Customer Reviews
I finally played it! - By: Neil G, 09 May 2007 
I never owned a Gamecube, so I never got to play this game. I loved the prequal on the N64, & always thought that this game looked good, but just never got around to it. Now I own a Wii, the gateway to a plethora of retor games has opened before me & this is the first title checked off my "to buy" list. Of course, I had to buy a Gamecube remote & memory card - don't forget to grap those!
Anyway, this game looks fantastic (even now) & plays well. The controls are a little convoluted & tricky (I've no idea what my targetting computer efficiency score means & I've no idea how to improve it) but you get used to them. And this feels like Star Wars. It feels like yourin the movies & it feels good.
In short, if you've bagged yourself a Wii, grab this game too. It's dirt cheap & I reckon you'll enjoy it!
Possibly the best star wars game ever - By: , 05 Jul 2005 Although some of the complaints from other reviews are true, such as there being a couple of bland levels, this is an amazing game. Great sound, great graphics, great gameplay but most importantly you will love it if you love star wars.
Many of the levels see you taking control of wedge antilles carrying out missions that are not featuredin the films such as the capture of the imperial shuttle tyderium. But of course there are also classic scenes from the films such as the death star trench run & the battle of endor.
It is extremely satisfying hitting your target after a long dogfight & the ship sounds are straight from the films. Get this before rogue squadron 3 as it is betterin many ways. This is one of my favourite games ever & definately one of the best star wars based games around!
Average space shooting helped by the license - By: Mr. R. D. Wilson, 24 Jul 2004 
I've heard that Ronseal: Quick Dry & Wood Stain does exactly what it says on the tin. You buy it & you know exactly what to expect. Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader? Same thing. No, I don't mean that it driesin a matter of minutes & protects surfaces for five years, nor is there a renegade general roaming the streets stirring up rebellion, shouting, "POWER TO THE PEOPLE" every oncein a while. But if you've played any of the previous Rogue Squadron games then what you expect is exactly what you'll get
Rogue Leader was showcased at the industry events as some kind of benchmark game for the Gamecube. It had to. There wasn't much else to show. I'm sure all of us will remember that first tech demo we saw the surface of the Deathstar, lifted straight from the final moments of the first movie. It was spectacular. Witnessing all that enemy fire coming up from the surface & the swarm of Ties flying all over the shop, it was enough to convince you that the Gamecube was the future of videogaming. But no, Rogue Leader is nothing more than a lot of hullabalooza & not much else.
If you've never played a Rogue Squadron game before let me summarise: you, as a pilot of the Rebel Alliance, fly various missions directly associated to the films or related ones the developers have thought up of - those ones are usually rubbish. Controlling all the craft of the rebel fleet, you fly missions eitherin space or on planet surfaces & most revolve around initial objectives which are deflected through circumstances that crop up - invariably it's Tie Bombers appearing from nowhere & attacking the target you're supposed to defend.
If I sound a little bored about the whole experience then you'd be right. Factor 5 knew exactly what they were doing when they developed this game. It's developed as a launch game. It's looks nice but it pushes no boundaries what so ever. In saying all this, though, it's still an enjoyable experience.
The game takes you from the Battle of Yavin, where you destroy the Deathstar, to the epic Battle of Endor. The power of the Gamecube (along with any other consoles outin truth) allows for some pretty impressive polygon shifting, texture licking & whatever else those eye-candy people like to talk about. The Battle of Endor typifies this with a tremendous effort, throwing a substantial number of capital ships around & near a hundred fighter craft into one area of battle. It truly does look spectacular. If I'm being fair, there isn't much that doesn't look at least impressive, but the sheer scale of the Battle of Endor puts it on a higher pedestal.
But apart from that it's 'as you were' with this franchise. There's no real stinker missions, you blow up lots of stuff & you get into the Star Wars mood, you might even go 'phwam... phwom...' a bit with your imaginary lightsabre. Basically Rogue Leader is all about how quickly you can kill stuff. The computer fighters don't have any A.I. they're just there to be shot at. It mostly depends on how quickly you can kill them which denotes the success of your piloting skills. You might have to zig-zag a bit when it comes to capital ships but that's the extent of the skill quota required.
So I suppose this would be the best time to tell you that the game is pretty easy to get through. You'll have knocked the original ten missions of the game within a week or so, so it's a good job there are some excellent extras to play for. The replay value comes from completing the missions within strict time limits, accuracy rates, number of enemies killed on so on. These can get very hard, but very rewarding. Succeedingin these missions will get you new ships, new levels & a commentary on the game & its levels. The commentary's pretty rubbish but the idea of all these extras is a good one & should be used more often.
Oddly, the extra levels are arguably the best bits of the game because, conceptually, they're different to the main missionsin the game. One finds youin the cannon controls of the Millennium Falcon, while other gives you control of a Tie Defender & let's you wreak havoc on an rebel base. Factor 5 should have been more bold & implemented these ideas into the main game. From the outset you would have had a more diverse game to enjoy.
Rogue Leader is an enjoyable game, the Rogue Squadron franchise always has been, but it's nothing more than that. It never climbs beyond or even tries to go beyond the sum of its parts.
Buy it cheap and it'll please - By: , 21 Jan 2004 I'll try to keep this review short. 'Rogue Leader' looks good, sounds great, plays quite well. The game really will take you back to the scenes from the original Star Wars films; your first level (although it sounds a bit extreme) is the Deathstar & trench run; the get to pull down the big walkers on snowy Hoth (remember 'The Empire Strikes Back'?); you visit cloud city; you get to man the gun turret of the Millennium Falcon, & it's fun. Where the game most lets you down is with the 'filler' levels, most of which are grey, slow & uneventful.
The game also has the capacity to annoy; the enemy ships will literally fly into you & cost you a life. Yes, it's their job to attack you, but that just struck me as stupid. Cut-scenes, the first time you see them, look good, but until you complete a level & return to it, if you die during a level, the game forces you to watch the cut scenes again, & again, & again, without letting you skip them. Why game testers didn't raise a hand & say 'you know, that's really quite irritating the fifth time around,' I don't know.
However, there have been a lot of Star Wars games produced opver the years, most of them pretty poor, & Rogue Leader is one of the better ones. If you're a Star Wars fan you'll probably love it, but if you just like playing good games, you'll enjoy it about 70% of the time, but might not feel all that compelled to return to it once you've finished the last mission.
Like I said at the top; get hold of a copy cheap & you probably won't complain.
Not Great, Not Awful - By: , 30 Oct 2003 
This game isn't particularly good.
Space levels are very confusing because it is hard to keep track of where you arein them since the bacl backdrops scroll & there are few placeholders.
Not as good as some early flight games such as Starfox on the Super NES.
Not really recommended.
