The Shrine

A little while ago, I decided to start re-reading one of my favorite series of books, the Star Wars X-Wing series - starting with Rogue Squadron and going all the way through to Starfighters of Adumar. I'm on the eighth book now (Isard's Revenge), and reading the books had given me a serious jonesing to play a SW starfighting game again. I'm a fan of starfighting games in general - I've played and enjoyed X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander: Prophecy, Colony Wars: Vengeance, and StarLancer - and I remembered from old reviews that Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader for GC was very well reviewed, so I went out yesterday, found a used copy, brought it home, fiddled around with it for a while, and then said to myself "What in the hell were all these reviewers smoking??????"

First off, there's no targeting. Read that sentence again - it's a space shooting game, and there's no targeting. How can there not be targeting???? Secondly, the radar is useless, asis the cockpit view. Thirdly, the ships control way too quickly for aiming purposes and way too slowly for finding new target purposes; and fourthly, without using the "targeting computer" - which does nothing but highlight destructible enemies (which every other space game automatically does for you anyway) and the game penalizes you for using it - I can't see a damned thing, due to the fact that the developers were so busy trying to cram as much graphical happiness on to the screen at once that they forgot to, you know, make the enemies discernable from anything else in any way.

It's just infuriating. I'm used to PC-style space-shooter simulations (I count Colony Wars in that category, even though it was console-only) that are well designed and playable, and I'm disgusted at this rushed, sad excuse of a game that everybody seemed to be happily fellating when it came out at the GC launch, simply because it looked pretty.

Just needed to vent.

I agree, Starwars Rogue Leader sucked. I finished it the first or second day I had it and touched it maybe like once again. That being said, I can't say I liked Colony Wars or Starwars: Tie Fighter either; if anything, I found those two to be even more slow and boring than Rogue Leader.

What? That game was freakin' great. I never understood how people had targeting issues, it was pretty easy to target for me. It was an excellent game that was graphically far ahead of its time

Zeus wrote:What? That game was freakin' great. I never understood how people had targeting issues, it was pretty easy to target for me. It was an excellent game that was graphically far ahead of its time

Yeah, it was possibly the best game around graphically the year it was released, and possibly for quite some time after. I didn't have any complaints about the graphics. I didn't have any targeting problems either. The thing that I didn't enjoy was, like most other Starwars games, the game wasn't very fun. It had a couple of good levels, there was one where you had to sneak by and disable sensors, and then attack a base, I liked that level, and the final one where you actually flew into the death star was fun as well. However, I didn't find the game overall to be fun enough to play after the first few days. It's not that good Space Shooters can't be made, it's just in my experience Lucasarts is not very good at making them (to my taste, I am sure some people like them, Zeus is one). The only really good game I can think of to come out of that studio is Knights of the Old Republic; and that was mostly developed by Bioware (if not completely).

The problem I had with targeting is just what I said - the game did nothing to discern the enemies from anything else, and with all the rest of the crap the developers crammed on the screen in order to make the game be as graphically impressive as possible, it was really hard to make anything out. Here's some examples.


On the first level, the Death Star:

-When the TIEs come in, you're expected to pick out these <font size=-5>little tiny gray specks</font> moving around with a <font size=+1>big giant gray thing</font> as a background. Not to mention the fact that there's twelve bajillion gun emplacements firing from the surface, which both a) obscure the sky further making it even harder to find the TIEs, and b) clutter up your radar to such a degree that it's completely useless.

-Then, when you finally hit the trench, all of the gun emplacements are these small gray rectangles set, again, on a much bigger gray background. My eyes were watering trying to pick them out.

-Finally, due to the perspective they used on the trench, the back wall of it and the exhaust port are impossible to make out until you're right about to hit it.

On the second level, the convoy assault:

-Again, you're expected to be able to find tiny gray TIEs, either a) against a black background of space with gray blocks of debris floating all over the place, or b) against a grey/white background of a nebula. You've got to be freaking kidding me.

Sure, you can counter all of that by saying "that's what they put the targeting computer in for", but the game penalizes you for using it. I'm trying to overcome the developer's bad design, and they're telling me I suck! It's like paying someone to kick me in the groin.


And then there's the controls. When you're just trying to adjust your aim, the targeting reticule goes flying all over the place with the slightest nudge of the stick - but when you actually push the stick long enough to one side to make the ship turn, it goes reeeeeeaaaallllllyyyy slooooowwwwwwlllllyyyy and you lose whoever you're trying to track. (Except when I tried the A-wing on the second level, which just went flying all over the place no matter what I did.) Not to mention that there's no feedback for how fast you're going, so I'm constantly either overflying things or watching them zoom away from me (and there's no way to match speed of your target, which is also usually a space sim mainstay). It's just infuriating.

I mean, let's compare RL for a moment to a comparable, arcade-style flight shooter type of game from this current gen - Crimson Skies.

-Red boxes frame all of your enemies. It's easy to pick them out at a distance.

-The radar is actually useful - turn in the direction of an enemy on the radar, and you'll see him.

-It controls slowly and smoothly enough to make precision shots, and yet isn't so slow that it feels sluggish.

-If you're not braking or boosting, you're going at your plane's basic speed. Simple as that.

These are all things that RL fails miserably at, but are absoutely basic to the genre. This is why I'm so baffled that it got such good reviews.


I dunno, man. I mean, I'm sure that once one gets used to the controls and the visuals/targeting and everything else that it's possible to beat it - people have done so and done so quickly, and even gotten the gold medals and such - but the learning curve is so steep, and there's so many bad design decisions and interface flaws to overcome, that I just don't think I'm going to have any fun with it.

You're playing a Flight/Space Sim on a console. I think that's your problem. Go pick up something like Independence War or Star Rangers for a good old-skool Space Sim, and play it on a computer with a HOTAS, like you're supposed to. (Or at least a good joystick, if you can't afford the $40 for a HOTAS.)