No Star Wars movie or game would be complete without the titles sliding up the screen in that difficult to read fashion. Shame to see they carry on that awful tradition here. The story is set between the third and fourth movie, Dath Vader in his crusade to purge the remaining Jedi from the galaxy stumbles across a child who is extraordinarily strong with the force. Massacring all witnesses Vader adopts the boy as his apprentice and secrets him away from the emperor and all other eyes. Time moves forward and we see the boy now trained as a Sith being sent on Jedi killing missions. As is typical for the Sith there is double crossing and intricate far reaching plans on all sides, Vader's and the Emperors. The Apprentice goes on a journey which sees him switch sides and allegiences and has far reaching consequences for the Emperor and the rebel alliance.
The conclusion is a branching affair which sees you being to able to make the ending light or dark as you see fit.
Characters are well fleshed out, The apprentice or Starkiller as he is known. Proxy his Kato esque robot. Juno eclipse, pilot and love interest. There is also a suporting cast of favourites from the movies like, leia, Bail Organa, Vader and Palpatine. There are also characters like General Kota, Maris Brood, Shak-ti and Kazdan Paratus, who I am sure are mentioned in Star wars lore many times if not in the actual movies themselves.
The story really grabbed my attention, which I didn't expect. It was well told and if Lucas wanted to make a Starwars 3.5 I am sure this would probably have made a good script and to my mind the best of the prequels. There was little child-friendliness here. A mature tone is taken and some fairly heavy handed moral lessons are doled out to the apprentice which makes him question his upbringing of hate and fear and find his compassion for life and a love for others. Of note is Jar Jar Binks frozen in carbonite as a trophy on a hunters wall, which shows the writers' contempt for the cute side or Star Wars.
I can take or leave Star Wars, I still haven't seen the new Clone Wars movie, I am in no hurry, though. I was first in the queue for the prequels and saw all the original trilogy in the cinema on first release. I realise what Lucas was trying to do with the prequels. He had to make a movie for a 10-20 demographic and also within the same movie include a plot that would appease the 30-40 year olds that grew up with the first three movies. What succeeds here is that there is no pandering this is a story for the 30 and upwards fans, kiddies need not apply this is 18 material.
There are several difficulty levels presented and one that is unlocked after the game is completed. One of the best things about the game is the rpg like levelling up of the apprentice, every time you kill someone little balls of green energy come from them and are absorbed into you. Behind the scenes the game gives you xp points and once enough have been gained you earn an orb to spend in the upgrade screens. There are three screens, one for combination moves, one for force powers and the third for health, resilience and recharge abilities. At the start of the game you have limited abilities. No force lightning, shield or ability to hurl your lightsabre around like a deadly boomerang. By the end of the fifth or sixth level they have been unlocked and with every enemy killed you are becoming stronger in all your abilities. This system even works in the training room and when you replay levels on the same game save. For example, say you are struggling on level seven, just go back to level one and earn more experience points so that when you go back to the harder area you have upgraded your ability to take damage and have mastered force lightning. There is nothing new here, it's just novel for this kind of game. Some smart soul will probably point out another similar game which has done it before, which only goes to show that there is little new under the sun. The only bad point is that the upgrade screen is accessed from the pause menu and takes ages to load for what it is.
Basic controls are handled well for a large skill set. You control lightsabre attacks with X which are context, timing and multiple presses sensitive. usual jumping, blocking and camera controls. Holding down the block changes the function of the face buttons to force powers like repulse, lightning, shield and throw lightsabre You can use force push by pressing B, force attacks use up force energy shown by a blue bar. The bar goes down with force power use and slowly climbs back up when not in use. When an object or person is in the centre of the screen it becomes targetted. Pressing in holding right trigger grabs it using the force. The apprentice then stands still and the analogue sticks are used to move the object around, letting go of the trigger while and object is in motion hurls it away in that direction. This is the attack that you will use the most, picking up enemies and simply hurling them to their doom is the quickest way of dealing with them, and most levels have a plentiful supply of large drops.
Using force powers also has an effect on the enviroment, simply hurling large objects around damages things as you would expect. Doors can be ripped open, objects bent into shape or moved around to gain access.
There are several times in the game where force fields are used. The main point of inclding them seems to have been to give the player enormous satisfaction of hurling enemies into them and seeing them vapourised in a flash.
