Star Wars: Rebel Strike — A RetRose-Tinted Review
Recall — What’s Last is First
Picture it. 2003. The holidays. My uncle, the self-proclaimed Star Wars nerd of the family since the original trilogy’s theatrical release, gifted me my copy of Star Wars: Rebel Strike, the third in the Rogue Squadron series. Up until this point, my exposure to Rogue Squadron was failing at the N64 missions because I didn’t know how to radar, or otherwise getting my adolescence rocked by the Rogue Leader demo kiosk at various stores. But Rebel Strike looked like it would hit differently. Between Shadows of the Empire, Dark Forces, and the like, I knew I was good at on-ground missions. They’d pepper in some funky spacecraft stuff, and then back to blasting things with a pistol on solid ground. Needless to say, I played the hell out of it.
For all that I’ve remembered tutorials in the other Rogue Squadron games, this was the one that really set the bar. Between all the new ways players were going to play, the tutorial was a must. On-foot, in the air, in a walker, on a speeder bike, Rebel Strike had options to spare, and each of them controlled just a bit different. Of course, the most important lessons were “never stop jumping because you’re harder to hit when you’re moving” and “full-auto feels good, sounds good, and looks cool.” Had to quash that second one to increase my accuracy ratings, but humble beginnings are nothing if not quickly humbled.
Like its predecessors, Rebel Strike sold players on its replayability, unlockables, and hidden secrets: do better in missions to get medals, which award points, to unlock bonus missions; discover upgrades to make missions easier, and medals easier to get; complete certain missions to unlock…arcade games? SURE. Pepper in an absurd amount of ships that could be unlocked and piloted. Ride the recent high of Episode II’s release and its new (and returning) crafts.
Rebel Strike continues the Rogue Squadron legacy of passcodes, used to unlock everything from levels to starships to secret arcade games. At some point, I know I’ve relied on passcodes and cheat codes to get everything I wanted out of the game, and I’ve felt shame for it. But really, what were they but early accessibility options? The dynamic has (thankfully) come a long ways since then, but what are accessibility options if not designed to let people experience the game how they want to experience it? Not everyone has the skills or time to grind out gold medals on all levels, after all.
Where Rebel Strike steps apart from its forebears is in the ahead-of-their-time setpieces it throws players into. Like the trench run on the Death Star, players are thrown behind powerful turrets, onto speeder bikes for blistering-fast encounters, and even into the head of a massive AT-AT walker to see how powerful it feels from the inside. We may not be scaling a train as it’s about to fall off a cliff, or climbing our way back into a plane mid-flight, but these setpieces were new. In the equations of Rogue Squadron, the game was never turned on its head like that before.
I was especially excited for the cooperative mode. My siblings and I didn’t have a lot of cooperative game options, and trouncing one another in Mario Party can only carry us so far. Being able to blast through all of the levels in Rogue Leader in a cooperative setting was phenomenal, fun, and challenging in a way that only occasionally felt unfair. And when cooperative mode got a bit too heated, we could always just go to competitive. Our go-to options were dogfight, my brother in Slave I, I in the Jedi Starfighter, somewhere in an asteroid field, with loads of seismic charges. You know, the giant blue disc-blast from Episode II? Those, but put into the hands of children. Good times.
And one of my favorite announcers, Danny Delk, most assuredly makes his return for this final Rogue Squadron outing. Consistency can be a wonderful thing.
All of this stands out, as a I recall, to set Rebel Strike as a peak Rogue Squadron experience. The single-player adventures, the setpieces, the multiplayer options, the unlockable arcade cabinets, the bonus missions, the ship selection…this was Star Wars when it was just fun. Yes, it’s Star Wars, there’s war in the name and destruction, but there’s also a dance party when the game boots up. The Death Star hanger spawns a disco ball when Darth Vader goes to play one of the arcade games. Players get to experience exciting scenes from the Original Trilogy, as a main character.
This isn’t a mechanics-heavy flight sim, and it’s not trying to tell the next great Star Wars story before the great de-retconning. Rogue Squadron wrote the equation, and Rogue Leader refined it, but Rebel Strike perfected the formula of fun.
Revisit — Muscle Memory
This was one of those times where it was just nice to revisit a game from way back when. Nostalgia carried it a long ways, and its objective strengths carried it further. Rebel Strike doesn’t so much fall short as it does leave you wanting for more of what it did well.
Rebel Strike gives players a lot to do and experience, sometimes within the same mission; piloting starkly different ships, going from space combat to ground assault back to space travel, downing AT-AT walkers from the ground before defending escaping convoys in the sky, it can all feel like mechanical whiplash, especially when missions are played one after the other. But when you zero in on the individual missions, played again and again to improve on them, that’s where it excels: the individual missions. They’re longer and more complicated than previous Rogue Squadron missions, but therein lies the new and thrilling challenge! Players have the excel at different elements, one after the other, in order to succeed to earn the highest medals. What feels like whiplash through different missions feels more connected and cohesive in the same mission.
When those standout moments in the missions hit, they hit. Speeder chases on the forest moon of Endor. Defensive speeder runs in a smog-filled city under siege. Modified trench runs across the surface of a Super Star Destroyer. Dogfights throughout space. The dogfights especially, you’re no longer playing hide-and-seek with enemies, they will turn and try to run you down in a game of interstellar chicken. They can (and will) take shots at you, but it’s perfect for players looking to line up a perfect set of shots on them, too. There’s fire coming from all sides, but Rebel Strike excels in making players feel like the Ace of the Rebellion through those tiny gameplay changes and experiences.
I wish that I could have my brother around to go through the Cooperative levels, or a few rounds on Versus, but for now, the memories will have to suffice. And, again, there are ports of the three arcade games on the disc, and they still stand up.
Unlike my revisiting the other Rogue Squadron games, I actually completed all the main (single-player) missions before settling in to write this section. I’m left wondering, despite all its changes to the Rogue Squadron formula, is Rebel Strike easier than its predecessors? Or, more likely, did I just play it more when I was younger? Muscle memory guided me towards upgrade locations, or best practices for dealing with certain obstacles. It was, and still is, a great game to just unwind and have fun with. It doesn’t strive to tell a dramatic story, it doesn’t seek to stonewall players on particularly difficult sections. Rebel Strike just throws players into the Star Wars universe, points them at the Imperials, and shows you how you use all sorts of blasters. And it, and the entire Rogue Squadron series, is truly that much better for it.
All images courtesy of MobyGames
