Squirrelinabox
01-15-2004, 04:09 PM
Alright, I am not a Star Wars junkie, I don't know the whole history of the jedi, or what the hell is going on with the clone wars. I have seen all 5 movies, loved the original trilogy, liked the first 2 new ones, but haven't dressed up as Chewie or any of the ewoks. So, when I play a Star Wars game, I am judging the game itself, not how true it is to Star Wars, or how much fun it is to play out my movie fantasies.
So does Rebel Strike hold water as its own game? If you have a buddy to play it with, it sure as hell does. You see, Rebel Strike is basically 2 games... the first game is a new Rogue Squadron single player experience. Where you will fly around playing various missions either taken straight from the movies or created from the backstory that is "implied" in the movies. The second game is actually the prequel Rogue Squadron 2, remade for coop play. From the title of my "review" you can pretty much guess I like the coop aspects, the single player is alright, but not worth the buy in my opinion.
What are these Rogue Squadron games you ask? Well, to put it simply, they are space flight simulators. Well... sort of. Rogue Squadron 2 is all about flying X-wings, Y-wings, even the Millenium Falcon, the closet you come to the ground is on your speeder while you tangle up some walkers. Rogue Squadron 3 has a lot of flight sim missions, but has also thrown in a variety of ground based missions. These include straight on-foot missions, walker missions, and even speeder bike missions. Mission objectives are usually either to blow something up, kill enough bad guys, protect some good guys, or a combination of the 3. Since some missions require different tactics, choosing your spacecraft (or land vehicle) is key.
For the single player aspect, missions are broken into 2 paths. One follows Luke while the other follows Wedge. Wedge's missions are mostly (if not all) flying missions, while Luke's range from walker missions, to flying, to running on the ground. Once you beat a mission, you unlock the next one in the same path. This works well in case you find yourself struggling to be a mission, since now you are able to choose a mission in the other path so you don't get too frustrated. The variety of missions is great, since you will find yourself trying to support some transport ships escape an ambush in space with one mission, then help the ewoks take down the shield generator in your walker the next. Unfotunately, the developers went one "step" too far with their ground based missions by adding on foot levels.
The on foot scenarios are bad... VERY bad. So bad that it rather largely detracts from the single player experience. Controlling luke on the ground with an auto aim that doesn't work and a camera that has a mind of its own is more painful than watching another news story about Ben and J.lo's latest engagement fiasco. You will soon realize the best way to get through on foot mission is to just press the fire button as fast as you can while jumping as often as you can. Don't try to aim, you have little to no control over it. This jump and fire technique works until you run into the worst level of any game EVER (ok, maybe not that bad, but pretty damn close)... the Yoda training level. You will soon learn to hate the developers of this game when you find yourself unable to get luke to perform the easiest of tasks, such as jumping from one rock to another. You will soon start thinking the game itself is playing some sort of jedi mind trick on you.
I emphasize the on-foot missions because they do hurt the game quite a bit. They take up maybe 15-20% of the single player experience, which is substantial since each one is like pulling your own teeth. The remaining missions are decent, some a lot better than others, but for the most part all good. Unfortunately, with only 80% of an already short game, you aren't left with much. There is little replay value for the single player aspect. Sure, you have medals awarded based on how well you do in each mission, but I personally didn't care enough about making my silver medal a gold medal if it meant having to replay the same mission 10 times.
But wait! Do not fret gamers, there is hope. If you do happen to have a friend (or somebody you can pay) to play the game with you, you are in luck.. because the coop aspect of Rebel Strike is amazing. Take the best parts of the single player aspect (not the same missions, but somewhat similar missions) and add 1 part strategy, 1 part coordination, and 2 parts trash talking and you will get one hell of a cooperative experience.
Note: You can't play the cooperative missions by yourself, it requires 2 people to play.
You see, with a partner, you have to coordinate how you want to achieve your mission. Sure, for some missions you can simply just charge in and kill as many bad guys as possible... but for some, you need to plan out who is going to protect what, or when to attack a certain group. Also, with different strategies and different objectives, choosing which player will be which spaceship is key.
