"Starwars: Revenge of the Clones!"

As I do with 3 out of 10 games I buy, I waited for the price to go down before buying. If your curious, 6 of those other games I buy used. Sorry, I'm cheap. I had heard many good things about the game so I had to see for myself. It wasn't quite what I expected, but it worked out in the end.

First off, the two Star Wars games I primarily play is Jedi Knight 2 and 3. I figured this game would be similiar. It wasn't at all. It wasn't a FPS with lightsabers game, but hack and slash. Once I got over my suprise, everything was alright. Anyways, enough of my rambling, I'm sure you want to know my opinion of the game.

To start, the game is quite a bit better than the average hack and slash game (Gaunlet Legends anyone?) Instead of having one normal attack, one medium attack, and one heavy attack, you get combos of both quick and strong attacks, critical strikes, force powers, and parry attacks. In most levels, you run down a linear path killing droids and (later) clones. Though the enemy doesn't go quietly, unlike some "slash slash slash kill" games. They put up a good fight and several times I came close to being killed. The clone were especially dangerous, which is why I have Revenge of the Clones in the tagline.

Some levels are different. In these levels you engage in a saber duel. The gameplay suddenly shifts from hack 'n slash to a fighting game. These levels were tough! You'll be hard pressed to defend yourself from the enemy attacks while delivering your own. They are pretty intellegent. If you stand there and block they'll grab you or perform a defense-breaking attack and put alot of hurt on you fast.

There were several bonus missions. A few were simple survival missions, but one was a puzzle-style level where you have to navigate moving platoforms without falling in the lava. Another was the famous duel in Episode 4. You even get to play as Yoda, who is crazy. You don't earn a thing for them though, which is dissapointing.

There is a Co-op mode, but all four levels are simply survival levels. Even worse, you don't get to pick your characters. You're stuck with Ani and Obi, save for the last one where you use two Jedi I had never heard of before.

The versus mode, however, is great. It is like the fighting-style levels. However, you can have some interesting match-ups, such as Anakin vs Darth Vader. Suprisingly, the characters even react to ones they don't encounter in the game (or ever). Sera taunted Vader about his buttons while Obi Wan makes fun of his older self. I was dissapointed a bit though. They went ahead and added Ben and Darth Vader, why couldn't they include Luke, Qui-Gon, and Darth Maul while they were at it?

The graphics and effects are great. They paid high attention to detail. You can see little details on the characters and other models. If you are paying attention you'll also spot tons of background effects, such as ships blasting each other in the windows on Grevious' cruiser and lightning in the background of Mustafar. The lightsabers look like the ones from the movie, unlike those on JK.

The sounds are nice too. Characters talk and communicate with each other, Clones make fun of Yoda's size, the saber sounds are the ones from the movie, you hear blaster shots whizzing through the air, and much more. The voices are not the real actors, but I could of cared less.

One other nice thing was the levels had very destructable enviroments. Computers, pillars, rails, walls, and much more break and explode when you hit them with your saber.

The difficulty is a tad bit on the easy side. The only levels I had trouble with was really the saber duels. I never touched easy mode, it'd probably be too much of a pushover. Though that last fight against Obi as Anakin was pretty dang hard.

The game does have several big dissapointments, other than the characters in versus mode it could have had. The game is very very short, only 17 main missions (16 if you count that the last two are the same, exept you play as a different character), each a few minutes long. They spent too much time on the cruiser for how short the game was (it was 6 missions long!) You only spend about two or three missions on every other planet. Also, you unlock everything by just playing through. They could of at least saved some of that concept art for unlocking only by completing bonus missions or finding all the secrets. Some of the personalities were a bit off, such as Mace Windu saying he would slay you in the name of vengeance (thats not very Jedi like..."Master") The camera is unadjustable and can get annoying. Enemies would go off-screen and blast you from there. Also, the camera doesn't move in saber duels much and never changes viewing direction, making it possible for you to be unseen on the other side of your opponent (or vice versa), which could get really annoying.

There was also quite a few glitches. Sometimes your control would go dead for a couple of seconds after a cut-scene. If you messed up on your grapple against Crab Droids, the camera would lock on the droid and not you. Sometimes you would get stuck floating in the air in a fall pose, vulnerable to attack. Mace would act stupid and try to run away sometimes, but get stuck on an invisible barrier where he would run endlessly.

PROS

Great Graphics and effects
Great Sound
Good hack and slash
Great versus mode
Good saber duels

CONS

Several glitches
Easy difficulty
Very short
Nothing hard to unlock
Bad camera
Bad Co-op play

Overall: 7...barely

Buy or rent? If you don't have someone you can do versus mode frequently against, rent it for certain. If you plan on buying, be like me. Don't buy it for $50. It wouldn't be worth that price. Buy it at a lower price or even cheaper as used.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/06