Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 2 Preview #2
For all of you Star Wars fanatics, Star Wars is set to make an appearance on GameCube, which is set to take the world by storm with it’s superb graphic and texture animations, integrated movie cut scenes, and make you feel like you’re Han Solo on a flight in Star Wars. Interested? Then read on.
The graphics are something else in this game. Says the games producer at LucasArts, “you’ll miss cool little graphic details if you fly too fast. For example, on the Bespin level you can actually see little stormtroopers working the turret lasers.” And details there are. The ships are actually rendered and textured from plastic models used in the making of the first three Star Wars series. Asteroids collide with each other effortlessly in the Falcon bonus level, and your cockpit is meticulously detailed down to the “fire” button located on the console. In Cloud City, the city is made of six overlapping layers of texture, so you can see metallic highlights, reflection, and the lights reflected in the sky. This is all running at 60 fps, but the way.
LucasArts plans to integrate movie clips into the game using texture overlapping methods. Scenes like the big Deathstar explosion and the ship blowing up in Return of the Jedi are integrated flawlessly into the game, and can also be accessed via a DVD-like menu system. RS features 11 levels and a handful of bonus levels. These levels will involve you playing logically and thinking about what happened in the movie. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to rent the entire Star Wars series to beat the game, but in some instances it could be helpful.
The actual gameplay in the levels is incredible. You are not limited to the confines of your own craft - or your own character for that matter. You play a little bit of Luke Skywaker’s life, but your characters are mostly played as Wedge Antilles, those guys who didn’t receive much recognition in the movies, but played the most important parts in the Star Wars trilogy. You can now take control of your fellow wingman and direct them to destroy only one type of aircraft or take out a certain part of a ship instead of having them aimlessly flying around.
The bonus levels are much better this time. Like Star Fox, you can earn three grades of metal on each level depending on how you well you complete it. You can get a gold for destroying secret enemy hideouts, certain ships, and accuracy definitely counts. Medals are worth money, and when you have enough money, you can buy secret missions and bonus ships from that level. Medals also depend on casualty levels, since it is your job as flight leader to make sure they don’t get killed.
Rogue Squadron looks incredible and it seems like it must handle like a dream. RS has made use of all the buttons on the GameCube controller. Basically, the A button is your Primary Fire button, which fires whatever weapon you have set on. You can create different combinations of fire sequences depending on how you tap the A button. The B button is your Secondary Fire key, which fires things like the tow hook for the Hoth level and proton torpedoes, for the Death Star level. You can even use the D Pad, which directs your wingmen to targets. This helpful radar is located in the top left of your viewing screen.
The L and R buttons vary your speed. Press and hold R, and your ship will have a super fast flight, but will have less turning capability. L makes you go slower, but increases your chances of a sharper turn. The Y button pops up your targeting computer which you will use frequently, and the X button switches between cockpit and behind the ship view. The Z button can make your ship do a barrel roll, and the C button moves your camera around the interior of the cockpit.
Rogue Squadron is GameCube’s flagship title, and it will be this game that makes the system sell. Factor 5 knows a lot about the GameCube, since they helped create the system and make the sound tools for GameCube. They’ve also had development kits for a very long time, so they know the how the GameCube functions inside and out. RS is set to deliver us a new way we think about spaceship battle, and you better duck for cover when RS comes shooting in in November 2001.