Most of us who played Rogue Leader loved the game but agreed that the formula was starting to get a little stale. Factor 5 promised that they wouldn’t make another Star Wars flight sim unless they could offer significant new experiences with it. Rebel Strike attempts to do just that, although the new features aren’t as jarringly different as they might seem at first.

The biggest addition to the series is on-foot missions. The one or two examples playable at E3 were promising but still very, very early. Characters control on foot pretty much like they do while flying the game’s many vehicles. What this brings to the table is simplicity of controls; you don’t have to learn a new layout for every situation. The downside is that running around on foot feels suspiciously like piloting an X-Wing, i.e. not exactly natural. The main differences are that the R trigger makes your character jump (the demo levels didn’t seem to ever require jumping), and the L trigger lets you lock onto enemies to aid in shootouts. Exactly how well the lock-on works is hard to say; it’s certainly inconsistent at this point, but there’s time to fix that. The real problem is the camera, which is obviously far from finished. In the demo, the camera sticks to fixed angles while your character (somewhat blindly) runs around and shoots things. We’re told that the final camera will actually be much different, but it remains to be seen just how it will work and how it will respond to the lock-on mechanic.

Regardless, the on-foot missions are fast-paced and quite fun, if still extremely buggy. The characters are nicely rendered, but some of them move awkwardly, as if they are still using placeholder animations. Your blaster’s target reticle simply faces ahead of the character, and there is currently no way to move in one direction and shoot in another. The lock-on just makes your blaster fire towards the nearest enemy; if you turn away too far in any direction, you’ll lose the lock and just start firing straight ahead. Again, this system may be improved or may prove to be more functional once the camera system is fully in place.

The flying missions seem largely unchanged from Rogue Leader, other than their new settings and objectives. The first level I played took place during the Empire’s invasion of Yavin IV, which was offered as a bonus mission in the last game. If anything, the mission seems to be much easier than before; I completed it and nabbed a silver medal on my very first try. I’m good at these games, but not that good. Otherwise, the level is nearly identical to the Rogue Leader version, except with improved graphics.

Another flying level takes place in the asteroid belt above Geonosis, some thirty years after the events of Episode II. The asteroids are certainly numerous and smoothly rendered, though some of the larger ones could use better textures. Even with hundreds of asteroids, TIEs, and a few capital ships all on the screen at once, the framerate was more than tolerable. Factor 5 plans to have the entire game running at 30 frames per second by release, and they’ll try to reach 60 fps if possible. This mission was just as easy as Yavin IV, as all I had to do was shoot down an Imperial frigate. A few TIE Interceptors were giving me trouble, but the frigate itself was nearly helpless against me as long as I stayed near its rear engines. It’s likely that the difficulty of these missions is still being tweaked or was toned down for E3, but if the final game is this lightweight, fans of the series will be disappointed.

I also got to try out the two-player cooperative mode. To really put the demo through its paces, I chose Razor Rendezvous, one of the most graphically taxing levels in Rogue Leader. The results were quite impressive. The game has no problem rendering the massive Star Destroyer on both halves of the screen simultaneously; in fact, I couldn’t tell that the graphics had been simplified or toned down at all. The two-player mode focuses on splitting mission objectives between the players. In Razor Rendezvous, one player is supposed to attack the Razor while the other protects the Rebel frigate. The difficulty on this mission has actually been cranked up so that you pretty much have to play it with some kind of cooperative strategy. The frigate now withstands far fewer hits than before, and the Razor’s shield generators can take much more punishment before going down. If the other missions are as solid and even improved as much as this one, Rebel Strike is going to have one hell of a memorable two-player mode. There are also going to be deathmatch and capture-the-flag modes in newer levels, possibly for up to four players, but those were not playable at E3.

So far, Rebel Strike has a lot of potential, especially if it comes through on its promise of totally open missions in which you can switch vehicles and even fight on the ground as you choose. The graphics, while still a bit rough in some places, are clearly an improvement on the previous game. Factor 5’s new DivX video tool is used to great effect, with high-quality FMV from the movies seamlessly spliced into the gameplay and real-time cinemas. I’m hoping to see the controls, camera, and difficulty polished up before the game’s release. Look for more Rebel Strike coverage in the near future.