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North America

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader

by David Trammell - May 17, 2001, 2:28 pm EDT

On November 5, 2001 Nintendo will unleash the GameCube upon unsuspecting hoards of gamers everywhere, and the Star Wars universe will never be the same.

When I first hit the E3 show floor, I didn't go directly to Rogue Squardon. By the time I got there, there was a riot of hungry gamers craning their necks to get a look at this visual masterpeice. It take some work, but I eventually found the end of a make-shift line and settled in to wait for my turn in the cockpit. While waiting I witnessed many people play through a lot of the three playable levels. The first thing I noticed is that this game was not attracting only Rogue Squardon fans. Most of the players had obviously never played the original, and their poor piloting skills showed it. However, this didn't stop me from witnessing the most insanely beautiful graphics in a Star Wars game to date. I'm not sure where to begin really. The polygonal detail is absolutely massive, as is the texture detail. In still shots the game looks good, but not nearly as stunning in motion. The lighting is just crazy. The planetary back drops are flawless. The lasers> are just brilliant! Pressing the fire button unleashes a hellstorm of deep orange lasers and they practically scream through space at intense speeds. It's hard to convey the difference that the lasers make. Speed of the game itself has been upped as well (to good effect). Did I mention that every level has always run at a rock solid 60 fps with not a single dip, ever!

Well, after waiting my turn, I finally got my hands on the controller. It took me just a second to get the slightly tweaked controls down. The ship moves about the same as it did in the original game, but the new silky smooth framerates caused me to over turn a little at first. As soon as I got the hang of it, I was blasting ties out of the sky. I had chosen the Battle at Yavin (first Death Star). The first objective was to take out gun towers. The feeling of knocking out these stationary turrets wasn't all that exciting since they are just stationary, and you can't lose (you have unlimited lives in this demo). However, after many of the turrets were taken out, the next phase of the level began. This included quite a few Tie Fighters which needed to be aquainted with my lasers. As I mentioned above, the lasers are absolutely terrific. There are tons of Tie Fighters to shoot, but this is balanced out because they die a little quicker. A couple of times, I shot down a group of Ties with a single barrage. After cleaning out a number of Tie Fighters, I moved on to the trench run. This sequence was quite simply L33T! The walls were really close in, and the sense of speed was awesome. There were pylons, lasers, gun turrets and Tie Fighters to deal with in the trench and I proceeded through it without too much trouble (this is the first level afterall). In the end, there was no place to drop my bomb and blow up the Death Star! I either missed it or it wasn't put in yet. Either way, I didn't care, the game is just brilliant. It surpasses the original in every way possible, most notably in gameplay. The wingmen commands even work to good effect.

My only beef with the game was a few jaggies. Don't get me wrong, the game still looks totally awesome, but there were a few jaggies to be seen on high contrast lines. This isn't to say that it was worse than other consoles, because it wasn't. I just hope that in the end they can crank up the FSAA a little more. The bottom line is that the game recreated the intense action of a Star Wars space battle like no game I've ever played. It remains to be seen if they can keep up this level of excellence for the rest of the game, but I'd put my money on it.

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Genre Shooter
Developer Factor 5
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
Release Nov 09, 2001
PublisherLucasArts
RatingTeen
jpn: Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
Release Mar 22, 2002
PublisherLucasArts
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