|
It had to happen
eventually. The only thing LucasArts loved more than pimping out its
Star Wars franchise, was staying on the cutting edge of technology.
So when FMV became the new buzzword, you could have bet dollars to
doughnuts that you'd be seeing an FMV Star Wars game. This
is that game.
In Rebel Assault,
you play as "Rookie One," a faceless newbie to the Rebel
fleet. Though the camera always shows the back of your helmet, your
character is annoyingly voiced by a snot-nosed "yes, sir!"
brat, who lends about as much personality to your character as a cucumber
would sitting in a cockpit with a little helmet on. As Rookie One, you'll play through
levels based directly on the first two films. They come completely
out of order, so you'll be fighting the walkers on Hoth toward the
middle, and doing the Death Star Trench Run™ at the end, but
if this doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me.
This
is a Sega CD review, so you probably know what to expect. Really
good audio, shit video. And you'd be right. The majority of the
footage in here consists of moving computer renders. These give
you the important stuff, like your levels and environments. They
are pixelated crap. The other small portion of screen time goes
to animated characters, which hold up pretty well. Unfortunately,
you don't get penalized by not being able to see a character's
lips move, while you DO get penalized for careening off a shadowy
canyon wall. This is a game where you're meant to be flying fast
and dodging shit and running at breakneck speeds through trenches.
Therefore, while pixelation can be tolerated in many other Sega
CD games, it's a real showstopper here. Lines defining walls and
protrusions blur together, pixel noise consantly shifts around
the screen, shadows mix with dark walls, empty, navigable spaces
often blend near-seamlessly with solid walls. The result, aside
from the lack of any real detail at all, is that it's hard to
tell where to go, and what to avoid. |
 Only gets worse in motion.
|
As far as gameplay
goes, you must be the only pilot on the clock. The other members of
your squad show up in beginning and ending cutscenes, but they fortuitously
go on various, lengthy union breaks during the actual combat of the
missions. This means you'll be taking on fleets of TIE fighters, armies
of walkers, a Star Destroyer, even the Death Star, all by yourself.
The rest of your squad then comes back together to congratulate the
team on a job well done.
|
|
You'll
play through 15 missions based loosely on events that took place
in the movie, and shifting each level between cockpit and third
person views. You will also take out troopers on foot. Every level,
regardless of ship or view, is an on-rails shooting gallery. You
have extremely limited control of your ship, except to dodge oncoming
objects to left or right every once in awhile. Meanwhile, the
virtually incomprehensible video plays around you, while animated
enemies dance across the screen, blissfully unaware of any turns
or twists the video (and thus, your ship) is making in the background.
The worst part of the game has to be the controls, even more so
than the video, because they are painfully sluggish. It will take
about two to three seconds to drag your crosshairs from one side
of the screen to the other, so tracking any enemy is impossible.
You'll have to either see them in the center of the screen, know
where they are ahead of time, or let them pass right by - which
of course causes damage to you. |
Except for a few
early training missions, where you're tasked with dodging walls or
asteroids, most of the missions in the game revolve around shooting
multiple objects, such as a large group of turrets, or many parts
of a single object, such as the armor plating off of a walker. This
means that you'll speed around on an "attack run" and try
and shoot at anything marked with a green bracket. If you don't get
them all in the first pass, the CD will take a quick breather, and
then reload the beginning of your run. With the sluggish crosshairs,
you might have to play through your attack loop three or four times
before you shoot everything, and the game drags on endlessly until
you do. The result is that each mission has maybe three minutes worth
of actual content, but may take ten minutes to actually finish. Are
you seeing the potential for boredom here? The entire game is short
as well, and will probably take two hours to finish altogether - barely
even worth the price of admission.
The
audio is - ready? - CD quality, and consists of loops of the music
from the films. Just like every fucking other Star Wars game!
Seriously, I have reached the point of saturation as far as these
clips go, and I'm getting to the point where I want to punch composer
John Williams in the ear. And I like Williams. Aside from
the fact that you've heard every piece of this music before, levels
will play only one to two minute loops of "actiony"
sections from the music. If you haven't finished your mission
before that point, the audio will awkwardly start over again.
After three or four times, it makes it seem as if even the music
is unsure as to how long these sequences will last. Voice work
features prominently in the game, which is bad news for you. A
lot of janitors and friends of producers apparently got in the
booth for this game. One of the reoccurring squad leaders sounds
like a gameshow host - "Follow me and turn left to... forty-eight
degrees!!" As said before, your pilot's voice is nauseating.
At the very end of the game, the kid actually says "Yahoo!"
Not a whooping cheer, he deadpans it like it was a word.
|
"Uh,
go get em Rookie One. Me and the boys have to... well, you know.
Good luck."
|
Finding Rebel
Assault will be far more trouble than it's worth. Everything in here
was done much better once actual 3-D gameplay, which is ultimately
what all the computer renders here are trying to simulate, comes around.
Rogue Squadron for the N64 is a good example of this, and seemingly
rips off a few missions from this game, but with much better results.
If you're really insistent on playing Rebel Assault, I'm pretty sure
a version was released for the PC, and will almost certainly contain
better graphics than the ones found here. Still, the only real chance
for greatness with this game would be if there was a compelling new
story, and likeable, emotional characters. Of course, the cheap way
was to rehash the movie plots and slap in wooden dialogue and boring
characters. And what have we learned about the corporate mindset?
The cheap way always wins.
-reviewed 6/13/04 - game copyright 1994 JVC
Barely playable FMV rehash of the first two films.
Totally uninspired, with nearly showstopping graphics and controls.
MobyGames - Star Wars: Rebel Assault
Intro and gameplay video on YouTube (emulated)
Astroid field gameplay video on YouTube
|