For instance, one missions involves protecting a transport train on a planet. Now, to protect the train, you need to kill a bunch of guns and keep the enemy tie fighters destracted. You will also need to take out a bunch of shield generators in the middle of the fight. This can't all be done without coordinating a plan of attack. My friend and I split up for most of the mission, he was an x-wing, I was a y-wing. He concentrated on the tie fighters and some guns while staying tight on the train to protect it. With my y-wing I bombed the hell out of the guns and then moved off to bomb the hell out of the generators. The fun of communicating and strategizing during the cooperative mode are only outdone by the fun of yelling, blaming, and sometimes hitting your partner when things go wrong. Of course, the eventual rejoicing when you do complete a mission is great as well.
The cooperative mode is fairly short as well... but the replay is at least 10x better than the single player. The same system of medals are used, but with a partner, going for medals is extremely fun. Since medals require a certain shot accuracy, number of kills, time completed, etc., you must figure out with your partner how you are going to bring up your shot accuracy without sacrificing too much time. That means you may have to change your plan of attack, or your ships, or whatever, and change is good... breaking up the monotony of playing the same missions over and over again.
I do have to mention that there are a few hiccups in performance when playing the cooperative mode. It is amazing they were able to get 2 screens to play a game originally made for 1, but there is a slight performance hit once in awhile. For the most part, you won't notice it and it won't affect your experience. That is, except for 1 mission. There is 1 mission where there are island and a HUGE amount of walkers, ties, and ground troops that all start to slow your machine to a crawl. It only happens when both players have most of the battle in view at once, and it is still playable, but that mission really needs a performance boost.
Now, it is worth noting that there is a multiplayer aspect. It is limited to 2 players (which is a real shame) but there are loads of different competitions to try out, such as who can destroy the most asteroids, or a race with the speeder bikes. I have't played these much since getting all golds on the cooperative mode is the priority right now, but they do look somewhat limited and could have been awesome if they supported 4 players.
You also can unlock the 2 original arcade star wars games (the green ones where you shoot at the colored asterisk "missles").
So... is it the game worth the money? Well, it is only $30 right now, so I would say probably. If you have a roomate/friend/relative to play with, you definately want to pick it up. I personally am not a fan of most star wars game, and don't generaly enjoy flight sims, but with my friends playing with me this game was worth my $50 (how much it was when I got it). If you don't have somebody to play with, I'd probably not get it unless you are either a hardcore star wars fan or love flight sims.
So does Rebel Strike hold water as its own game? If you have a buddy to play it with, it sure as hell does. You see, Rebel Strike is basically 2 games... the first game is a new Rogue Squadron single player experience. Where you will fly around playing various missions either taken straight from the movies or created from the backstory that is "implied" in the movies. The second game is actually the prequel Rogue Squadron 2, remade for coop play. From the title of my "review" you can pretty much guess I like the coop aspects, the single player is alright, but not worth the buy in my opinion.
What are these Rogue Squadron games you ask? Well, to put it simply, they are space flight simulators. Well... sort of. Rogue Squadron 2 is all about flying X-wings, Y-wings, even the Millenium Falcon, the closet you come to the ground is on your speeder while you tangle up some walkers. Rogue Squadron 3 has a lot of flight sim missions, but has also thrown in a variety of ground based missions. These include straight on-foot missions, walker missions, and even speeder bike missions. Mission objectives are usually either to blow something up, kill enough bad guys, protect some good guys, or a combination of the 3. Since some missions require different tactics, choosing your spacecraft (or land vehicle) is key.
For the single player aspect, missions are broken into 2 paths. One follows Luke while the other follows Wedge. Wedge's missions are mostly (if not all) flying missions, while Luke's range from walker missions, to flying, to running on the ground. Once you beat a mission, you unlock the next one in the same path. This works well in case you find yourself struggling to be a mission, since now you are able to choose a mission in the other path so you don't get too frustrated. The variety of missions is great, since you will find yourself trying to support some transport ships escape an ambush in space with one mission, then help the ewoks take down the shield generator in your walker the next. Unfotunately, the developers went one "step" too far with their ground based missions by adding on foot levels.
