Game Debate #64: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

[Sumez | 2,966]

It's not even slightly like the X-Wing or Tie Fighter games, and has absolutely no relation outside of the IP.

In the Rogue Squadron games you can actually aim at stuff and hunt down other fighters in exehillerating battles, rather than aimlessly spin around while staring into space hoping to find something to shoot.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Sumez

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

37 minutes ago, Sumez said:

It's not even slightly like the X-Wing or Tie Fighter games, and has absolutely no relation outside of the IP.

In the Rogue Squadron games you can actually aim at stuff and hunt down other fighters in exehillerating battles, rather than aimlessly spin around while staring into space hoping to find something to shoot.

I didn't say it did, I said because of my exposure to those games, anything that has you flying one of those ships basically needs to have the same sort of freedom for me to be able to enjoy it.  Not sure how to make that clearer.  In X-Wing and TIE Fighter you can do the exact same things...with a joystick...and depending on the mission, you can actually empty a Star Destroyer of its entire compliment of TIE Fighters (typically 6 flights, or 72 fighters), then proceed to do what you were supposed to in the first place.  You can change your view, find whatever you want to fight with via your radar OR visually (you'd only be running around aimlessly in space if you didn't know WTF you were doing), etc.  It's similar to the difference between something like a Tom Clancy combat game and a GTA game.  In one, you're "on rails" inside whatever building or area they want to confine you, while in the other you've got a comparatively massive world to be able to run around in while doing the same kind of thing.  I tasted Rocky Road, and afterward, plain 'ol Chocolate could never do it for me again.

[cj_robot | 543]

Ah yes, Rogue Squadron. Had a great time with this game. Not perfect, but pretty good fun and I was really impressed with the visuals. The only thing I didn't really like was how it felt like the game was trying to rush you through the missions. It was a little tough for me to get used to combat from a third-person perspective, especially after spending so much time with X-Wing and TIE Fighter.

8/10

[cj_robot | 543]

6 minutes ago, darkchylde28 said:

I didn't say it did, I said because of my exposure to those games, anything that has you flying one of those ships basically needs to have the same sort of freedom for me to be able to enjoy it.  Not sure how to make that clearer.  In X-Wing and TIE Fighter you can do the exact same things...with a joystick...and depending on the mission, you can actually empty a Star Destroyer of its entire compliment of TIE Fighters (typically 6 flights, or 72 fighters), then proceed to do what you were supposed to in the first place.  You can change your view, find whatever you want to fight with via your radar OR visually (you'd only be running around aimlessly in space if you didn't know WTF you were doing), etc.  It's similar to the difference between something like a Tom Clancy combat game and a GTA game.  In one, you're "on rails" inside whatever building or area they want to confine you, while in the other you've got a comparatively massive world to be able to run around in while doing the same kind of thing.  I tasted Rocky Road, and afterward, plain 'ol Chocolate could never do it for me again.

I totally get where you're coming from. I was able to separate the two, and appreciate them both as two very different games. But I'd be lying if I said that playing Rogue Squadron didn't have me dreaming of someday playing a legit Star Wars space combat sim on my big screen TV.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

12 minutes ago, cj_robot said:

I totally get where you're coming from. I was able to separate the two, and appreciate them both as two very different games. But I'd be lying if I said that playing Rogue Squadron didn't have me dreaming of someday playing a legit Star Wars space combat sim on my big screen TV.

Apparently Squadrons is/was being touted in that way, but a friend who tried it out told me that it still falls flat in comparison, despite being more graphically appealing in this day and age.  Oh well, baby steps, lol.  I believe somebody is/was (unofficially) doing a total conversion for the classic games to bring them up-to-date for play on modern machines, but haven't heard anything about it in a while, so I don't know whether that'll actually come to light or not.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

18 hours ago, AstralSoul said:

This is one of those I thought was fantastic back in the day and tried replaying it a year or two ago and was absolutely not feeling it. I gave it a 6/10, but was probably 8/10 for the year it came out. But 6/10 for today.

Really? I played it last year and thought it was great. I have the Ultra HDMI N64 so that might help.

[AstralSoul | 502]

17 hours ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Really? I played it last year and thought it was great. I have the Ultra HDMI N64 so that might help.

No I don't think it has anything to do with the graphics. I just didn't think it was fun anymore. I guess back then I thought it was great because it was the first time I played a game where you piloted a bunch of Star Wars ships. It's certainly not bad but I think overall it felt a little clunky to me and maybe just not as fun as I remember. 

