With the recent broadcast of The Clone Wars season 7, I thought it was a good time to catch up on the last piece of expanded media I hadn’t gotten to.
There’s basically three major narrative video games based on The Clone Wars CG animated series. I’ve covered Jedi Alliance for DS and the Republic Heroes console game before, but the RH game for DS is its own little thing. It’s a bit of a mishmash of events (or alternate takes of them) in and around a handful of early episodes, some stuff relating to the console game’s new content, and a bit of new stuff at the end as well.
Like all these tie-in media, it’s based on seasons 1 and 2 of the show (and the movie). This means the inferior young Ahsoka design, but the superior Obi-Wan and Anakin armour designs, and that refreshingly strange (for Star Wars) music. All the show’s voice actors reprise their roles so it feels authentic, and all the major characters show up: there’s a variety of playable Jedi and some prominent clones, Padme, and even Cad Bane is playable for a bit. However they’re relegated mostly to voiceover; the cutscenes are pretty much just looking at holograms before a mission.
The new antagonist Kul Teska and some locations from the console game show up, and the ending implies that this is a prequel to it. The new plot content reuses the “battlesphere” concept, placing it on Mustafar as part of a self-serving plot by Grievous to reactivate an ancient weapon that can exterminate organics, allowing him to lead a droid army to a coup. This is kind of an eleventh-hour thing, with the different missions throughout feeling a bit disconnected.
Anyway. How does it actually play? Republic Heroes had frequent awkward mechanics, and Jedi Alliance was slow with mindless combat, but this is my least favourite of the bunch. Getting around is reasonably quick, especially as a Jedi, and they try to inject a bit of depth into the fighting. But the entirely stylus-controlled gameplay can’t help feeling janky, and in practice combat becomes tedious quickly, especially with the blaster characters. And I can’t decide what’s worse, the touch-screen minigames for operating panels and switches that crop up way too often, or the timed-action segments where the slightest hesitation or missed tap on the next contextual jump point can set you back minutes.
Like all these games, there’s also a co-op dynamic. I couldn’t test the multiplayer, but I can’t imagine it’s great; it seems one of the players would be forced to idle frequently. In solo play, you’re sometimes required to swap between two character to solve simple puzzles or tediously move between lifts etc. I feel like having to accommodate a co-op system may have handicapped the game design somewhat, especially since you’d think a handheld game would mainly be played alone.
Clearing the main story gets you extra challenge missions, and there’s optional goals and time limits and such to earn credits for unlocking character profiles and stills from the show. I didn’t feel the need to frustrate myself further to view these pointless extras, but the concept art gallery was ok. Overall this is a passable attempt at replicating the early feel of the show, and it has a partially unique story at least. But it’s not good! Sadly.
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