E3 2003: Rogue Squadron 3 Hands On

Lucas Arts and Factor 5 bring Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike to GameCube, as one of the biggest titles at Nintendo's booth. Our impressions plus screens.

Most of us will never appear in a Star Wars movie. We're not as cool as Harrison Ford, we don't look as good as Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini, and we can't whine as effectively as Mark Hamill.

The best we can do, it seems, is play Star Wars games from Factor 5. Their games pack the visual wallop and excitement of the movies, and we don't run the risk of having our careers unravel after starring as Luke Skywalker.

Naturally, you can understand why the Force was flowing particularly strong in our loins when we got our hands on Factor 5's newest, Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike.

As you know, the third installment in the Rogue Squadron series is taking some detours from the basic roadmap. In addition to the traditional vehicular combat, several missions will now have players leaving their cockpits for land-based scenarios.

In the demo, we tested our skills in a Hoth mission. Apparently, if you make a game based on the original Star Wars trilogy, it must include a Hoth-based scenario or George Lucas will commandeer your first-born son.

In this particular mission, we assumed the role of Luke Skywalker after his snow speeder crashed at the feet of an AT-AT (nicely introduced by actual footage from The Empire Strikes Back). From there, we had to hoof it over the frozen tundra of Hoth as we diligently took down imperial walkers. This involved grappling to the underbelly of a walker, slicing open a hatch, and tossing a thermal detonator inside (this should sound familiar).

As we trekked from one imperial walker to the next, snow troopers and scout walkers pummeled us with a barrage of laser blasts. The gunplay still needs some fine-tuning, but smoking snow troopers with a blaster rifle helped bring balance to the Force (we think).

Also on display was an Endor mission - another staple of Star Wars games - that looked so good you could almost smell the Ewok poodu. We didn't get our hands on this one, which involved whizzing through the forest on a speeder bike, but we'll be dreaming about it every night for the next several months.

As you might expect, Rogue Squadron 3 was extremely easy on the eyes. Factor 5 simply doesn't know how to make a bad-looking Star Wars game. We did not see any visual enhancements that put this iteration ahead of the Gamecube original, but even then it's still one of the best-looking titles on the console.

Though we were unable to take control of an X-wing, we expect the flight missions to boast the series' trademark tight and intuitive gameplay. The land-based missions are a bit of risk, but we have faith in Factor 5 to pull it off. If they do, the day Rogue Squadron 3 gets released will be a day long remembered.

Expect lovely videos of this title shortly.

Tony Scinta
Staff writer, Kikizo Games