[Tanooki | 4,936]

On 8/27/2021 at 6:35 PM, Sumez said:

It's not even slightly like the X-Wing or Tie Fighter games, and has absolutely no relation outside of the IP.

In the Rogue Squadron games you can actually aim at stuff and hunt down other fighters in exehillerating battles, rather than aimlessly spin around while staring into space hoping to find something to shoot.

If that's what you think about the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games/add-on packs, bluntly put, you don't know a damn thing what you're talking about then.  Rogue Squadron (the flight stages) are effectively like watered down 'lite' versions of the older PC games you mentioned.  There was no aimlessly spinning around staring at space hoping to shoot unless you 1) didn't read the manual (or keyboard setup shortcuts in the option screen) 2) didn't listen to or read the mission briefing, and 3) missed the actual MISSION OBJCETIVES screen that updates live as you tick off objectives.

There never is any aimless moment, unless you're looking to be aimless.  I may probably suck at them now, but I could take those games 20 years ago on any difficulty, aimless is one of last words I'd dare explain those games as.

Where as, RS1 is utterly aimless, because those nitwits didn't give an objective screen or hints what to do on each stage before you started.  They only pop up AFTER you tick off something as cleared, but give no idea what to do TO clear them so it's overly common at any point in RS1 to fail a mission repeatedly  A LOT if you don't figure it out or someone tells you, or you get a guide.  RS2 fixed that crappy oversight and the franchise largely improved from that fix.

[Tanooki | 4,936]

On 8/27/2021 at 8:52 PM, RegularGuyGamer said:

Really? I played it last year and thought it was great. I have the Ultra HDMI N64 so that might help.

I have that same kit, to be fair, if you try and play the N64 on a non-CRT without some HDMI upgrade, RS1 is utterly unplayable.  It used the CRT to cheat to create lighting effects/shadow, so any stage not entirely in space, you often times if it's not daytime slam into invisible walls that are actual structures.  The UltraHDMI kit fixes this so you see what you see on CRT, just without all the SD blur of it all.  As soon as I could get that kit bought/installed I started playing some games again that were rendered useless without an old tube tv.

[RegularGuyGamer | 2,013]

8 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

As soon as I could get that kit bought/installed I started playing some games again that were rendered useless without an old tube tv.

Yep, I did the same thing. The day I got the modded console back, I ordered the Everdrive and never looked back. I'm still shocked at how well a lot of the games hold up. 

However, I grew up in the ers of gaming where controlling every character was akin to driving a tank so clunky controls in 3D games are almost nostalgic to me and I adjust to them pretty smoothly. 

[Tanooki | 4,936]

25 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Yep, I did the same thing. The day I got the modded console back, I ordered the Everdrive and never looked back. I'm still shocked at how well a lot of the games hold up. 

However, I grew up in the ers of gaming where controlling every character was akin to driving a tank so clunky controls in 3D games are almost nostalgic to me and I adjust to them pretty smoothly. 

Good on you, same here...picked up the beefier ED 2.5 model that does all the added features and instant saving.  The games shockingly hold up and middle finger a lot of the haters on how so called muddy they are and this and that.  The HDMI upgrade shows what the games were intended to show up like if you didn't have a crap TV.  It's not really boosting video quality, it's just cleaning up the mess really with the bonus of losing the SDTV vaseline/blur effect it causes.

I never really had problems with tank control either, in most genres, but when it came to the garbage control of a few like Resident Evil given how enemies move, it was an utter put off.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

6 hours ago, Tanooki said:

If that's what you think about the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games/add-on packs, bluntly put, you don't know a damn thing what you're talking about then.  Rogue Squadron (the flight stages) are effectively like watered down 'lite' versions of the older PC games you mentioned.  There was no aimlessly spinning around staring at space hoping to shoot unless you 1) didn't read the manual (or keyboard setup shortcuts in the option screen) 2) didn't listen to or read the mission briefing, and 3) missed the actual MISSION OBJCETIVES screen that updates live as you tick off objectives.

There never is any aimless moment, unless you're looking to be aimless.  I may probably suck at them now, but I could take those games 20 years ago on any difficulty, aimless is one of last words I'd dare explain those games as.

Thank you!  Glad to see someone else knew exactly what I was talking about without pretending like it was somehow blasphemy to think that other flight-sim-y games/stages just weren't worth messing with after having flown the "real thing."

