Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike

This game is the best yet for air battles but when it comes to the ground battles they could do a lot of work and the light saber combat sucks.

Wow! Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike - What a game! I'm not the biggest fan of Star Wars but I have to congratulate Factor 5 on creating the best game the franchise has ever seen. I've had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Star Wars games ever since I played Rebel Assualt on the Mega CD. It was abysmal, and the 32-bit console offerings weren't much cop either (although Arcade on the 32X wasnt bad). The N64 Rogue Squadron games were pretty good, but it's taken till the current technology to finally realise the full potential of the Star Wars license. And this is the result of years of fine tuning on Factor 5's part. Learning from the minor mistakes of Rogue Leader, they have returned with this; an all action, epic shoot em up - Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike.

Fans of the other 'Rogue' games will know what to expect with this - you fly around various planetscapes blowing the hell out of Imperial forces with a plethora of highly detailed Rebel ships. However, it is the unmistakable filmic atmosphere that sets this installment apart from the rest. The Ewok levels feature jungle warefare; the AT-AT levels feature bringing the four-legged behemoths down with a well placed tow cable; the on foot levels feature...well, rubbish physics and Vice City style targeting systems (very poor). So the 3rd person walking bits are a bit naff, but overall, this is probably the best shoot 'em up on the GC and quite possibly the best Star Wars game there has ever been. Buy it!