This game needs no power converters.
It’s no secret to anybody that knows me that I am a huge Star Wars fan, so when I purchased my GameCube a few months ago, I had to pick up a Star Wars game, specifically one I hadn’t played on other systems. Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader fit this bill, and I was pretty excited to try it out.
Upon booting the game, the LucasArts logo appears which is formed by Stormtroopers with glow sticks dancing to the Cantina Band track from Episode IV. Starting to play the game though, I must say that it is tough. After a tutorial on Tatooine, the first real mission places you in Luke Skywalker's Red 5 X-Wing, while one of the most well known Star Wars movie moments is played out on your TV screen: of course I am talking about The Battle of Yavin. Now, I was never under the impression that assaulting a Death Star would be an easy task, but you would think for the first mission of the game, a little slack would be cut, how mistaken I was.
The controls in Rogue Leader were hard to use at first. After so many hours over the years being spent in Star Wars Battlefront II space combat, using the GameCube’s controller instead of the PlayStation 2’s Dualshock 2 took some time to get used to. The placement of the analog sticks on the GameCube controller I found odd, compared to so much time spent with other controllers where stick placement is symmetrical. However, after becoming more comfortable with the controller, I was ready to play.
It did not help that during my many attempts trying to play the first mission on a small TV I did not have my glasses, I found that the stark black background of space made it hard to see the TIE Fighters I was supposed to be shooting at. Beyond that, however, the game is quite spiffy looking, with visuals closely resembling the events that took place in the films. One thing I really found hard during the infamous trench run was dealing with my confusion of when to fire my proton torpedoes. I ended up going off audio cues from the film, mainly when Han says “You’re all clear kid! Now let’s blow this thing and go home!”. Eventually after multiple attempts I was able to finish the mission, and was rewarded with some footage from the film. It’s a nice treat, though I could imagine the frustrations of people who invested in the GameCube at the time of release, because unlike the PlayStation 2, owners of the system could not take out the game and insert a DVD to watch the entire film, unless they bought a Panasonic Q.
With no new big Star Wars game releases coming out until Dice’s Battlefront III, I may just have to keep playing and see where this game takes me, Hoth I would assume. As much as I love playing old games though, the lure of space dog-fighting in The Old Republic may just impede on my time with this title.