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Star Wars: Attack of the Clones Review - GBA

I'll come right out and say it, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones has its back well and truly up against the wall. There has never been one decent Star Wars game on the GBA. Not one. Despite being a license open to endless possibilities and so many cool themes at their disposal, game developers have failed to deliver a decent GBA Star Wars experience- even to a hardened fan such as myself. In theory AOTC has the potential to at least give some sort of joy to long suffering GBA fans, but I wasn't holding my breath. Let's see how it turned out, shall we?

Gameplay

As if the Star Wars game curse wasn't enough, AOTC is also a film tie-in, based loosely around the second instalment of the prequel trilogy. Taking control of Obi-Wan, Anakin and Mace you must guide your way through a series of side-scrolling levels with the odd 3D space shooter level thrown in. Unfortunately, the space shooter levels are few and far between.

If anyone reading this review was under the impression that a Jedi was a nimble and acrobatic being, I'm here to tell you they aint, if AOTC is any indication. Controlling your character is a real battle, it's as if he swallowed 5 to 10 of those pills in Grand Theft Auto at once. There appears to be a slight delay between the action you perform on your GBA, and the outcome on the screen. This obviously leads to some extreme frustration, especially when fighting a boss battle or when you're attacked by multiple enemies.

You are armed with the Jedi weapon of choice, the lightsaber, and some force powers. There is a handful of attacking saber moves to use, but by far the most effective is blocking. You can block any laser shots- deflecting them back onto the enemy. There are only really 2 forces powers, the force push (there's a super force push also) and force jump. Your ability to use the force is determined by a force meter, which can be increased by collecting the various power-ups littered through out the levels. Once again, the force abilities have been severely under used- acting more as a cool variation to disposing of the enemies instead of them being integral gameplay elements.

Sluggish movement and controls aside, AOTC dishes up some truly mediocre gameplay. You basically scroll the screen until it stops, clear the screen of enemies and repeat. The majority of the game is made up of this. The tone is set very early in the piece with the bland first stage. There is very little variation thrown up across the level, with wave after wave of droids attacking you all the same way- in fact, it will be impatience, more than lack of skill that will see you succumb in AOTC. There is also very poor explanation of what your actual goal is for some stages. For the most part it's ... (continued next page)