Star Wars Rogue Squadron is the first game that allows you to play the role of Luke Skywalker in fighter combat. The story takes place after the destruction of the first Deathstar, as Luke forms Rogue Squadron of the most experienced and gifted fighter pilots. The main members include Wedge Antilles, ‘Dack’ Ralter, Wes ‘Janson’, Zev Senesca, Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, General Rieekan, and of course Luke Skywalker. The Rogue Squadron’s purpose is to defend the Rebel Alliance against the mighty forces of the Empire.

As I said before, LucasArts has published some good games and some bad games. I can’t express how much I enjoy anything having to do with the Star Wars universe, but I seemed to find more to quibble about with Star Wars Rogue Squadron than to praise.

First off let me start by saying that I’ve played X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter so I’m not a novice at space combat sims. Of course I know that Star Wars Rogue Squadron isn’t supposed to be a sim, but that doesn’t mean that they can slack off on the controls, either. When I played Shadows of the Empire, flying the speeders on Hoth was the most enjoyable part of the game, but when I experienced this in Star Wars Rogue Squadron I was mightily peeved! Why on earth would you fix something that wasn’t broken?! The flight control of Shadows of the Empire was perfect for an arcade style flight sim, but that’s not the case with this game. The first of my control problems came when I couldn’t find a way to setup my Sidewinder Force Feedback Joystick to roll using the twisted Z axis on the joystick. I thought this was kinda stupid, but I figured that they just decided to not support that feature since not all joysticks have the Z axis. But I soon found out that the only way you could roll your ship was to hold a button down and then push left or right on the joystick--very lame, and without this finer control over your ships, they seem very sluggish while turning. This is at the root of all the game’s control problems, and I figured it out within the first 5 minutes of gameplay; can you say play testing?

The game does, however, look pretty spiffy, though not revolutionary. The textures on objects and terrain are awesome, which makes the game’s visuals look very appealing, but the game engine falters in rendering objects at long distances. Your radar is for the most part limited to what you can already see, which isn’t very far. Anything out of view is covered up with a thick fog cloud, which reminds me of Magic Carpet, a game that is almost 5 years old. I can’t believe that an engine that utilizes the newest 3D acceleration hardware can’t render any better than a game that uses no 3D acceleration hardware. Sheesh. That aside though, the explosions look great and laser blasts do have light sourcing, which is a step in the right direction.

Since this is a Star Wars game I of course figured the sound and music had to be perfect. And though the trade mark sound effects we expect from watching the movies are there, for some reason the music is in some sort of midi format and doesn’t sound all that great. Yeah, the same old tunes are used, but c’mon--if they’re trying to conserve space on the CD they should’ve used MP3 encoding and not sacrificed the music’s quality.