My brother and I ended up being aces thanks to X-Wing's training mode.  We had been playing a ton of Elite and Elite Plus, where in order to maneuver, you'd spin the ship right or left, then pull up or down to change direction.  After getting constantly killed after the first couple of missions, we decided to go through the training missions to work on our skills, as obviously X-Wing was 100x tougher than Elite!  It was crazy getting through all of the training missions, then getting top honors in them, but we (finally) managed, then went back to the main game.  At this point I'll mention that the joystick we were using was the CH Flight Stick, which has two buttons, but thus far the second (top) button didn't do anything--we figured it would fire rockets, but only the main button did anything.  So, we're playing together (one of us flying, the other running keyboard as "R2") when, during a particularly hairy dog fight, my brother gets so excited that he picks up the joystick when pulling up, then manages to lose his grip on the way back down and bang his hand over the top getting hold of it again.  Well...the screen moved weirdly!  We both quickly looked at each other and were like, "WTF was that?"  So my brother held in the top button, moved the stick and...the whole ship rotated while still going straight ahead!  Our minds were blown, things became 10000% easier (especially after all the hours we spent in the simulator going backwards, sideways, and upside down through the training mission rings, since we didn't know we were supposed to be able to ROTATE, lol!), and the game got to be a LOT more fun!

[Tanooki | 4,936]

8 hours ago, darkchylde28 said:

Thank you!  Glad to see someone else knew exactly what I was talking about without pretending like it was somehow blasphemy to think that other flight-sim-y games/stages just weren't worth messing with after having flown the "real thing."

My brother and I ended up being aces thanks to X-Wing's training mode.  We had been playing a ton of Elite and Elite Plus, where in order to maneuver, you'd spin the ship right or left, then pull up or down to change direction.  After getting constantly killed after the first couple of missions, we decided to go through the training missions to work on our skills, as obviously X-Wing was 100x tougher than Elite!  It was crazy getting through all of the training missions, then getting top honors in them, but we (finally) managed, then went back to the main game.  At this point I'll mention that the joystick we were using was the CH Flight Stick, which has two buttons, but thus far the second (top) button didn't do anything--we figured it would fire rockets, but only the main button did anything.  So, we're playing together (one of us flying, the other running keyboard as "R2") when, during a particularly hairy dog fight, my brother gets so excited that he picks up the joystick when pulling up, then manages to lose his grip on the way back down and bang his hand over the top getting hold of it again.  Well...the screen moved weirdly!  We both quickly looked at each other and were like, "WTF was that?"  So my brother held in the top button, moved the stick and...the whole ship rotated while still going straight ahead!  Our minds were blown, things became 10000% easier (especially after all the hours we spent in the simulator going backwards, sideways, and upside down through the training mission rings, since we didn't know we were supposed to be able to ROTATE, lol!), and the game got to be a LOT more fun!

I remember that now, it has been ages, I had that same classic pc colored body/black stick joystick too to play the game on for some stretch of time, before that the earlier one that looks like the NES joystick CH put out through quickshot for it and Wing Commander 1 and 2.  I had the complete boxed game in the day so I knew the second button did that, it made for some interesting slides and twists around parts of larger personal/combat craft, or getting in some tight shots on a fast moving fighter too.  These days I have an insane joystick a goodwill gifted me cheap years back for a few bucks and it has plenty more buttons.  Now I can fire from the stick, rotate, toggle mission objectives, damage control, power ratings of Shield/Weapon/Engine and being that fast not leaning into the keyboard too much works wonders.

RS1-3 are great games, but they're watered down, much like how people love but the die hards dump on Civilization Revolution for DS, console, mobile because it is CIV, but you don't deal with most the micromanagement of cities, just the ranking up, growth and combat to shave hours off the game.  Neither are bad, but to call the streamlined game the full game and the full game watered down means you really missed the entire point.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,547]

I'd say they're completely different genres...

It would be like calling Star Fox 64 a watered down Wing Commander.  It's just not really applicable.

[RH | 4,915]

I rate games on their individual merits and personally admit I enjoy them with a dash of nostalgia or "historical importance" when considering the time they were released.

This was a game I loved in the 90s, I beat it with no strategy guide or internet cheats and the last time I plugged it in, I found it just as fun as the first time I tried it.

I am surprised so many people seem to dislike this game. I, too, played X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter but I never compare console vs. PC games because they always offer such different experiences, but hey, you guys rate as you desire.

For me this was an easy 8 of 10, all personal factors considered. I have played RS2 but not as much. I might give it the same or slightly higher rating, but this is about RS1. It was and is a good game, in my opinion and I stand by that.