Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith (X-Box)
Developed by: The Collective
Published by: Lucasarts

The final installment in George Lucas’ space opera is almost upon us, and what would a new Star Wars movie be without its multimillion dollar marketing and merchandise campaigns? For a lot of movie studios, video games are just another tool in their promotional bag of tricks, but Lucasarts has (so they claim) always been committed to making games that are more than just a cash grab. Would the Star Wars Episode III video game be good enough to stand on its own, or would it just be a sub-par experience coasting on the Star Wars brand name?

Right off the bat, this game has caught a lot of flack from some of the major game publications. Hungry for the opportunity to lambast any game that makes Star Wars look bad, they have jumped all over it and accused it of being sloppy, short and boring. But wait a minute… not so fast. This game follows an almost identical formula to EA’s Lord Of The Rings arcade-style brawler games for The Two Towers and Return Of The King.Both of those games received favourable reviews, and while Revenge Of The Sith is clearly not in the running for game of the year I do think it holds enough fun to satisfy most Star Wars geeks.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith was not developed by Lucasarts in-house but rather by The Collective, the same people who did the first Buffy The Vampire Slayer game for the X-Box (which was quite good, all things considered). The game follows Anakin and Obi-Wan on their quest to protect the republic against the droid army. Each level opens with a cut scene taken from the actual film, before fading into in-game cinematics. Those who are worried about spoilers need not be too concerned, as the cut scenes are short and disconnected enough as to be mostly harmless. Besides, it’s not like you don’t know what’s going to happen anyways, right?

The game is definitely best described as a “brawler” in a style that harkens back to the old arcade games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but with a lot of cool lightsaber combat to carry it. For the most part it is a lot of button mashing, but the variety of moves and the quality of the animations make it an exhilarating experience. I especially enjoyed the ability to deflect laser blasts by twirling the right thumbstick, and the force powers that allow you to throw objects and enemies around. While the physics are not as well done as they are in a game like Psi-Ops, it still enhances the gameplay a lot and adds to your Jedi arsenal.

Just like in EA’s Lord Of The Rings games, you earn style rankings based on how skillfully you take out each enemy in a level. The more impressive your moves, the more experience points you will receive. At the end of each level you can spend these experience points to increase various force powers and gain extra combos — a slight RPG twist that gives you some customization options. Some of the combos are a little bit frustrating as they take a long time and leave you vulnerable to enemy attacks, but I didn’t ever find myself getting bored of the combat.

For the most part, you are very limited in where you can move in the game and the levels definitely feel restrictive and provide the very definition of the word linear. Invisible barriers will always keep you from falling off cliffs and railing, and herd you along in the right direction. Of course, this is par for the course when it comes to arcade brawlers. The camera angles in the game are a little annoying and you don’t have any control over them so sometimes you will be find yourself fighting enemies off screen that you can’t see. I see most of this stuff as forgiveable though, particularly for a game that doesn’t claim to be anything more than a simple beat-em-up actioner.

My biggest complaint is that the co-op play was so underdeveloped, because as we all know brawlers can be a lot more fun with a buddy. Although the game box claims that it includes a 2 player co-op mode, they neglect to mention that the co-op mode consists only of special bonus levels that need to be unlocked in single player missions. Why they couldn’t include 2 player simultaneous gameplay throughout the single player missions is beyond me… after all, most of the time you are playing alongside a CPU-controlled Anakin or Obi-Wan anyways. There is also a multiplayer duel mode, which gives a bit of added value, however it’s not as fully formed as, say, Jedi Academy’s duels and you can’t play online either.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith is definitely short, and for the most part it’s pretty easy to fly through with the exception of some of the major boss fights. However, there are unlockable bonus missions (some of which can be played co-operatively) that pad it out a bit more. I found the game to be mostly enjoyable despite its shortcomings, but I do think it’s more of a rental game rather than a purchase. If you like Star Wars, this game might be just what you need to hold you over until the opening night of Episode III movie. — Sean

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