Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

[ClaRK! Kent]

Got the new Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith game last night, have been playing it this evening and a little bit before school this morning.

I must say I'm very impressed with it. The quality of the graphics is excellent, and the gameplay is very accessible without being too easy. It focuses on the 'get-in-there-and-hack-stuff' method, using Jedi, but there is also a lot of the usual action-adventure puzzle stuff, using the Force and stuff. Action switches between Obi-Wan and Anakin, and they level up independently, so after 4 levels with Anakin, you find Obi-Wan is comparatively weaker and you have to alter your combat style until you catch up levels, which is quite neat.

The sound quality is, as we have come to expect from LucasArts, excellent, and the lightsaber-related stuff especially is great. Soundalikes, alas, for Christensen, McGregor, McDiarmid, Jackson, and Lee, but they're all very good and the banter during lightsaber duels is scripted very well.

The cool thing about this game is that you start off as a badass, and the levelling-up only makes you badder.

The lightsaber duels themselves are excellent, with a lot of combo-fighting, blocking, counter-attacking, and Force jiggery-pokery making it a lot like a 'real' saber duel, with comparatively-few blows landing unless you're very good or your opponent has made a mistake of sorts. If your opponent swings at the same time as you do with the same type of strike (fast, strong, or critical) you enter a 'saberlock' where the lightsabers lock together, humming and cracking for all they're worth, and it's a frantic button-bash to overpower your opponent and get in a cool maneuver. The coolest thing about saber duels is that once you've defeated a Jedi character, they become unlocked for use in multiplayer versus duels, so you can spend hours duking it out with a friend or whatever, as I have been doing this evening with my brother.

In addition to this, it goes beyond the plot of the movie to some extent, whilst a surprisingly-high level of movie cutscenes (I've seen 12, and I'm on about level 10 right now - each saber duel is a level in itself, and I've had about 5 of those, even) mean that you can tell which bits are 'within' the movie, and by the time I complete this one I should be able to bluff my way through the plot of the movie itself and pretend that I've seen the film on opening night when I haven't.

All in all, if you like Star Wars or the third-person action-adventure game, you'll find a lot to enjoy here. It's not the best game of its genre I've played, and it has some of the usual movie tie-in fallbacks (the soundalike actors, and the fairly linear level progression) but it's definitely worth £30.

Hope that helps if you were pondering whether to buy it.

RK/ZB

[Corizzle]

The thing that's stopping me from renting it is the utter shit reviews it's been getting. I may rent it for the hell of it though to see if it's any good.

[PkmnTrainerJ]

It looks awesome on the adverts. I'll get it after I've seen the film.

[Godfatha]

The game sucks.

Seriously. There's no need to level-up to get the combos since the typical XXX combo works just fine for every bad guy (even fighting Obi-Wan as Anakin).

Secondly, if you were to do an elaborate combo, there's no way to block half-way through. So what you're left with is your opponent blocking one of your hits, and he counters you. Since you couldn't block due to you being in a combo, you open yourself up to a huge attack by your opponent.

The graphics on the Xbox version sucked. The framerate was rather choppy and I just wasn't having fun. The only good part is that there is a chance to play as Vader in this game.

2/10

[therockbox]

My brother (who's twelve, and a massive Star Wars nerd) completed it in about 6 hours yesterday. Seems a bit to easy for my liking.

[FunkAsPuck]

Its shit. Through and through.

Well thats my opinion anyway.