Review: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (GBA)

Being a Jedi is one of those things that most people dream of. The force powers, the freedom, the light sabre - the potential for a great videogame is obvious. So far, there have been a few successes; Jedi Knight springs to mind, with its blend of wonderful FPS level design and weapons played off against wonderfully different lightsabre combat (complete with laser-deflection) and powers from both sides of the force.

Console adaptations have generally been less effective; really only those games that focus on space combat or pod racing have worked. It's high time for a decent Jedi-themed console game. Unfortunately, this isn't it. Essentially a side-scrolling beat-em-up and platformer, it manages to get the basics right, but generally fails to engage as much as it should. Players are thrown into the storyline of Attack of the Clones, picking up the lightsabre of Obi-Wan, Anakin or Mace Windu in levels inspired by movie sequences; so you start off rushing around on Coruscant, tackle Jango Fett on Kamino, clash with Tuskan Raiders back at Tatooine, and "infiltrate" a base on Geonosis before the final battle against Count Dooku.

Breaking up the action are three 3D chase segments in a Speeder, Jedi Starfighter and Republic Gunship. These provide some of the more entertaining moments of the game, and with this game coming out of the studio behind the GBA Doom port, things are at least technically impressive. This isn't to say that the rest of the game has many technical failings. The graphics are acceptable, with fairly detailed backgrounds in bold, if somewhat flat, panels of colour. At points, the game doesn't seem to know whether it wants a sloped view of the ground under the player's feet or a side-on approach, and can lead to confusion regarding where the edges of platforms are in the first level, but this improves later on, with a functional series of side views.

Unfortunately, backgrounds in the later levels get very repetitive very fast, especially Geonosis, which loses the red-tinged, sandy hive-spires of the movie in favour of grey platforms and greyer background towers. The sprites in the game are, thankfully, mostly detailed and smoothly animated, with crisp shadows and blocks of tones giving the game a sort of cartoony appearance. There's never any sign of jerking in the animation of them or your lead character, which is pleasing. Sadly, this repetitive but smooth, bland but functional approach is continued to the music, which does a decent stab at John Williams but ends up sounding like a tinny recording of a mobile phone ring tone. The lack of any of the classic Star Wars themes beyond the title screen's Imperial March and the intro sequence's abbreviated theme tune is a disappointment, and the repetitive tune of the platform sections soon begins to annoy. Thankfully, there's an option to turn it off.

The flying sections, on the other hand, mask their fairly bad music with a hail of gunfire or collisions, and the mixture of Doom-style flat walls and sprites with Star Wing-ish polygons provide a slightly scruffy, but acceptable blend. Every sound in these sections seems to have a role, warning you swiftly of incoming mines or messy collisions. Annoyingly, the same attention to detail has not been taken with the sound in the platform sections; enemies (even Destroyer Droids for pete's sake) make the same generic pain sound as you when damaged by a clichéd lightsabre swish, and strangely make less noise when destroyed. There's not even a background hum from the sabre! The only audio feedback you can count on is the enemy blaster sound, which is important for reasons I'll explain later.

This inconsistent approach continues to the game's general presentation, too; although there is a neat intro sequence with the Star Wars logo and the story so far scrolling off into the distance, and the narrative is filled in by bright little captioned, digitised images from the film, there is no battery save- meaning passwords are needed. Life counts are recorded in the passwords, too, which is odd considering that death means restarting the level anyway. It's almost as though the save were tacked on, like some sort of bad arcade port from 1991.

Moving swiftly on, the gameplay fails to break from the trends set by the presentation. Controls are fairly obvious, with left and right walking and ducking on the d-pad, the A button with the d-pad to attack, R to block and L- combined with a d-pad press- for force powers. While it may seem to make a lot of sense, having no attack assigned to A alone takes a bit of getting used to, and a few subtle gaffs, such as a jump button which doesn't respond differently to long and short presses, and a character's stubborn refusal to turn around while blocking, give the game a stop-start feel. For example, attacking a hand-to-hand attacker involves approaching them, remembering to keep the control pressed towards them, and tapping A. If an enemy is ducking, you must down to enter a duck, then press A, or if a target is at floor level, press down, then diagonally down and forwards with A. You get the idea; fluid movements are out, dialling in attacks is in. You even need to release the A button and stop your attacking spree if you want to turn around- otherwise you do an ineffectual mid-range attack behind you.

The game's love of platforms just above your jumping level means you rely of the game's force jump move a lot, which unfortunately only works when you hold L and press up; if you want to jump diagonally, you have to hold L, press up, release both and hold right. To aggravate things more, your force jump drains a power meter that only recharges very slowly towards the precise level of one force jump, then stops, unless you grab "force orbs" from dead enemies- the anthropomorphic kind which generally don't respawn in levels. Tedium sets in with many of the platforming "challenges".

Level design isn't much more inspiring. There's a dependence on the block-and-deflect move to deal with blaster-equipped enemies, which suggests strategy by only deflecting shots back at enemies if you wait until after the shot is fired (the sharp blaster sound comes in useful here), but which becomes a scrappy mess of dodging, blocking approaches in the game's busier areas. Platform sections, as noted, are annoyingly dependent on the force powers, and there's absolutely no challenge to the game's one "free-form" level- certain doors lead you the right way, the smaller, other kind that you need to figure out how to open lead to dead ends. Although these sections intend well, with force orbs hidden inside, the mandatory force jumping needed to reach them means there's a net loss of force. Pointless in the extreme. Actual level progress is blighted by a difficulty level adjustment that merely increases damage taken and enemy fire rates, and with it the dependency of memorising where enemies are and exactly which order to attack in.

There's no real freedom to improvise clever sequences of moves when your character essentially has a separate attack and move mode. It's a shame, considering the subtleties that have clearly been dreamed up- force orbs, for example, are replaced with health restorers when the force meter is full creating a nice choice between unleashing a powerful force blast (with down or forwards and L). But things are just too stop-start, and the game only reasonably entertains in later levels when hordes of sabre fodder are send towards you, allowing you to clobber the weak ones out of the way and use your deflection power on a single remaining foe. Even then, things are far too shallow to keep your interest.

The last word has to go to the game's set pieces; the 3D sections are fairly shallow dodge-and-blast sequences, but at least they're smooth and shallow sections. Pulling a GTA and running down battle droids with a force-shielded Gunship near the end of the game is a definite highlight. Unfortunately, the scrolling-section set piece boss fights are an absolute joke of single-pattern monotony, especially against the hilariously digitised two-frame Jango Fett, and the button-mashing confrontation with Darth Tyranus is genuinely side-splitting. So, to bring it all together, it's a moderately well presented, horribly repetitive and generic beat-em-up with a few good ideas but flawed execution. It has its moments, but to put it bluntly, the force is not strong with this one.

Rating: 4 / 10

Words by Alex Whiteside