Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike

Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike
North American cover art
Developer(s)	Factor 5
Publisher(s)	LucasArts
Director(s)	Julian Eggebrecht
Producer(s)	Brett Tosti
Artist(s)	Paul Topolos
Composer(s)	Chris Huelsbeck Jake Jacobson
Series	Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
Platform(s)	GameCube
Release	NA: October 21, 2003[2] PAL: November 7, 2003[1]
Genre(s)	Action
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike is an action video game developed by Factor 5 and published by LucasArts for the GameCube. The game is set during the original Star Wars trilogy and recreates battles that take place during those films. The game follows Rogue Squadron, which, under the command of Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, uses starfighters to engage and defeat the Galactic Empire.

Rebel Strike was developed as a sequel to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader. Rebel Strike introduced the ability for players to step out of their starfighters in on-foot missions, as well as the ability to commandeer ground vehicles that have appeared in the films, such as the AT-AT, the AT-ST, speeder bike and landspeeder. Additionally, the game features a two-player multiplayer mode, allowing cooperative play for most missions from its predecessor, Rogue Leader.

In Rebel Strike the player controls several Star Wars vehicles such as the X-wing and AT-ST across missions that span the movies and moments outside the films. It also contains on-foot missions in addition to the space battle missions found in the previous Rogue Squadron series games. The game also includes some unlockable classic missions inspired by the Star Wars original trilogy.

The game also features two multiplayer modes: Co-op and Versus. Co-op allows players to replay missions from Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader in split-screen, excluding the levels Triumph of the Empire and Revenge on Yavin. In Co-op, players share the same pool of lives. Versus features a variety of modes, such as Dogfight and Survival. In any Versus mode, players can pilot several craft, including X-Wings, A-Wings, TIE Fighters, and Darth Vader's TIE Advanced.

Shortly after the destruction of the Death Star above Yavin 4, the Galactic Empire drives the Rebel Alliance off the moon, leaving them searching for a location to establish a new base. Tycho Celchu, an Imperial officer, defects to the Alliance on Dantooine. He leads the rebels to a group of scientists on Ralltiir, who also wish to defect. During the battle to rescue the scientists, Rogue Squadron member Sarkli defects to the Empire. Despite this, Rogue Squadron and the scientists manage to escape safely in a transport craft. The Rebels establish Echo Base on Hoth, it is destroyed by the Empire during the Battle of Hoth, forcing them to flee the Empire again.

Following the Battle of Hoth, Wedge Antilles leads a raid on Bakura to extract rebel hostages from the orbiting prison. Sarkli leads Rogue Squadron into Geonosis' orbit, where he and Wedge both crash following an ambush by TIE fighters and Imperial escort carriers. Wedge fights with stormtroopers and battle droid remnants. By making use of various pieces of deactivated Galactic Republic machinery left over from the Battle of Geonosis, he escapes and flees the system. This uncovers a ploy to wipe out part of the Alliance fleet over Dubrillion, and, in response, Rogue Squadron raids the shipyards of Fondor to destroy a Super Star Destroyer under construction. Emperor Palpatine reveals that he had personally manipulated the prior battles by throwing them, causing the rebels to become overconfident. The rebels are caught off-guard in the Battle of Endor, which turned out to be an elaborate trap set by the Empire. Despite the emperor's efforts to manipulate the battle to his advantage, Han Solo disables the shield generator protecting the second Death Star over Endor, killing Sarkli and allowing the Rebels to score victory.

The production team felt the need to expand upon the game's predecessor by adding enhanced atmospheric effects, more impressive explosions and the capability of having many more enemies on-screen at once than Rogue Leader could handle, among other improvements. The game ran into some troubled development. Because of the decision by Director of Technology Thomas Engel and Development Director Holger Schmidt to scrap all the coding of the engine for Rogue Leader so they could "reinvent the wheel" with the knowledge of the GameCube engine they had at that point, Factor 5 ran into various glitches as well as ultimately had various difficulties in development of a new landscape engine, causing it to go as long as tedious as in Rogue Leader, due to underestimating the amount of time it would take to do so.^[3]

In the United States and some European countries, anyone who pre-ordered the game would receive a special copy of the game with a playable version of the original Star Wars arcade game immediately unlocked (which is usually unlocked after completing a certain level or entering a pair of cheat codes), plus a bonus disc featuring demos and trailers for several upcoming games and a concept art gallery.^[4]

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Rebel Strike was met with positive reception, as GameRankings gave it a score of 76.61%,^[5] while Metacritic gave it 75 out of 100.^[6] Critics praised the intense gameplay and the ability to have more enemies on screen than on Rogue Leader. However, Rebel Strike was criticized for its on-foot missions, due to its clunky gameplay and lack of refinement.^[17]

• Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike at MobyGames