GameGuide

Once again we are offered another episode in the ever growing Star Wars franchise. This time the game targets the story gaps between Season 1 and Season 2 of ‘The Clone Wars’ TV series.

You can play as any one of the major Jedi characters, or as a Clone Trooper, while you “take on a multi-faceted adventure to stop a mysterious Techno Assassin’s destructive plot”.

The game promises to be very entertaining, and if your a fan of the TV series you would be forgiven for being a little excited about it. 

But.. That’s where the excitement ends. The game is played as a third person shooter, and the camera angles appear to be managed by drunk chimpanzee with no working thumbs. While it does deliver on the promise of acrobatic combat, the challenge to actually figure out just which way your character is going to attack takes some time to get used to.

There are also a series of mini-puzzles you must undertake to make it past the next area, but at the end of the day this game has all the feel of a 90’s side scroller with a very strict linear path.

At one point of the game i was left standing in one screen, couldn’t go forward and couldn’t go back. Off to the far right were some droids I needed to destroy, yet I couldn’t reach them. It wasn’t until my clueless AI team mate was bored enough to wander off screen and kill them that we could actually move ahead.

And this is the problem with this game. Its so rigidly linear it drives you nuts. Much like the frustrating hours spent playing Space Quest 1, this game feels like a massive 3 dimensional checklist. The only challenge i found in it was to hold back from throwing the controller at the screen as my character would randomly flip into walls, while the AI team mates would stand dormant in front of droids wondering what to do.

This probably explains why large sections of the playing area do not allow you to jump off the map. One scene involved running across the bridge. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t run off the side. One can only assume the developers decided their chimpanzee camera man was too hard to work with, so they decided to give the player a break.

Overall this game didn’t seem to deliver at all. It did seem to promise some good features, but the delivery is clunky and full of gimmicks. One such gimmick is the addition of an online store, where you can buy various droid upgrades. But a few things were odd, such as giant heads and the purchase of cheats. Needless to say if you want to buy a good solid Star Wars game, don’t buy this one.

Reviewed on: XBox 360

Available on: XBox 360, PS3, PS2, Wii, PSP, NDS, PC


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