The game does include quicktime events on boss battles and some of the smaller enemies. I hate quicktime events. Though these seem more forgiving than some.
The environment itself is hostile, you are usually high up most of the time and death is only a mistimed jump away. There is lava, acid pustules and spiitting plants to deal with. One of the thing that it took me an awful long time to realize is that you don't have to kill every enemy in an area to progress. I lost count of the amount of times I spent ages clearing an area only to curse myself for bothering when I found that the way out was open all the time and I could have simply ran for it.
There are occasions when you have to escort people, however this is not a horrible as you might think as the person seems able to take care of themself, you just need to ignore them really and get on with it.
At one point in the game you are attacked on the planets surface by a star destroyer, this should have been a high point in the game, it is marred by a horrible analogue stick waggling sequence that seems broken. A real shame as people should have been talking about how impressive the scene was not how hard it was to actually get working despite the instructions being clearly visible on the screen.
There are some throwaway game mechanics near the end of the game where it seems to be chucking in everything but the kitchen sink. There are sections where you have to force move what look like huge stargates against the clock, which feel akward to control and as I say it's against the clock which is frustrating rather than fun.
For the most part the combat is great fun. The feeling of power is superb, the apprentice is a super hero in all but name and his abilities make him incredibly dangerous. There are lots of enemies, though they are mostly humanoid, stormtroopers, jawas, wookies, felucians, etc. They come in varieties with differing moves. Like shielded troopers, flamethrower troopers, sniper troopers. There are also the non humanoid beasties. Rancors, sarlaacs and walkers. The a.i. is actually fairly solid, they use cover, run screaming for you, grab onto things to prevent being thrown over cliffs etc. They will also use emplaced guns despite not actually being spawned as the gunner for said emplaced gun.
Boss fights are usually against Jedi and as such they have similar abilities as your own and need careful watching to learn the chink in their armour and exploit it. General Kota, Kazdan Paratus, Maris Brood, Darth Maul, Shaak-ti, Darth Vader and the emperor himself all get a turn with you. There are also mini-bosses in the levels in the form of large rancor beasts, walkers and the emperors personal guards.
Level design is patchy. There are some very detailed environments and some fairy simplistic ones. It looks like differing teams have been involved in the implementation of the design, I can see the concept art for each level being drawn by similar artists, however its just that it looks like the Raxus Prime team did a better job of implementing it that say the Kashykk or Felucian teams did. It's a shame that the environments are not consistent as the better ones actually draw your attention to the poorer ones.
There are 6 environments which are recylced. Though the levels are different when they are recycled. Kashykk is the wookie home world, forested and also more rocky areas are available. Raxus prime is a junk planet and is very detailed and confusing. Felucia is an organic nightmare of large mushrooms and plants. There is also the familiar enviroment from the movies of the cloud city. There are of course the obligatory Star Destroyer and Death Star sets.
The death star level deserves special mention for a sense of scale and letting you run around inside the giant laser array that we see being fired in the movies.
The physics engine is special in this game and can't really be faulted, the ragdoll and object motion is pretty seamless in it's feel and rarely makes you think of dodgy game physics, it just looks right which is an achievement. A prime example is the hunter trophy room on Kashykk, the glass cabinets shatter very realistically, and I imagine anyone who plays the game and comes across this area will not be able to resist smashing all the cabinets up.
There is a lot going on in some areas with lots happening and little to no frame rate drop evident. There is some, all games drop frame rate or gain it when there is less happening it's unlikely to ever be perfect this or next generation but for this game there is no need to make any issues about frame rate.
Sound is a joy, John Williams' score is faultless for an action movie and many themes are lifted straight from the movies really giving the game an epic feel. The sounds effects are also the usual wonderful array of whooshing and screeching.
The game saves automatically at each checkpoint as is the norm. The checkpoints are for the most part fairly good. However there are a few howlers where you are forced to repeatedly fight through long areas with many enemies due to what seems like the checkpoint fitter falling asleep at the wheel.
I played the game for about fifteen to twenty hours on the Sith Lord difficulty and gained 595 achievement points, which I feel is pretty fair. The remaining points can be found by scouring for hidden objects and killing specific number of enemies using specific moves.
There is no multiplayer available.
Scoring
Graphics 8
Gameplay 8
Story 9
Level Design 7
A.i. 7
Total 7.8
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