Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

"Revenge of the Droids (read inside)!"

You got to admit, the Star Wars saga has reached all all-time high right now. With Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith in theatres right now, and all of the prior games released (Knights of the Old Republic and the sequal) have all had critically-acclaimed success. But the same cannot be said about the newest Star Wars game to hit the consoles, which bares the same name as the movie.

Revenge of the Sith starts up fairly well, with footage of the introduction of the movie, to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker slashing through droids. Wash, rinse, repeat. That's pretty much to the game, folks. Next level you see some footage of the movie, then hack-and-slash through mindless droids to get to the end of the level (and occasionally a boss fight). Every now and then, a interesting mini-game pops up, for example, on the Utapau planet, you can control a turrent to destroy two shield generators. But these parts are short-lived and, after the first time you participate in the mini-game, it gets repetitive and boring.

The game's single-player campaign lets you play as either Obi-Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker, though Yoda and Darth Vader are playable during bonus missions. There isn't a lot of variety between these four Jedi, except Yoda's a lot more fun to play around with (seeing how he can jump around when he fights). You have your basic quick and power attacks, as well as a stab attack, which is incredibly weak. You have your various force powers, such as lightsaber throw and force healing, but you won't be using them very often except when they are mandatory to complete the level.

During your missions, you have a few objectives and most of them are fairly repetitive. First of all, most of them just require you to get to the end of the level. The rest are either typing through a computer to unlock something, or helping out some completely pathetic friendly AI. The locations of your missions are fairly interesting, however. The first six missions have you on one of the Trade Federation's battleships (which is holding Chancellor Palpatine) and when you glance out of the window, you can see ships dogfighting outside and explosions happening everywhere. When you get to Utapau, Coruscant, and Mustafar you will see all of the unique attractions each planet has to offer. Coruscant has all the buildings and ships flying around, but you won't probably notice them as your killing all the Jedi as Anakin. Mustafar (where Obi-Wan and Anakin duke it out) has all the boiling lava erupting in the background, the lightings effects are spectacular.

The game boasts that there is plenty of secrets for you to unlock, but the only secrets you'll come across are upgrading your health and force meters, as well as saber crystals, which power-up your lightsaber.

After each mission, the game takes a role-playing turn as you take all of the experience you earned destroying droids to upgrade your force and lightsaber powers. There are ten in total and only three slots to upgrade each skill. It's fairly easy to fill up all of them during the the course of the game, but you'll really want to spend your points of lightsaber skills.

After you beat the short single-player experience, the game offers you cooperative and versus multiplayer modes. Cooperative is very disappointing as it is only you and a friend stay in a corridor and destroy droids... Extremely boring. Versus (aka duels) are much more interesting, but the true stradegy to win each battle is hold down the block button (L1 for the PS2) and mash the quick and power buttons as fast as possible. It's fun to play with a few drunken friends, but that is about it.

The graphics in the game are pretty good for a game that is so shallow on gameplay. Each character looks fairly close to his movie counterpart and they all move fluidly. Lighting plays a huge role in the game (especially on Mustafar) and it succeeds fully. The game does have some frame rate problems when it is full of droids and lasers are going everywhere, but it is only a minor problem.

The audio is great except for one major problem: the voice-acting. Like most of the Star Wars games, the real actors in the movie do not participate here. Here, you only have voice-actors that do a ham-fisted job and when the characters talk back and forth to each other, it sounds so repetitive. John Williams epic music is still involved here and it does a great job.

All in all, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith is a short-lived action game that has very little replay value. If it wasn't for the repetitive droids and ham-fisted voice acting, this game might be worth a purchase. But as it stands, Revenge of the Sith only clarifies itself as a seven-day rental, and that isn't saying much.

+Detailed graphics
+Interesting level design
+Ties in great with movie
-Bad voice-acting, it has
-Repetitive action
-Very, very short
-TOO MANY DROIDS!

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/05