Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (GameCube)

[NinjaWarrior]

Have anyone played this Game?

 

I got it for Star Wars Arcade 

 

But, I don't like when you start the Game and you can't bypass the Logo by Pressing Start 

 

Like where there dancing after the LucasArts Logo

[Lost Dragon]

Picked it up for the unlockable extras and i had very much enjoyed the earlier Rogue Squadron game on GC, but came away bitterly dissapointed. 

 

 

Whilst technically very impressive, it was just horrendous to play. 

 

 

Developer went onto repeat the same mistakes with Lair on PS3. 

 

 

Fantastic visual showcase for the hardware, horrendous to actually try and play. 

[Steven Pendleton]

Extremely disappointing single player. Coop is good though, mainly because it's just a coop remake of the previous game, which is excellent and far superior in every way except maybe graphics. The remake changed some stuff and unfortunately they replaced Wedge's real actor's voice with some other dude who doesn't sound anywhere near as good and is also missing some stuff, but otherwise it's good.

[Tanooki]

I've had it a few times off and on, originally when it came out, and as Steve there said 'extremely disappointing.'  It's like they tried to rush it out and dial in a sequel without thinking things through entirely.  The flight stages, no doubt are still on the level of the ones from RS2, but after that the game entirely crumbles into a mix of fury and frustration.  I'm not even going to nitpick the rest he did up there, but the most by far damning problem was the fact they stuck to using the same gameplay and camera engine on all stages, all stages that weren't flying.  On foot the camera was still locked, it messed up perspective and made it a real hard chore trying to do all these jump challenges where a miss is death, and also since you're not always moving, anyone shooting at you off screen can waste you as you move beyond them and they pass into the screen.  Trying to double back, find the target, lock it and attack is beyond rough, like a mix of bad ideas before people nailed down camera/enemy placement in the PS1/N64 era bad.  Then the others were the few on ground land speeder stages, argh, the camera couldn't relate either to that so you'd swish all over the place like a drunken sailor and the camera would lag often causing you to slam into trees, rocks, etc and like the movie, instant death.  When another has fell into my hands since I see if I can tolerate it and nothing changes, so I won't even buy the game anymore and try and forget it exists.

[Steven Pendleton]

13 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

It's like they tried to rush it out and dial in a sequel without thinking things through entirely. 

That's kind of what happened, actually. From what I understand, someone (pretty sure it was Holger Schmidt) decided to have them intentionally delete the source code for Rogue Squadron 2 before they started work on 3, so they had to completely rebuild literally everything, including all of Rogue Squadron 2 for the (excellent) multiplayer coop mode, which resulted in them having to rush the game.

[Lost Dragon]

5 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

That's kind of what happened, actually. From what I understand, someone (pretty sure it was Holger Schmidt) decided to have them intentionally delete the source code for Rogue Squadron 2 before they started work on 3, so they had to completely rebuild literally everything, including all of Rogue Squadron 2 for the (excellent) multiplayer coop mode, which resulted in them having to rush the game.

Wow. 

 

Kudos for the back story. 

 

That would exolain an awful lot. 

[Punisher5.0]

5 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

That's kind of what happened, actually. From what I understand, someone (pretty sure it was Holger Schmidt) decided to have them intentionally delete the source code for Rogue Squadron 2 before they started work on 3, so they had to completely rebuild literally everything, including all of Rogue Squadron 2 for the (excellent) multiplayer coop mode, which resulted in them having to rush the game.

That is absolutely hardcore. It would explain why the game stayed a GC exclusive for almost 20 years now.

[Tanooki]

13 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

That's kind of what happened, actually. From what I understand, someone (pretty sure it was Holger Schmidt) decided to have them intentionally delete the source code for Rogue Squadron 2 before they started work on 3, so they had to completely rebuild literally everything, including all of Rogue Squadron 2 for the (excellent) multiplayer coop mode, which resulted in them having to rush the game.

 

8 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Wow. 

 

Kudos for the back story. 

 

That would exolain an awful lot. 

Dragon there has the key word 'awful' and it really is a good one word explanation there for why it just is what it is knowing that dumb stunt.  Awful idea, awful stunt to pull, awful to then rush it, and even more awful to think releasing it as it was was any kind of a good idea.  Had they not lost all the time re-doing it, that wasted crafting could have crafted a proper set of on foot and speeder bike stages with proper cameras with them and could have trumped or matched the prequel

[Steven Pendleton]

  I'll just reply to everyone here all at once to make it simple, and also because we're all of the same mindset that this was an insane thing to do:

7 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Wow. 

 

Kudos for the back story. 

 

That would exolain an awful lot. 

7 hours ago, Punisher5.0 said:

That is absolutely hardcore. It would explain why the game stayed a GC exclusive for almost 20 years now.

