Another quality shooter from Factor 5
Nowadays the Rogue Squadron games (for the GameCube) are more like reimaginings of the original SW trilogy, and this game doesn't exactly break the trend, but rather than just following the story (like RS2 did), this game tries to add a backstory to some of the OT events, and even lets you choose two campaigns: Luke's or Wedge's. If you follow Luke's campaign, you'll follow some varied missions where you'll pilot mostly land vehicles and navigate on-foot, finishing some missions that tie events between Episodes IV and VI, and Wedge's campaign consists primarily of good-old flight missions with a sidestory that backs up that of the OT. The first mission is the aftermath of Episode IV, with the rebels escaping from their base at Yavin after being raided by the Empire in retaliation of their victory destroying the Death Star. After the first mission, you can choose your campaign, and you can even switch between campaigns during mission select. When about to finish the game, the campaigns finally cross paths again and you'll take on the last missions, which sadly are land-based.
As stated before, the game now has different gameplay modes. Everyone loved the old flight-based missions from RS2, and these missions in RS3 are beautifully executed, with a very balanced gameplay and a very stable framerate. There are many more ships on screen than before with no drops in gameplay, and these missions are very fun to play. Sadly, these take like about 60% of the game only. Other additions to gameplay are the use of land-based vehicles, which also are very well done; these include using speeders, hoverbikes and imperial walkers; these missions are also very well implemented, and take like another 20% of the game. Finally, we have the on-foot missions, which are the missions that detract gameplay a little. These missions are also good and solid but gameplay isn't as good as it should be; models are good, solid and realistic but their controls just plain suck, as the jumps feel light when going up and extremely heavy when falling, and the targeting system, even though it's automatic, isn't very precise when you're trying to hit a specific target; these missions aren't terrible, but really drag the game's other excellently-crafted modes.
Graphically it is a masterpiece. The ships have never been so good-looking, models so sharp and realistic, and the environments have never been so beautiful; heck, you just can't get tired of switching to cockpit mode just to look around the cockpit and see the astonishing detail! This game really pushes the GameCube's hardware to the limit. The game includes real-time cinemas, as well as some FMVs, which I must say are excellent in quality - could we expect less from Factor 5? - as they're compressed with DivX, so you know what to expect; these videos come in the form of scenes from the OT, which look really good. The downside to all of this is that loading times are more apparent now than in RS2 - they're still very short but now they're noticeable, unlike in RS2 where they were virtually null. Also, at times the game feels a little glitchy, since the game froze up several times and I had to reset my GameCube.
Sound is excellent also. The music doesn't sound like MIDI anymore, it feels truly instrumental and atmospheric, and it features new tracks as well as improved renditions to the OT's soundtrack as well as to the past RS games. The ships still sound great, featuring all the effects you'd expect from spaceships. All sounds are reminiscent of the OT. What I didn't like was that the voiceovers don't sound as the original actors, and when there's a transition between a FMV and the game it really is noticed, specially Han Solo.
Something that the past RS games never had was multiplayer. This game now features two-player modes, which include Co-op and Versus. Versus is what you'd expect, some competitive modes to see who wins; the Versus modes are very varied, which includes Dogfights in starships (where you can even use a GBA to issue commands to your wingmates without letting your rival know what you issued) to land-based showdowns using on-foot vehicles, as well as races using speeders or see who gets to the end of the Death Star Trench first; you can select even more ships than the ones that are available for Single Player mode and you can even choose the locale. In addition, there's the Co-op mode; this is the multiplayer mode that really shows off the game's quality, as it includes the COMPLETE Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader game, twitched to be played by two players at a time, modifying the amount of enemy fighters and the difficulty, but it's only included for multiplayer gameplay; sadly, unlike in the original RS2, Wedge's voiceover isn't the original actor and he was replaced by LucasArts's own voiceover.
In the previous entry, getting medals wasn't a walk in the park, and this time it isn't either, but it isn't as difficult as it was in RS2. The game by itself is a breeze, but if you really want to get medals you must work hard, REALLY HARD. Like in all previous entries, to get rank medals you must excel in a mission's parameters, including the time you spent to finish it, the number of enemies wiped out, number of lives spent, etc. I must say, some missions are really tough, but I felt the experience to be less difficult than in RS2; sometimes it was difficult during the on-foot missions as the sucky gameplay didn't help. In addition to the Bronze, Silver and Gold, the game features now a "Best Ever" medal, which is more tough to get and is much more demanding, but you don't need it to unlock things, it's just for ego. The point to get medals is to unlock additional content, which includes extras like documentaries, trailers, to additional ships and more missions (that are really adaptations of some OT scenes, nice touch). Also, you can include two complete arcade games from the 80's, the Star Wars arcade vector games from Atari, which inspired the Rogue Squadron series. These games are really good and fun, but really hard.
So, still not convinced? It's a shame this game wasn't well sold and it was quickly price-slashed to 20 bucks, like a month after it was released. This game just bloats with replay value. You'll almost never finish this game completely, as it contains so much extra content, even more than a full second DVD disc, and so much extra gameplay. When you play this, you'll be sure that Factor 5 really tried - and risked - to make the best game they could, and mostly they did. This game is an excellent addition to your library, and a must-have if you're a SW or RS fan.