|
In
the beginning there was the middle, the great stretch of space far,
far away where lightsabers and robes were the “in-thing”.
Three glorious Chapters of  Sci-fi
excellence with robots, massive terrorising machines, weird
creature-like life-forms, and even a cool little green man,
millions of people flocked to see the movies and buy the
merchandise afterwards.
The
games industry, although not at its peak in the late 1970’s when
the series started, produced many a title for all the CommodoreC64
and SpectrumZX fan’s at the time. The second, (fifth) in
1980 and third, (last) films hit as the Atari consoles
became bigger producing another huge range of titles for those
wanting to wield virtual lightsabers, with hindsight, a rather
graphically impaired lightsaber at that. It was now that Star
Wars seemed to really take off; toys, videos and games sold
massively for another three to four years after the third film, and
then became quite collectable items. Games were released on the
Master System, Mega Drive, NES, and SNES, even the 3DO, CD-i,
PlayStation, Saturn and Nintendo64; in fact practically any gaming
machine released over the past twenty years has seen at least one Star
Wars tie-in.
Now,
finally at the beginning nearly twenty three years later, we have
gone back almost fifty years,  maybe
more, Darth’s face being so ageless in the last film.
Technology has seemingly advanced beyond the empires wildest
dreams; imagine if robot drones like these existed then or err in
the future, Jedi Mind Control would almost be worthless. Anyway
enough about the films, lets have a look at possibly (but
improbably) the last ever-official Star Wars movie/game
tie-in, Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith.
Those
of you that went out to buy the game as a sneak peak of the film
should have begun to realise now that you were tricked, by “nasty
little advertising tricksies’”. The beginning and the very end
of the game are the same, but that’s about it, oh no I was wrong,
the same people die in the game and film, and that is it.
When playing through, after watching the film, you see how they
used game graphics mixed with tiny clips from the film to give an
entirely different story from the ones being told in the clips.
The
game plays similarly to Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers as
well, almost a side scrolling beat-‘em/slash-‘em-up, well it
would be side scrolling if the camera stayed in one place long
enough, not that it’s a bad camera, just a little disorientating.
You go through  the
game using your repertoire of moves to destroy pretty much anything
that moves, which slowly fills up a bar close to your health, this
bar gives you, Fair, Good, Impressive or Masterful finishes
whichall get added up at the end to work out your experience for
that level, this experience is used to buy moves or the next level
in Force Power, taking you though three levels of Jedi Mastery,
with the ultimate aim to become a Jedi Master.
Luckily for the game these 26 levels of one player Jedi
mayhem isn’t all there is, they have also included some bonus
missions where you can play as different characters seen through
the game, although the moves for this mode do seem to be slightly
limited they do offer a break from the difficult parts of the main
game.
There
are also two-player modes; versus or co-operative. Each are masses
of fun and while the levels in co-op mode do get a little bland
after a while, the versus mode could almost be sold as a complete
game. There are nine characters to choose from, each with
completely different attributes making it worthwhile to go through
them all to find your comfortable medium.
Graphically
this ga me
is awesome looking easily as good as Lord of the Rings: The Two
Towers did when that first came out; each area is self
contained, so there isn’t any polygon pop-up or problems with the
draw distance, every animation sequence has been carefully
rendered, so when you do Matrix style slow down, nothing
jilts or jumps, all very nicely seamless in fact.
From
the very beginning this game had a lot to live up to, well over
twenty years of Star Wars hype, lunacy, and even sheer
fantasy indulgence needs to be summed up in this tiny package. This
is the product every person who held the virtual lightsabers aloft
has been waiting for, the “ultimate” Star Wars game;
does it meet everything these years of waiting have made us
anticipate? Only sales
of the game will prove this, one way or the other. In my view this
game is worth every penny to own, it fulfils my personal
expectations perfectly, there is nothing at the moment I feel
anyone could add to a lightsabers slash-‘em-up that would better
this game. A must for every Star Wars fan.
|
