Hint: Do not accidentally type the escape key with internet explorer. It will delete your entire post with one press, and you may not even be able to undo it.

I am starting to get a little more into the GC Star Wars games. I still think they're missing an "act 1" however. They are probably the only games I've played whose "training mission" is harder than the first 5 or more (and thus an appreciable fraction of the total game) normal stages.

I tried Rogue Leader's training mission three times tonight. At 20 minutes an attempt, that means I wasted an hour on it. I've been able to finish all the objectives; I just haven't been able to do them all at once within twenty minutes.

It seems like a lot of the challenge of these games so far comes from just understanding the game: Knowing how to read the radar, knowing how to use the weapons, knowing what the mission goals are, etc. Is this a legitimate source of challenge? Maybe. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I think it's something that designers have to be cautious about. In any case, I think the existence of a training mission means the designers acknowledge that players might have trouble acclimating themselves to the game. That being the case, a training mission should be a training mission. You don't have to worry about "wasting" a level by making it easy. I'm proud to say I haven't met anyone dumb enough to complain that Glass Joe in PunchOut!! was easy. R-Type II was only 6 stages long, and it still managed to fit an act 1 in (as well as the full rest of the difficulty curve).

Anyway, because the idea of playing a 20 minute stage, only to miss the last objective in the last 30 seconds, rubs me the wrong way, I spent the rest of the night on Rebel Strike (avoiding the training mission in that game, too). I cleared a few stages and earned a few more medals. On Luke's side of the missions branch, I had a few on-foot missions. I read a couple of reviews today that complained about Luke's Trials of the Jedi stage being too hard. Actually, I thought it was fairly easy. I got a game over on my first try, but earned the silver medal on my second (and was only about 30 seconds too slow, and needed to kill about a dozen more enemies, to earn the gold). It was probably the best on-foot stage so far, mainly because it was mostly platforming, and had virtually no shooting.

I also played and beat my first bonus mission, the rescue of the princess from the Death Star, as seen in the first movie. This wasn't much of a mission. Most of the time is spent watching clips from the movie. But let's face it: You probably won't bother with a game like this if you're not a fan of the movie. So, it was still sort of cool to see the clips. I have the trilogy on tape, but it's in full screen format; the clips on the game are letterboxed.

I think I only beat one mission on Wedge's side tonight. It was the one where you start by flying down a tunnel, which becomes an obstacle course with lasers. Then, you're in a huge open area and have to dogfight with some TIE fighers. I've said before that there were some stages where I'd just circle around and around, desparately trying to find some enemies. Well, that doesn't apply to this stage - until the end. When there's only one TIE fighter left, it can be a pain in the ass to track it down. I came up with a little trick to help me if I was having trouble, though. The area where the fight takes place is sort of football shaped. If I can't face the other ship, I'll fly to one of the tapered ends of the area. Then, I'll turn back. When I do that, almost the entire area is in front of me, which means I should be able to find the tie fighter easily.

After that, there's another corridor with a lot of lasers, and it's somewhat difficult.

Then the mission has one last part. It's sort of complicated to describe, and so I won't even bother. The first time I tried it, I not only lost, but spent most of my time unaware of even what I was supposed to be doing. In the last instances, I figured out what I had to do. I failed the mission that time, but beat it the next.
I LOOOOOOVE Flying Omelette!!
Crawl and 1000