking you through the first three Star Wars films. Unfortunately, this was a bit misleading. There -are- scenes from 'A New Hope,' where you (on-foot, a new feature for Rogue Squadron) attempt to rescue Princess Leia and escape from the Death Star disguised as a Stormtrooper, and a handful thrown in from the Hoth battle and the Endor battle from 'Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi,' respectively (and like, one or two from the Sail Barge fight with Jabba the Hutt)... however, the game leads you down the off-beat path. As Wedge Antilles, you travel to some locations that make sense in coordination with the off-camera scenes of the movies, and as Luke Skywalker, you... uh... run across snow on Hoth and drive a speeder bike (twice, the second time on Endor, like you're fucking supposed to). I was irritated with the progression of the story. The mission selections are in rows of three, and you can select any of them. Some would fall into place before the other, but they're not arranged in such a way that you would know which they were. For example, you can aide the escape from Yavin after the destruction of the Death Star before you play the mission where you rescue Leia from it. Aside from these small points, the game is overall MUCH more fun than its predecessor. The missions are at least 2-3 times longer than those from RS2, the ship models are more intricately designed, and your wingmen... well, they're still dumb as all fuck, but they at least draw a few fighters off of you until they explode in a horribly violent rage. Awesome music and sound effects, straight from the movies. The only real drawback (aside from the disappointing amount of movie clips and the non-story-aligned mission select) was the on-foot portion of the game. The Hoth mission was very cool as an on-foot mission (in the past, you played Hoth from the cockpit of a Snowspeeder, but in RS3, your Snowspeeder has crashed, and you, as Luke, must make your way back to the base). This mission is an exception to the point. In all the other on-foot missions, the camera is very strange. You have no control over it, so it works in mysterious ways... especially when there are enemies in front of you, but you're so amazingly hot that the camera is focused on your face, or something... so naturally, you can't see who's shooting at you. But hey... this is a flight game! You can't expect the on-foot missions to be good, right? Right. So in the future, they shouldn't have any. Or they can actually put some effort into camera and character movement. Overall, this game is definitely worth playing. Some really fun missions which tie in well to the overall story... just, not in order. The best feature is the addition of multiplayer. You can dogfight your friends, kill more enemies, or the absolute best feature is the ENTIRE GAME addition of Rogue Squadron 2, which you can play through cooperatively with your friends. This game scores well with me. 8/10. And in retrospect, this probably wasn't that short a review... Oh well, back to Soul Reaver 2. - Don
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Master Biscuit