Fill out this form to email this article to a friend
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
By JOSH KORR
Published May 16, 2005
System reviewed: PlayStation 2
Company: LucasArts
Rating: Teen
Price: $49.99
Grade: D
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is a perfect video game complement to the movie prequels: It's boring, repetitive and full of lame one-liners.
I played through six of the game's 16 levels, and spent most of them hacking away at the same three types of droids with Anakin Skywalker's or Obi-Wan Kenobi's light saber. The game allegedly includes a combo fighting system that chains together attacks to make combat more interesting, but the basic droids are so weak and the combos so hard to pull off that you just end up mashing buttons.
To spice things up, the game presents exciting objectives like - wait for R2-D2 to open a door. Sweet! Can I wait some more? Unfortunately, yes. At least three times in the first six levels, an objective like this flashes on the screen: "Destroy enemies while R2-D2 extends catwalk." With backgrounds repeated more than an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon and the same droids waiting to be sizzled to bits, the objectives get old pretty fast.
The nonwaiting parts are hardly more exciting. The plot unfolds through clips from the movie, but after each scene you go back to slicing droids and destroying a power coupling or computer panel to shut down a force field blocking your path - so you can advance to destroy the next coupling to get through another force field, etc.
(To be fair, I can't vouch for the film clips' authenticity: I closed my eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears and hummed during them so as not to spoil the real thing for me.)
With all the Industrial Light and Magic talent seemingly at LucasArts' disposal, it's doubly disappointing that the game looks as bad as it plays. The character models are a bit blocky and fuzzy, and the backgrounds lack the detail of the last couple of generations of PlayStation 2 and Xbox games.
Movie tie-in games are usually pretty bad, but you'd think they'd make an effort on something as high-profile as this. Even the old Super Star Wars games for Super Nintendo are more fun.
Revenge of the Sith is great for one thing, though: After sitting through something as awful as this game, the movie might actually seem good.
[Last modified May 13, 2005, 21:36:02]
Share your thoughts on this story
|
News
Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
Print
Email story
Comment
Email editor