5 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

 

Dragon there has the key word 'awful' and it really is a good one word explanation there for why it just is what it is knowing that dumb stunt.  Awful idea, awful stunt to pull, awful to then rush it, and even more awful to think releasing it as it was was any kind of a good idea.  Had they not lost all the time re-doing it, that wasted crafting could have crafted a proper set of on foot and speeder bike stages with proper cameras with them and could have trumped or matched the prequel

Yeah, it's a really interesting (and terrible) choice to completely erase all of your old work and completely rebuild it, and it does definitely explain why the game has never been ported. I really wish they hadn't done this, because Rogue Squadron 2 is my favourite GameCube game by far and they had the potential to make its sequel even better if they didn't include those horrible foot missions and gave themselves more time to work on the game. I'd honestly say Rogue Squadron 2 is probably the most impressed I have ever been with a launch title for any system ever aside from maybe Uncharted on the Vita, even if RS2 has a bunch of weird glitches. Meanwhile, Rogue Squadron 3 has a bunch of really short, unsatisfying flight missions combined with those horrible ground missions.

 

Factor 5 was an extremely talented studio (they would have to be in order to completely rebuild Rogue Squadron 2 from literally nothing in a short time and get it as close to the original as it is in addition to creating an entire new game while also on a strict time schedule), but they did some dumb things in those last few years before they went out of business (Lair and the apparently self-inflicted Rogue Squadron 3 development trouble). They were working on some sort of Rogue Squadron HD collection for I think the Xbox 360, so there was a plan at one point to port it, but that never happened because Factor 5 decided to make Lair instead.

 

Again, this is just what I heard many years ago, so maybe it's not true, but I checked Wikipedia's page on Rogue Squadron 3 and it definitely does seem to say some very similar stuff, if you are willing to trust that website. What a crazy decision to do that instead of building on your existing work (which was excellent, if a bit glitchy sometimes).

[Tanooki]

7 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

  Factor 5 was an extremely talented studio (they would have to be in order to completely rebuild Rogue Squadron 2 from literally nothing in a short time and get it as close to the original as it is in addition to creating an entire new game while also on a strict time schedule), but they did some dumb things in those last few years before they went out of business (Lair and the apparently self-inflicted Rogue Squadron 3 development trouble). They were working on some sort of Rogue Squadron HD collection for I think the Xbox 360, so there was a plan at one point to port it, but that never happened because Factor 5 decided to make Lair instead.

 

Again, this is just what I heard many years ago, so maybe it's not true, but I checked Wikipedia's page on Rogue Squadron 3 and it definitely does seem to say some very similar stuff, if you are willing to trust that website. What a crazy decision to do that instead of building on your existing work (which was excellent, if a bit glitchy sometimes).

No it's Rogue Squadron Trilogy for the Nintendo Wii, and furthermore it was finished, yet Disney shitcanned it at the 11th hour in that buy out from Lucas.  IT crippled the studio as they went all in on the thing and they were furious.  Years later they started leaking footage of it and talking it up hoping maybe they'd be allowed to bring it out anyway given Factor 5 re-formed around 3-4 years ago now.  Here's some footage they slipped out.  I can't find the video interview, sorry.  They now want to put this on SWITCH.

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Tanooki

[Steven Pendleton]

2 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

No it's Rogue Squadron Trilogy for the Nintendo Wii, and furthermore it was finished, yet Disney shitcanned it at the 11th hour in that buy out from Lucas.  IT crippled the studio as they went all in on the thing and they were furious.  Years later they started leaking footage of it and talking it up hoping maybe they'd be allowed to bring it out anyway given Factor 5 re-formed around 3-4 years ago now.  Here's some footage they slipped out.  I can't find the video interview, sorry.

 

lol that's the one! Where the hell did I get Xbox 360 from, I wonder? Maybe I'm just going crazy again, but I thought that Eggebrecht might have mentioned it somewhere once a while ago. Maybe not.

 

Anyway, yeah, Factor 5 exists again to some extent, although I'm not sure how much of the old staff is there, but I hope that whatever they are doing now won't be as troubled as the past few games they've worked on.

[Tanooki]

There was talk of another non 'rogue' star wars game for the platform, that's about it, talk.  And from what I think I remember years back, many of the main players who with F5 before came back.  I think if someone would give them the chances they had 20 years ago again they could do some serious damage in breaking walls of quality with lesser hardware such as doing this game now on the Switch or its successor.

[roots.genoa]

As usual, I'm in the minority camp of unpopular opinions but I think I preferred Rebel Strike. ^^ Rogue Leader was really impressive, but too difficult for me. While I'm almost sure I've beaten Rebel Strike, even though I admit the on foot sequences sucked and there were a few frustrating moments, but they were short I guess.

