Review: Star Wars- Clone Wars: Republic Heroes

I'm a bad gamer. It takes me forever to start a game and even longer to finish it. I finally had some time to sit down and dig into the year-old Star Wars- The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes game on the X-Box 360. I played it on and off for about a week before finishing it. After having just finished Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, I was ready to trade in the first person shooting for some badass Jedi action. This was not the game I should have picked up.

Yes, it recreates the characters and storyline that makes me love the Clone Wars series so much but that's pretty much all it has going for it. If only the team at Krome put as much time into the mechanics of the game as they did in the storyline then we might have gotten a decent game. Pretty much all of the characters from the shows first season pop up in the game. You get to control Jedi (Mace Windu, Obi-Wan, and Plo Koon amongst others) and Clones. Padme and Yoda show up in the game but, unfortunately, they are not playable characters. The villains that make appearances include Count Dooku, Cad Bane and Asajj Ventress.

The game is set up in three acts that are comprised of 20+ levels. That's 20+ repetitive levels. It works for the Lego games but here it's just plain BO-RING. Not only that, but the game is plagued by horrible camera angles and even worse controls. There were many times when jumping was frustrating as hell due to the fact that I couldn't really gauge distances. Oh, and couple that with the fact that sometimes the controls were unresponsive and you have the recipe for some good times. There were some points in the game were you have to bounce between walls. During these points you WILL attempt it at least fifty times before getting it right. Thank goodness you have unlimited lives.

When playing as a Clone Trooper you have your trusty blaster at your side. In theory, running around as a Clone Trooper shooting Droids is awesome. In Republic Heroes, it's damn near impossible. You can't really lock onto enemies so you just have to run around firing and hope you hit something.

Overall, I'd have to rate this a 5 out 10. The storyline is comparable to the show (that's good) and the cut scenes look and feel like the show (also good) but the in-game graphics weren't at all impressive. In fact, they reminded me a lot of the Dreamcasts Jedi Power Battles game. Not what you want from a next-gen console. Unless you want to risk your patience and sanity, this is not the game you're looking for.