Cons: Flaky control, bad AI, obtuse mission structure.
The Bottom Line: As fun as it is frustrating. Most out there (self included) will forcibly tolerate the game's problems just to "enjoy" another Star Wars game, but you've had and know better.
billservo's Full Review: Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron II for Game...
Rogue Squadron 2 (RS2) is a lot like the old sex and pizza adage: even when a Rogue Squadron game is bad, it's still pretty good. In truth, that analogy is a little harsh, RS2 isn't a bad game, but the force isn't quite as strong with RS2 compared to the original.
Back on the N64, Rogue Squadron blew gamers away. It was the most authentic Star Wars shooter a console had seen, raising the bar for every console arcade space shooter that followed. On the Gamecube, RS2 does everything the original did, minus the standard setting gameplay.
In a welcome break from the deluge of Episode One based games, RS2 sticks to the original movies' roots. The story loosely chronicles the events from the destruction of the first Death Star to the last putting you in the shoes of some famous Star Wars characters and vehicles. While the ship roster isn't huge, it contains most of the more well-known vehicles. RS2 lets you get behind the yoke of an X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, B-Wing, and Speeder. Along with these are a few "cameo" pilotable ships like the Falcon, a TIE Fighter, and Imperial Shuttle.
Most missions don't offer you a free choice of ship until the mission is completed. Instead, mission briefings designate the kind of ship you'll be flying for the mission based on strategic advantage. Missions that require you to play a defensive escort role will out you in a X-Wing or A-Wing, while missions that need targets bombed out of existence call for a B-Wing or Y-Wing. When you need to tie a rope around an AT-AT's legs you get the Speeder. There's never only one objective per mission, though, and some even require you to switch ships to succeed. While missions are generally fun, their structure and content are some of the game's biggest weaknesses. Any Star Wars fan can predict some of the content: the Trench Run mission, the Battle of Hoth mission, the second Star Destroyer, etc. These missions, while true to the movies, are really getting old- the proof of this is the fact that the Trench Run is the first thing you do in the game!
More "generic" missions are ten times as exciting as the famous ones. One has you escort a Frigate to safety only to warp into a fire fight with a Star Destroyer. To succeed you'll need to take the massive ship out with your Bomber. The next mission has you chase the wreckage down to the planet surface for recovery support. But more often than not, briefings and wingman support hinder what could be a beautifully elaborate mission. For instance, the Star Destroyer mission puts you into the seat of a bomber, vehicles with the ability to put some serious hurt on heavily armored enemies, but known for their lack of speed and maneuverability usually requiring multiple bombers or some friendly coverage. Yet, you go into this mission as the sole bomber with such little fighter support that you can't afford to have your wingmen even cover you and a briefing that is so generic you're not sure what your role should be. The mission is easily beatable, once you figure out the trick, but the brain racking required to get there takes much away from the fun. And this is only the fourth mission. Later missions can get even more confounding, especially when you're looking at missions lasting ten minutes long or more. Playing through five minutes of mission to get to that one event that rips you to shreds within seconds becomes routine. And when it's not the case that you simply can't take the heat it's probably your wingmen's inefficiency that kills a mission by allowing a friendly vessel to be destroyed. While the game lets you command your wingmen to one of four roles there's usually only one that they should be doing and more often than not it's going after TIEs. Missions requiring stationary or ground objects destroyed will almost always totally hinge on your own abilities. But even when you actually want help taking out fighters AI wingmen are so slow that they're almost no help. What's worse is that your wingmen constantly request orders from you, and if they don't get them they'll do nothing or just follow you. For some reason orders don't seem to "stick" with your wingmen. An order to go after TIEs will cause them to select and destroy a certain group of TIEs, then ignore other enemy squadrons. Missions with a constant barrage of TIE squadrons means you'll have to repeatedly tell them to do the same thing over and over. Since you're usually busy targeting something yourself, the jump from the analog stick, to the digital pad will most likely cause you to screw up.
But some help is better than no help at all, and your wingmen do seem to have their moments. Once in a while wingman will pick off one of your TIE pursuers, which almost makes up for every other problem they have. They'll also alert you to specific problems they're having, whether it's with other TIEs or grounded turbolasers. In fact, listening to radio chatter is key in this game. If someone's complaining you most likely have to figure out what's the problem and destroy it. Other sounds help clue you in on your environs, too. For example, blasts from a TIE fighter not only look different, but sound different than a blast from a turbolaser. Most sound effects were ripped right from the movies, from actual dialog to the clanking of an AT-AT walker. Music, of course is the standard issue John Williams score played dynamically based on what's happening on screen. Basically the same as it's been since the original X-Wing, only it's not MIDI anymore. Good music, but the same stuff.
While music may not have advanced much, RS2 takes full advantage of the Gamecube's graphical power. Reels of the approach on the Death Star have been playing months before the Gamecube's launch. I've even heard that the game accurately recreates that same scene in the Episode 4 Special Edition. The game does look amazing, even if the hype slightly exceeds the game's capabilities. Locales are populated with tons of on-screen action, complete with reflection mapping on cockpit windows, bump mapped terrain, fantastic explosions and even a few video clips streamed in. One doesn't even have to look any farther than the Death Star surface on the first level to get a feel for the level of detail that went into the game. The few drawbacks in this department are the fairly limited world boundaries that have you circle back into the action. There's also a few levels where it's possible to start dropping frames, but that's a rare event and even takes some provoking just to get it to kick in.
One of the cooler effects is the use of the Targeting Computer, mentioned in the movies. Pressing the Y button in RS2 activates the targeting computer which serves as a type of real-time X-ray on your field of vision. When active, the Targeting Computer dulls out most of what you see but highlights enemies of different types with different colors, even exposing enemies that may be behind an object in front of you. Besides a strange glitch with the Y-Wing's bombing mode, its only problem is the fact that it's only active with the Y button pressed down. Other similar control problems exist with other ship features, though. Again on the Y-Wing, is the strange behavior of the ION cannons. Unlike other Star Wars flight games, RS2 requires the cannon to be charged for every firing of the cannon making the weapon impractical to use unless it's a requirement. On the other hand, the Y-Wings bombing mode is one of the game's control triumphs. When dropping bombs, the camera hovers over your ship allowing you to see the potential drop site. Control is mostly downhill from here, though. Like the first game, speed control is a nightmare, never allowing you any accurate level of throttle management. Worse, the speed up button prevents an X-Wing or B-Wing from firing. While slowing down gives an almost reasonable feeling of control, the speed up effect just feels like a cheap trick. When speeding up the camera zooms backwards from your ship, in what is most likely the effect of your ship taking off faster than the camera can catch up. All this really accomplishes is just a feeling of disorientation, and doing this in close quarters will probably ram you into something you didn't think you were even close to (and in some cases probably weren't). All these things are easy to get used to and over, but just no something that should have made its way into a finished product, especially with a legacy of finely tuned PC titles to learn from.
Gamers not familiar with the X-Wing, TIE-Fighter, or X-Wing Alliance games may not complain, though. As far as console space shooters go, Rogue Squadron 2 is still fun. On the other hand, gamers who've gone through all the PC titles and the first Rogue Squadron will probably still get into the second installment just for another Star Wars fix. But those with no loyalties to the franchise will likely be turned off by constant small glitches and bad design decisions that just get in the way of what should have been a purely fun experience giving this game a guarded recommendation at best.
Awesome cinematic graphics and intense action-packed gameplay put you "in the movies"! Be Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles and fly your choice of X-Wi...More at Amazon Marketplace
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