With the twentieth anniversary re-release of Revenge of the Sith now upon us, what better time to review its semi-classic tie-in game. Despite its lukewarm reception from critics upon its release, SW fans seem to remember it as a flawed but fun beat-em-up that captured the feeling of fighting as a jedi better than just about any game before it. The developers certainly spared no expense in making its saber-play as authentic as possible - not only did developer The Collective get Anakin's actor Hayden Christensen to perform the moves used by Anakin in-game, they got the movie's stunt co-ordinator, Nick Gillard, as a consultant when building the game's combat system. This did go a long way towards making RotS one of the most mechanically sound portrayals of the jedi martial arts yet seen in a video game. The feeling of playing as a jedi, engaging in epic one-on-one duels, flinging droids into the abyss and slicing up helpless enemies in your path is captured excellently - enough to convince aspiring jedi masters to power through the game's all-too-obvious flaws.
The game clearly draws inspiration from EA's excellent Lord of the Rings games, complete with how it opens. Like The Return of the King, the game completely skips the menus the first time you boot it up and drops you right into the action. Disappointingly, they skip the space battle that opened the movie of the same name and instead place the first level inside the hangar bay where Obi-Wan and Anakin slice through droids on their way to rescue Chancellor Palpatine from the clutches of droid General Grievous. Seriously, why no starship gameplay? They had it in the Episode III section of Lego Star Wars. Hell, the DS version even had some excellent space combat. So why skip it in the console version.
Anyway, once over the disappointment that RotS is purely a hack-and-slash title, the first level does a decent enough job of introducing the mechanics, letting players utilize Anakin's lightsaber-skills and allowing players to use the force to throw explosives at droids or, better yet, throw droids at explosive. Even better, throw them into the exposed electrical currents that can be found all along the hangar. It's fairly basic stuff, simply ferreting you from point-to-point, cutting down enemies along the way, but it does do its job of introducing you to the game's mechanics and letting you hop around and destroy helpless enemies in your wake as a jedi.
Unfortunately, the level also drops you headfirst into some of the game's biggest flaws. From the outset, you'll see just how brain dead your enemies really are. Typically, droids will just stand in place as you approach them, and they seem incapable of noticing when something in the environment is blocking their line of fire. What's more, they seem incapable of breaking through your block, and given that you can hold down the block button even while your attacking, the normal droids you encounter are all real pushovers. As for the AI controlled Obi-Wan, he seems to alternate between taking two or three swipes at foes and standing still and letting the player handle things.
The camera also leaves something to be desired. It can't be controlled manually, instead operating at fixed angles. Sometimes this works perfectly fine, giving you a good view of the action. Other times, the limited field of view is infuriating as enemies repeatedly fire at you from offscreen. An option to have some kind of camera control, even a limited one, would have gone a long way.
But once you've gotten past the first level and have acclimated yourself to these problems, the game takes an interesting turn, as it incorporates content that was cut from the film. The second level takes you through the ship's fuel tanks, this time as Obi-Wan, facing new, more interesting types of droids. They're still not the sharpest tools in the shed, but the bigger, tougher droids that can block attacks offer some much needed variety, as well as challenge, to the combat. As for Obi-Wan, he more or less controls the same as Anakin, right down to the special attacks they can pull off. Even so, his varied attack animations provide just enough of a change to keep players' interest.
What will likely cause interest to wane, unfortunately, is the mind numbing repetition of the game's level design. Each one follows most of the same basic gameplay loop - run into a room, kill some enemies, then repeat, until you reach the end. The repetition is particularly annoying in the first half of the game, where your enemies mostly consist of the same few puny droids repeated ad-nauseum. The game tries to break up the endless hacking-and-slashing with the occasional turret sequence, but these plodding and dull sequences simply make you want to return to slashing droids. Fortunately, things do pick up considerably in the second half of the game, once you've learned new, more interesting moves and the enemies change from boring pushover droids to considerably tougher foes, like jedi. That's right, once Anakin turns to the dark side, you get an entire level where you slaughter jedi at the temple, something that was done mostly offscreen in the movie (sorry, aspiring Sith Lords, I'm afraid the younglings weren't available for slaughter in this game). And yes, taking on legions of jedi in the temple, each with their own lightsaber, is about as awesome as it sounds. Even then, though, your enjoyment is hampered by some subpar AI. It's amazing how jedi armed with lightsabers and force powers are unable to maneuver around a small table in their way.
