I beat a couple of missions in Rogue Leader, and maybe 3 or 4 in Rebel Strike.

I really don't like the on-foot parts of Rebel Strike. The lock-on targeting seems to suck. You can't strafe if you're not locked on, so there are a lot of times when you turn to face another enemy, and Luke (or whoever) will turn his back to the enemy. MDK2 this ain't.

Speaking of locking on, I have no idea how the targeting computer is supposed to work, or even what it's supposed to do. I even read the manual and it didn't mention it. All I can tell is that it's supposed to help you discriminate between friend and foe, but that can't be all. The ranking when you finish a mission mentions "target computer efficiency". Normally, mine is at 100% because I don't use the targeting computer at all. However, when I do activate it, I end up getting something like 1%. I might have thought it would do a small amount of auto-targetting, a la Goldeneye: If you're close to targeting an enemy, but aren't bulls eyeing them, the targeting computer might compensate so you'd hit the enemy. Nope. I can have my target directly overlap an enemy with the targeting computer on, and the enemy still doesn't get destroyed.

A lot of the time in these games feel like it's spent flying all around, searching hopelessly for enemies when none are on the screen. However, I finally figured out a little bit about the radar. Rebel Strike helped me with that; it seems it's just ever so slightly more user friendly than Rouge Leader. I believe when I left off on Rogue Leader, I had no idea how to fire my tow cable during the battle of Hoth; Rebel Strike helped me figure that out.


Both games have the battle of Hoth. However, they're dealt with a little differently. In Rebel Strike, you play as Luke after his snow speeder crashes in the movie. In Rogue Leader, you have to use your tow cables to take down AT ATs. That turns out to be not as much fun as I would have imaged. You take them out all the same way, and it seems there's about a dozen during that mission. It feels rather repetitive.


Then add in that the missions usually have several segments, making them feel quite long. They may feel longer than they actually are; the clock claims they last about 5~12 minutes.

So, if I'm having trouble with things like flying around without seeing enemies, how the heck am I beating missions? Well, some missions (but not all; I don't want to be misleading here) are very easy, in a sense; they're just not easy to do well. (I personally am beginning to hate this style of goal structuring in games; the point of a game should be to beat it, not to get some dumb ass rank while beating it. If a game is worthwhile to play while only attempting to beat it -- as is the case with, say, Goldeneye -- than extra goals -- eg., the cheats -- are okay). So, I might beat a mission in a couple of tries, but be 15 seconds too slow to earn a medal. Hooray, I get to replay the entire 10 minute mission. No thanks.

Anyway, I can think of one mission where I sort of used strategy after losing a couple of times. It was the battle of Hoth in Rogue Leader. The AT ATs kept making it to the command center before it was evacuated. If this happens, you automatically fail the mission (meaning, it's worse if that happens than if you die once).

The AT ATs are sort of in a parade. You can skip a few, and start trying to destroy some further down the line. However, this means the ones behind you will be shooting at you as you do your thing with the tow cable. So, I started at the back of the procession, and worked my way up the line. I think I destroyed all but two when they reached the base.

The next time, I killed a few at the back, but then began killing only every other AT AT as I worked my way up the line. That thinned their ranks out enough so that I didn't have to worry too much about fire from my rear. And I destroyed them much faster. Then I went on to the next part of the mission. And then the AT ATs destroyed the base! I thought that part of the mission was over! Guess not. That's another problem I've had with the game: Simple confusion over mission goals.

So, the last time I tried that stage, I used a similar strategy for dealing with the AT ATs. But when that stage of the mission was over, I tarried a bit longer, killing the few more AT ATs that were closest to the base. Then I went to the area of Hoth where the last part of the mission took place (and successfully cleared the mission).
I LOOOOOOVE Flying Omelette!!
Crawl and 1000