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Star Wars: The Clone Wars Review

Chris Leyton

13/11/2002

Taking inspiration from the best bits of Episode 2, The Clone Wars is a good game for action-junkies.

The GameCube is fast becoming the console to own if youâre a Star Wars fan, following on in the footsteps of Rogue Squadron 2 is The Clone Wars, from LucasArts and Pandemic Studios.

Focussing on the best parts of Episode II; The Clone Wars puts you in a variety of different vehicles in an action based title that draws obvious influences from the epic-battles between the Galacticâs Republic clone army and the separatist movementâs legion of druids from the second film.

The game sees you take on the role of Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Annakin Skywalker as you fight your way through 16 action packed levels, spanning a variety of locations from Episode 2 and a number of new locations.

Beginning with the events towards the end of Episode II, players take control of Mace Windu as he attempts to destroy a certain amount of installations in order to let the calvary of Jedi Troops land safely to save Obi-Wan, Annakin and Princess Amadala. Although a few of the missions take place on foot, most of them require you to pilot a range of different vehicles as you attempt to thwart Count Dookuâs plans to unleash an ancient Sith weapon upon the Republic. These include a Republic gunship, fighter tanks, assault walkers, speeder-bikes and even a four-legged creature named Manu!

When piloting these most of them use a similar control system, utilising the A button as the primary weapon and the B button to activate secondary fire; each of which differ depending on which vehicle youâre in. The Y button varies of the vehicle youâre in, in most it acts as a turbo boost, whilst the others see it access special weapons unique to the ship. The land based vehicles use the shoulder buttons to strafe, which comes in crucial to staying alive, whilst the aircraft use them to accelerate and brake. In general the controls were very well, giving you a great degree of movement and freedom, essential when youâve got a million-and-one laser beams aimed at your general direction.

Most of the missions are long affairs with multiple objectives; the variety between each of these is considerable and stops the game from becoming tedious. Some missions see you in full-blown war, destroying hundreds of druids and separatist vehicles; these is an area that the game does very well as hundreds of units populate the screen and create that manic tension associated with war. Other missions range from having to destroy certain installations to escorting vital transport ships. Throughout the levels youâll find health, ammo and other power-upâs to aid your chances; on the later levels youâll need these as the games difficulty does pick up, however itâs a trial-and-error approach, most often youâll have it licked at the second or third attempt. When you first take control of Obi-Wan, youâll be able to issue commands to Annakin; this works in a similar manner to Rogue Squadron, using the d-pad to issue four types of orders. Itâs a nice addition and adds a sense of tactics to the action-packed affairs, but when youâre in the midst of combat itâs likely youâll forget about the whole thing. As with other Star Wars titles on Nintendo formats, each missions contains three bonus objectives to complete. These range for completing the level in a certain time to maintaining 100% shield strength throughout the mission, completing these opens up a range of bonuses such as new multiplayer maps and movie clips.

The gameplay is firmly rooted towards the arcade end of the scale, the pace of the game is intense, the physics are bouncy and combat mainly revolves around circling around the enemy whilst blasting them; it probably wonât please the Star Wars hardcore but it certainly is fun whilst it lasts.

Visually the game does some things right and others wrong. The 3D engine renders very large areas well, and the impression that youâre fighting in an epic war is at times overwhelming; hundreds of Clone Troops fight against legions of droids on the ground below illuminated by the light show of laser beams, whilst missiles fly by in the skies above. Although it looks great when youâre flying around, the effect breaks apart when you take a close look at things; in particular troops appear to be nothing more then static objects put in to make it all look pretty, to be fair youâll spend most of the time flying around too fast to notice. To keep a smooth frame-rate and the impressive amount of whatâs going on, the levels do contain a substantial amount of fogging. Although this doesnât look too bad and you can easily dismiss it, it is a shame especially compared to the visual delights of Rogue Squadron 2. Models on the whole are simplistic affairs, and whilst some textures do sport bump mapping and good detail and distinction, most of them look blurry and lack clarity.

Musically you know what to expect, the score is both a mixture of the films soundtrack and original tracks, however with all of the action sound effects it is hard to pick it out. Voice acting is in general quite good, however there are times when youâll cringe at the Ewen MacGregor impersonator, not as bad as weâve seen in the past however.

A range of multiplayer modes completes the package, allowing four players to indulge in some split-screen action. The standard deathmatch and CTF variants are present, however the most intriguing is the Conquest mode, which sees the Republic army go up against the Seperarists. The objective of this mode is to destroy each others base, by capturing outposts you can build AI controlled units that you can command.

Good Points