You take on the roles of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, as the clone wars rage on in that galaxy far, far away. The Republic is in ruins, and the Jedi are on the verge of extinction. And, as everybody with the slightest clue about pop culture knows, Anakin Skywalker is on the verge of turning to the ‘dark side’ of the force. The game’s story is slightly warped – it concentrates exclusively on the two lead characters, and doesn’t really fill what happens to the other central figures in the film. Bonus missions fill some of the details once you’ve finished the game, but it doesn’t quite make sense at times. In any case, it does feature a lot of spoilers – even if most of the movie’s plot is obvious – so it’s best to avoid it totally until you’ve seen the movie.
They don’t make droids like they used to.
The game itself is, at heart, a good old fashioned side scrolling beat ‘em up – you know, like Double Dragon, Final Fight and Streets Of Rage. You progress to an area, kill everything in it, and then move along as indicated before going up against a boss. But, in this game, you have a lightsabre. You have three lightsabre attack buttons, one unleashing a quick attack, another a medium and the final delivering a killer blow to enemies of low health. Naturally, combinations can be used to create some nice combos – unfortunately, none of them are particularly extravagant. Most are hammer the same button three times, or one button twice and another once and so on. You can also lock onto a target with the L button, which will cause you to block at the same time.
Bringing some variety are the force powers. These range from the versatile push, the lifesaving heal right through to dastardly electricity. Lightsabres can also be thrown to deal some damage at a distance. However, the force powers at the beginning are quite weak, and most of the combos are locked.
As you progress through the game, you obtain experience points, which can be used to up your character’s skills. Don’t get too excited, though – there are only a few categories, which can be leveled up twice each. The categories are mostly along the lines of upgrade your force push, or your jumping attacks (of which you don’t ever have to use in the game). The number of foes you defeat determines the experience points you gain. But, it doesn’t end there. There is a meter on screen, which measures your current skill level. Killing an enemy, or simply attacking them, causes it to rise to one of four levels – fair being worst, masterful being best. The higher levels you obtain, the more experience points you gain and the more powerful your character is. The whole system is somewhat underdone, and seems pointless. Only three levels of progression? Why not just have all combos unlocked from the start of the game?
With that said, the game does play fairly well. Its old school approach is quite refreshing and fun, especially some of the epic boss battles. Players are fairly responsive, but by no means perfect. Often they will execute combos in the direction opposite from the enemy you are locked on, which is really annoying. The guard is also far too strong. There are very few block breakers in the game, and you can basically hold the L trigger against a single opponent and not take any damage for ever if you were deranged enough to do such a thing. Cheap methods are also usually the most effective way to get things done. For example, hammering the medium attack button for the usual three hit combo will see most opponents dead in rapid time. Occasionally big numbers will overcome this method, so a bit of blocking and light attacks will be the order of the day. Bosses actually use this method against you, with one in particularly doing the same combo over and over and over again until you can get a hit in. The system is great fun at first, but is, ultimately, extremely shallow.
Take that Texas Ranger! …Ugh.
Revenge of the Sith isn’t especially strong visually. Characters lack the detail we’ve come accustomed to, looking more like a first-generation Xbox game. However, the environments fit the Star Wars mould quite well, and are even occasionally destroyed by a lightsabre. The special effects of the force powers are quite decent, too.
Footage from the movie is often used for cut scenes, which often cut back to a game engine sequence without you even realising it. By contrast, the game does teleport your in-game character to fit in with a mid level cut scene, which looks highly stupid.
But, this issue is minor when compared to the game’s camera. Simply put, it’s abysmal. You cannot control it at all – infuriating when an army of druids are appearing on the screen giving you a fraction of a second to react. Or, worse – shooting at you from off screen. While nothing special, the mediocre visuals are really damaged by the total lack of camera control.
The music is your average Star Wars fare, with epic orchestral arrangements taking centre stage throughout. The music is really quite fitting, with pieces that most will recognise from past movies. The effects are really quite average, with the exception of the lightsabre, which sounds stunning. But, the voice acting drags all this down. None of the actors of the film have roles here, but, amazingly, whoever plays the voice of Anakin Skywalker manages to deliver a worse performance than Hayden Christensen in Attack of the Clones. Most of the one-liners by any character are totally out of place – since when does Obi-Wan Kenobi brag about beating up a droid? Ugh.
Ultimately, the biggest problem of Revenge of the Sith is that it is over all too soon. The sixteen missions will take no longer than six hours at the absolute most – and these include the five bonus missions. Not even a Yoda bonus mission can save this. Thankfully, there is a multiplayer mode. Two players can duel it out in a decent one on one lightsabre battle, with any of the game’s main cast – except Yoda. Why? He’s already in the game with a totally unique attacking style in a bonus mission, so surely he could have been included, right? It makes no sense. Anyway, there is also a co-operative mode for the story missions for killing any rainy days.
The duel mode in action.
At the end of the day, Revenge of the Sith feels like it was rushed to be out before the movie. There is plenty of potential here, as the game is a hell of a lot of fun for the first few hours. The two-player duel mode is great fun, despite the omission of Yoda, and the force powers and lightsabre moves are all quite well pulled off. Unfortunately, there just isn’t any real depth to the game. With some longer and more varied missions, a deeper combat system and some sort of camera control, this game could have been a different story. As it is though, it’s a rental for Star Wars fans only.
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