Edited August 30, 2020 by roots.genoa

[Tanooki]

17 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

As usual, I'm in the minority camp of unpopular opinions but I think I preferred Rebel Strike. ^^ Rogue Leader was really impressive, but too difficult for me. While I'm almost sure I've beaten Rebel Strike, even though I admit the on foot sequences sucked and there were a few frustrating moments, but they were short I guess.

Yeah you probably are, as I think you're just more forgiving of it.  RS3 wasn't an easier game, even if you ignore the problems with the crappily swishing camera with the land speeder bike stages or the weird way it worked when on foot too messing with perspective.  They were in practice fun by design, just bad execution, while the flight stages were right at home with the original.  I've finished both, not like 100% of any sort with golds I usually was just find having any medal so it was a mix.  I don't want to call it the lesser game, but those non traditional stages dragged it down badly into fury and frustration, more so with the swishy speeder than on foot.

[Steven Pendleton]

18 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

As usual, I'm in the minority camp of unpopular opinions but I think I preferred Rebel Strike. ^^ Rogue Leader was really impressive, but too difficult for me. While I'm almost sure I've beaten Rebel Strike, even though I admit the on foot sequences sucked and there were a few frustrating moments, but they were short I guess.

RS2 has probably the most difficult first level of any game I have ever played. For some reason it took me like 4 days to finish Death Star Attack, but I was like 11, so maybe it's because I was just a dumb kid.

28 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

RS3 wasn't an easier game

Yeah, 3 is actually way harder than 2, at least if you want the gold medals and discounting that stupid Endurance level in 2. The hardest thing about Endurance is that it's super boring, not that it's difficult, unfortunately. Best to just use the Buick and be done with it.

[roots.genoa]

5 hours ago, Tanooki said:

the land speeder bike stages

I remember having a hard time with those stages, but a friend of mine gave me a good piece of advice: don't look at the trees but at the space between them! ^^

Anyway I always sucked at dogfighting games; I tend to get lost (in space, lol) and time limited missions are very hard for me.

[Tanooki]

Hmm interesting.  I don't know if I ever attempted that.  I just tried to avoid the trees aiming for what looked like the best path, but the way the camera would slosh around somewhat independently from the bike speeder I'd just end up slamming into trees and rocks or in the thinner spots just flying off an edge.  I don't think I ever finished the game, or cheated/got lucky going through those once out of way too many times so I'd never do it twice.

 

Dogfights though, I'm kind of a natural at them, been since around 1991~ when I got Wing Commander as I could just destroy that game, then it's sequel, and I could crack through X-Wing and TIE FIghter +expansion packages on hard in the day going nuts at times by myself against multiple targets.  I really want to get into that new one popping up shortly on PC but I fear my processor may just miss the mark despite being well in excess or at max recommended for the GPU and RAM.

[roots.genoa]

Of course I'm not saying that Rebel Strike is the better game, but Rogue Leader frustrated me more. I play games like I watch movies or read books; I beat a game and move on to the next one, and I have very little time to revisit any game unfortunately. So being unable to beat a game is one of my biggest frustrations. I know some people, esp. hardcore gamers, don't like when a game is too easy, but that's clearly something I don't mind that much (even though I admit it will be more satisfying if I beat a game that felt challenging, of course).

[Atariboy]

I find it difficult to believe that Rogue Squadron 2's source code was deleted just after development had ended. Judging by a 10 minute search just now, it's gotten little if any attention if true. Yet if someone in the development team indeed had made this claim, I would've thought it would be widely distributed by gaming sites that pick up on interesting tidbits like this.

 

Contrary to what's been said in this thread, the Wikipedia page makes no mention of this. What it does say is that they scrapped Rogue Squadron 2's engine in order to build a new one more tailored for the GameCube's hardware, taking advantage of all that they had learned about the hardware during the development of Rogue Squadron 2. While perhaps a mistake, it's a far cry from deleting the source code to Rogue Squadron 2. 

 

And Rogue Squadron Trilogy was an original Xbox project that got canned late in development. It was resurrected for the Wii with I believe Rogue Squadron 1 dropped and a lot of Wii motion controls added, but that too got killed late in development. Was a flurry of news about this project a couple of years back for some reason, so should be easy to find information about it.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Atariboy

[MrMaddog]

On 8/28/2020 at 3:37 AM, NinjaWarrior said:

Have anyone played this Game?

 

I got it for Star Wars Arcade 

 

I've borrowed a copy from a friend to try out the included arcade games.  The vector graphics looked terrible unless you had a S-Video cable and the digitalzed voices were garbled because they played at the same time!

 

Still, it was the only "legal" way to play SW arcade games back then....