The on foot scenarios are bad... VERY bad. So bad that it rather largely detracts from the single player experience. Controlling luke on the ground with an auto aim that doesn't work and a camera that has a mind of its own is more painful than watching another news story about Ben and J.lo's latest engagement fiasco. You will soon realize the best way to get through on foot mission is to just press the fire button as fast as you can while jumping as often as you can. Don't try to aim, you have little to no control over it. This jump and fire technique works until you run into the worst level of any game EVER (ok, maybe not that bad, but pretty damn close)... the Yoda training level. You will soon learn to hate the developers of this game when you find yourself unable to get luke to perform the easiest of tasks, such as jumping from one rock to another. You will soon start thinking the game itself is playing some sort of jedi mind trick on you.
I emphasize the on-foot missions because they do hurt the game quite a bit. They take up maybe 15-20% of the single player experience, which is substantial since each one is like pulling your own teeth. The remaining missions are decent, some a lot better than others, but for the most part all good. Unfortunately, with only 80% of an already short game, you aren't left with much. There is little replay value for the single player aspect. Sure, you have medals awarded based on how well you do in each mission, but I personally didn't care enough about making my silver medal a gold medal if it meant having to replay the same mission 10 times.
But wait! Do not fret gamers, there is hope. If you do happen to have a friend (or somebody you can pay) to play the game with you, you are in luck.. because the coop aspect of Rebel Strike is amazing. Take the best parts of the single player aspect (not the same missions, but somewhat similar missions) and add 1 part strategy, 1 part coordination, and 2 parts trash talking and you will get one hell of a cooperative experience.
Note: You can't play the cooperative missions by yourself, it requires 2 people to play.
You see, with a partner, you have to coordinate how you want to achieve your mission. Sure, for some missions you can simply just charge in and kill as many bad guys as possible... but for some, you need to plan out who is going to protect what, or when to attack a certain group. Also, with different strategies and different objectives, choosing which player will be which spaceship is key.
For instance, one missions involves protecting a transport train on a planet. Now, to protect the train, you need to kill a bunch of guns and keep the enemy tie fighters destracted. You will also need to take out a bunch of shield generators in the middle of the fight. This can't all be done without coordinating a plan of attack. My friend and I split up for most of the mission, he was an x-wing, I was a y-wing. He concentrated on the tie fighters and some guns while staying tight on the train to protect it. With my y-wing I bombed the hell out of the guns and then moved off to bomb the hell out of the generators. The fun of communicating and strategizing during the cooperative mode are only outdone by the fun of yelling, blaming, and sometimes hitting your partner when things go wrong. Of course, the eventual rejoicing when you do complete a mission is great as well.
The cooperative mode is fairly short as well... but the replay is at least 10x better than the single player. The same system of medals are used, but with a partner, going for medals is extremely fun. Since medals require a certain shot accuracy, number of kills, time completed, etc., you must figure out with your partner how you are going to bring up your shot accuracy without sacrificing too much time. That means you may have to change your plan of attack, or your ships, or whatever, and change is good... breaking up the monotony of playing the same missions over and over again.
I do have to mention that there are a few hiccups in performance when playing the cooperative mode. It is amazing they were able to get 2 screens to play a game originally made for 1, but there is a slight performance hit once in awhile. For the most part, you won't notice it and it won't affect your experience. That is, except for 1 mission. There is 1 mission where there are island and a HUGE amount of walkers, ties, and ground troops that all start to slow your machine to a crawl. It only happens when both players have most of the battle in view at once, and it is still playable, but that mission really needs a performance boost.
Now, it is worth noting that there is a multiplayer aspect. It is limited to 2 players (which is a real shame) but there are loads of different competitions to try out, such as who can destroy the most asteroids, or a race with the speeder bikes. I have't played these much since getting all golds on the cooperative mode is the priority right now, but they do look somewhat limited and could have been awesome if they supported 4 players.
You also can unlock the 2 original arcade star wars games (the green ones where you shoot at the colored asterisk "missles").
So... is it the game worth the money? Well, it is only $30 right now, so I would say probably. If you have a roomate/friend/relative to play with, you definately want to pick it up. I personally am not a fan of most star wars game, and don't generaly enjoy flight sims, but with my friends playing with me this game was worth my $50 (how much it was when I got it). If you don't have somebody to play with, I'd probably not get it unless you are either a hardcore star wars fan or love flight sims.