Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader

Be Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles and join the Rebellion against the Empire today!

One thing that Rogue Leader does impeccably well is putting you into the Star Wars universe. Factor 5 have captured the look of the films perfectly, and it still look quite spectacular to this day. One thing I especially love is how well the cockpits are made, different for every ship in the game and each one fully 3D modelled with the ability to look around, seeing parts of your fighter out the windows. It’s an absolute joy to look at, even today.

There’s also an immense amount of enemy ships, the large swarms seen in Return of the Jedi are fully present here. With everything looking just like the films, it does mean that TIE ships are quite difficult to see against the background stars, which is where the targeting computer comes in, an overlay that highlights ships – although if you want to earn the extremely difficult medals, you’ll need to learn to cope without it and use the force instead.

One downside to this are that there are only 10 main missions (and a few more to unlock). One mission does have day and night variants, with it automatically selected based on the time of day you play the game, which is a neat surprise, but also means faffing with the clock if you want to specifically pick which version of the stage to play. These missions are a lot of fun, and you do get both Death Star battles and the Battle of Hoth to experience for yourself.

There are a load of unlockable ships, though, each one feeling very different to each other, and it’s fun to try out missions in different ships. For the final Death Star II assault, picking the Millennium Falcon puts you in control of Lando rather than duplicating the ship, which is a nice touch, and navigating the tunnels is a fun challenge in the Falcon. The Naboo Starfighter also returns, but with a weathered look to make it fit the Rebellion. There’s no unique secret ship form the next film in this one, but there is a secret paint job for the Slave 1.

Rogue Leader is still an absolute joy to play, and still captures the style of Star Wars impeccably well. It’s a wonderful experience and was absolute magic when it launched. It was one of two games I got with my GameCube on launch day, and one I kept returning to for many years.

Fave

If you’re a massive Star Wars fanatic, who simply has to indulge in every piece of merchandise to come form the Lucas stable then there’s no doubt about it – this is about as essential a purchase as you’re ever likely to find. But, even if you loathe the Star Wars hype machine and everything it stands for, it’s worth putting aside your prejudices, for Rogue Leader is definitely still worth investigating.

Geraint Evans, NGC Magazine #68

Remake or remaster?

This series definitely needs a remaster. It’s still one of the more difficult GameCube games to get running smoothly via emulation due to the advanced techniques and tricks Factor 5 used, so a version that properly runs on modern hardware would be amazing to have.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play  Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader.

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