This time around you get to be Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Wedge Antilles and fly their X-Wings, the Millenium Falcon etc. in deep space battles and planet-based missions. Smartly, you can also 'borrow' Imperial Walkers or speeder bikes and even go wandering on foot in an all-new third-person mode (although Rogue Leader's glorified ship selection screen was obviously the template for this new facet to the series). Also as many fans requested, they've even chucked in a split screen co-operative or dogfight mode - They're really spoiling us…

   

The game's missions are set on the ground and in the sky; one time you could be back on Hoth in an even more hectic take on Rogue Leader's amazing snowy battlefield, or stomping around a beautiful rendition of the lush green forests of Endor in an AT-ST, or maybe even on the next level throwing an X or B-Wing around the heavens in battles that have to seen to be believed - if you thought there were a lot of ships on-screen in Rogue Leader, then you simply won't believe the intensity of Rebel Strike's even more epic encounters.

Visually, Rebel Strike is of course a stunner, even more so than its prequel. But gamers are a hard audience to impress, and although the game may at first sight look like a typical sequel developers Factor 5 have clearly lavished care and attention all over the game. Even the familiar menus (with FMV running in the background) look slicker than before, and in-game the ships and various craft have immensely detailed textures. Lighting seems to be a visual effect that developers are fast mastering (and we're not just talking about a nice sun flare anymore), and the way that light hits the landscapes and the vehicles is highly impressive and realistic, both in terms of highlighting and shadows. Even the water has been given an umm.. facelift and now looks even better than before.

Whilst the space battles and low level airborne missions have a similar (if more hectic) feel and control system than previously, the AT-ST walker levels have their own control system (which we don't like) and whilst you dwarf stormtroopers and can even squish the superbly detailed and animated little sods underfoot, your relatively low level view of the conflict on both the ground and the air as the air wars rage above truly make you feel like just a small cog in a huge war machine. The new speeder levels move along at a blinding speed and the forests of Endor in particular look great, but they are extremely linear, and are little more than exercises in twitch steering - although Endor is quite beautiful with its massive redwoods and swaying ferns, the speeder bikes are just about the only really disappointing part of the game for us.

   

As polished and impressive as RS3 is, the new on-foot missions have their spectacular moments but generally feel rather tacked on and simplistic, and the auto-aim shooting and unsympathetic camera fails to satisfy. The continuing lack of subtlety in the aiming and control of the craft in the other levels also spoil things a bit (although we accept this may be down to the Cube's twitchy sticks). However, the overriding feeling that you get when playing the game is that this is the most visually impressive, complete and epic game to be based on the original trilogy yet. The new split screen modes (which allow you to play co-operative Rogue Leader missions and head to head dogfight (complete with AI bots and wingmen!), rampage, tag & defend, walker rampages, Deathstar trench race or an Endor speederbike race) also give Rogue Squadron veterans just about everything that they'd have put on their 'wanted list'. We've heard a lot of comments on RL3 along the lines of "looks just like the last one", but we feel that over-criticising the game for being similar whilst simultaneously, bigger, more spectacular, more varied and two player friendly seems an exercise in naivety and small mindedness. So if you like Star Wars and the Rogue Leader series it's unlikely you'll be disappointed, if this is your first foray into the Star Wars universe there are few better places to start.