One-on-one duels like these are, in the words of Darth Vader impressive.....most impressive.
What's more, the whoosh of lightsabers still looks fantastic twenty years later. Thanks to motion capture work provided by actors like Hayden Christensen himself, as well as consulting from stunt co-ordinatior Nick Gillard, the animations for the various characters' moves is incredibly fluid and intricate, much like the saber work in the films. There are some occasional glitch outs here and there, mostly with finishing moves failing to connect with the enemy being felled, making for some really awkward looking images of droids being stabbed by some kind of invisible sword. What's more, the framerate does hitch on occasion when lots of stuff is blowing up on screen, but it's pretty minor, all things considered, and very rarely distracting. The environments also look nice, if somewhat repetitive ('Everything's chrome in the future!'), with well-designed geometry that still looks impressive even by modern day standards, and plenty of objects you can damage with your lightsaber (even if it makes it all the more distracting when you come across objects that you somehow CAN'T cut through). What's more, you'll see plenty of activity going on in the background, giving the sense that you're smack dab in the middle of events larger than yourself. Overall, it's still a great looking game, and there's not too much to complain about.
Slightly less impressive is the audio. Sure, the John Williams score is present to accompany the action, and it sounds as great as ever, and the sound effects for both lightsabers and blaster fire sounds as sharp as you'd expect. It's the voice acting that's not up to par. Aside from Grievous, none of the film's actors signed on to voice their characters, and the stand-ins range from passable to just plain awful. Anakin in particular gives a monotone delivery that makes his stiff acting in the movies look downright Oscar worthy in comparison. And when fighting in one-on-one duels. you can expect to hear the same verbal jabs over and over, which is bound to grate on your nerves pretty fast.
On the whole, I can say that Revenge of the Sith was, and still is, a significantly flawed game. To an extent, you can tell the game was rushed to be out in time for the movie's premiere. There's a general lack of polish throughout, from its undercooked AI to its occasional visual glitches. What's more, the general feeling of redundancy from slaying enemy after enemy across multiple levels is unavoidable. Even so, the core combat remains some of the most mechanically satisfying of any Star Wars game I've played, and just when you feel like you've hit your limit, a fantastic one-on-one boss fight is there to spice things up.
It's just a shame that the game leaves you wanting more. Getting through the 16 levels in the campaign should take a player no more than five hours at most, even with all the retries against some of the more challenging bosses. There is some extra content to sift through, like some bonus stages, which are passably entertaining diversions, particularly the one that has you play through the original lightsaber duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan onboard the Death Star back in A New Hope. There are also some multiplayer options. The co-op mode is a bit of a dud, simply a boring horde mode where you and a buddy slice through a seemingly endless number of enemies across a few rooms, which gets boring fast. More interesting is the versus mode, which plays like a light fighting game where you can select one of two duelists and duke it out in one of the arenas from the boss fights in the campaign. It's not deep enough to rival the likes of something like SoulCalibur, but if you've got a friend to play with, it's a fun enough time waster for aspiring lightsaber duelists. Aside from this, there are unlockables like concept art, as well as maxing out combos and discovering crystals that provide upgrades to things like health and force powers, which will give completionists a bit more playtime, but not a whole lot.
Even so, for as long as it lasts, RotS may well be the 'Ultimate Jedi Action Experience' as it advertises. Aspiring jedis who are looking for a buried relic of the force would do well to check this out. It may not be the best Star Wars game ever made - hell, I don't think it even cracks top ten - but I can say that, twenty years later, the force is still just strong enough with this one.
Pros
- + Intricate combat system that skillfully simulates saberplay
- + One-on-one saber duels are exciting and challenging
- + Gorgeous environments and well animated character models
- + Two-player vs mode
- + Authentic John Williams score and sound effects
Cons
- - Main campaign is extremely short and repetitive
- - Mind-trick afflicted AI
- - Occasional visual and sound glitches
- - Poor camera angles
- - Weak co-op
- - Lousy voice acting that makes the film's actors look like Golden Globe winners
7
Gameplay
8
Graphics
7
Sound
6
Replayability
7.5
out of 10
Overall
I can confidently say RotS is still a fun beat-em-up twenty years later. It's far from perfect, with a short and repetitive main campaign and a certain amount of movie-tie-in jank, but ultimately, The Collective succeeded at bringing the force into balance. 'A fun time, this is. Play it you should.'
