Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike Impressions

LucasArts had a new playable demo of Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike on display at a press event today, and we spent some time with several of the game's diverse levels to see how they've shaped up since E3. A wide variety of missions were included in the demo, which showcased several of the combat types that Rebel Strike will have to offer in its final incarnation. Among them were an X-Wing mission in the asteroid field surrounding Geonosis; a new Battle of Hoth level that had you playing as Luke Skywalker both on foot and on a tauntaun; two levels on the forest moon of Endor, one on a speeder bike and one in an AT-ST walker; and finally, a bonus mission that had you playing as Luke on foot in an attempt to rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star detention area.

The aerial combat in the missions we played closely resembled that seen in the previous games. You can still issue orders to your wingmen, switch to first-person mode for targeting, and that sort of thing. The difference here, of course, is in the levels you'll play and the mission objectives you'll pursue. Some of the newer levels were of greater interest to us, specifically the ones involving the AT-ST and speeder bike. The AT-ST level had us stomping around the forest, blasting stormtroopers and other AT-STs while trying to help the hapless Ewoks defeat the Imperial forces on Endor. This mode was quite a bit of fun, as the heavy cannons on the walker allowed us to lay waste to just about everything in our path. The speeder bike level was quite straightforward, as you might expect--it merely had us dodging giant trees as we chased and tried to shoot down scouts on their own bikes before they could reach additional Imperial forces.

Rebel Strike's most significant addition to the gameplay model established by previous Rogue Squadron games is the on-foot combat. In the level we played, we controlled Luke Skywalker (in full stormtrooper regalia) inside the Death Star's prison block, fighting enemy troops and searching each cell for signs of Princess Leia. The controls in these on-foot stages are pretty easy to pick up on--Rebel Strike features a sort of loose auto-targeting that makes it much easier to aim at oncoming troopers. In addition to simply blasting away, you can also roll, duck, and jump in an attempt to evade enemy fire.

We also got to play a brief bit of Rebel Strike's cooperative mode. As has been previously reported, the two-player co-op mode reprises Rebel Strike's predecessor, Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader, in its entirety by letting you play all of that game's missions on a split screen with a friend. We controlled an X-Wing against squadrons of TIE fighters while our friend flew a B-Wing and attempted to disable a nearby Star Destroyer. Even with two screens running at once, the graphics were quite smooth and seemed on a par with the quality of the original game. We were also told that the co-op missions in Rebel Strike are being retuned slightly to accommodate two players.

Graphically, Rebel Strike is one of the best-looking GameCube games we've seen. Its lighting and other visual effects are certainly among the finest on the console, and equally impressive is the fact that its frame rate never drops considerably. Like Rogue Leader before it, Rebel Strike will end up being one of the games that GameCube owners will want to show off their consoles with.

Based on our experience with the demo today, it looks like Factor 5 is going to great lengths to make Rebel Strike a new and unique Star Wars action game. The game features a large and varied number of missions that will let you both relive memorable moments from the films and experience new scenarios derived from the expanded Star Wars universe. Rebel Strike is slated for a late September release. We'll bring you more soon.