The Software Menace
Review by Chris Seip
When the latest Star Wars movie hit the big screen, two new Star Wars games landed on the digital screen at about the same time: Racer, reviewed in this space several months ago, and The Phantom Menace, named after the movie. The title's no coincidence, as this arcade/adventure follows the contours of its motion picture namesake. At its best, this game re-creates some of the movie's grandeur and imagination - borrowing many elements straight from the film of course, but also adding compelling details to the dialogue, characters, and settings. At its worst, its puzzles get too frustrating, and its graphics go from compelling to cardboard.
At the outset, you play as young Obi-Wan Kenobi, fighting side-by-side with Qui-Gon Jinn against the droids that would prevent your leaving a maze-like Trade Federation ship. The locations progress from ship to swamp, through the underwater bubble city of Otoh Gunga to the desert town of Mos Espa, and beyond. In later levels you play as Qui-Gon, Queen Amidala, and her security chief Captain Panaka.
Obi-Wan's hair gets mussed in battle, in The Phantom Menace. |
| Click on the thumbnail for full image. (53K) |
As Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, your handiest weapons are usually a "force push" kind of power, and the trusty lightsaber. It does an imperfect but useful job of blocking blaster shots, and a learning just a few keystrokes gets you some slick blade-swinging moves. As Amidala and Panakin, you'll probably find more relative use for the other weapons in the game: a blaster rifle, various models of blaster, Amidala's energy-pulse droid stunner, flash grenades, and, as seen on a movie screen near you, the pretty purple Gungan energy ball.
Those weapons provide a good jumping off point at which to discuss the graphics of the Phantom Menace, as the shining lightsabers, explosions, and electrical effects are handled with real polish. The environments through which you battle and explore are lavishly drawn and populated with characters similar to those in the film. For better or worse, the game's point of view is much like the Tomb Raider games, a third-person camera floating overhead that, a few times, can obscure useful visual information. Graphically, this game can be a real treat, and when Obi-Wan starts a-swinging that glowing lightsaber to deflect blasts into exploding droids, anyone looking over your shoulder will want a turn at the controls.
As mentioned, there are times when the graphical design seems painfully misguided, most notably the cardboard cut-out look of the trees and plants in the swamps of Naboo. It's a real let-down and blows any suspension of disbelief the player may have been mustering. It must be pretty tough to portray a forest/jungle environment with a typical 3D engine; the same graphical trade-offs weakened parts of the last two Lands of Lore games. Another tricky aspect of the graphics is the need for a "good" 3D accelerator. After playing quite a ways with an older ATI card, I was motivated to restart it when I used a system equipped with a Voodoo2 card. Not only did many things look better, but opaque ceilings, beneath which I'd had to guess at my character's activities, were now rendered see-through!
Fans of the film will be pleased to explore these worlds in greater depth. There are all kinds of secondary characters to meet and talk with (using dialogue trees). Many settings from the film are expanded into maze-like territories to explore. There may be extra meandering and less wit than in other, classic, LucasArts games, but I suspect many Star Wars fans would be pleased with the invitation to spend time checking out the nooks and crannies, and crooks and nannies, of the Phantom Menace universe.
Lapses in graphics design would be forgivable, but then we've got the puzzles to contend with. These are mostly arcade-style puzzles, where you must find a handle, or jump in the right places, or follow Jar-Jar without doing him bodily harm borne of frustration. If I must follow Jar-Jar through the swamp, why does he disappear so frequently? Hunting for him in the artificial maze of trees just wasn't much fun. Jumping across the sinking stones in a Gungan pool was fairly tough and, again, just not much fun for me. I've worked harder at making progress in games, but when the puzzles seem arbitrarily tossed in, and inconsistently difficult, I must admit I start losing interest.
Nearly any entertainment product from the land o' Lucas seems to place a premium on good sound quality, and this game works very well sonically. Sound effects are right on, the music is grabbed straight from the film's soundtrack, and the voice acting is quite believable. Some original cast members reprised their roles: Jake Lloyd still boyishly Anakin, Andy Secombe growling his lines as the hovering Watto, and the unmistakable Ahmed Best as Jar Jar.
Nothing groundbreaking about this whole enterprise. It's apparently meant to appeal comfortably to the console/Nintendo generation more than to the hard-core PC gaming crowd. It's flashy and fun, but stumbles in ways that can aggravate. It's not surprisingly original or particularly lean in any way, but that's the point really: It's your chance to spend some time, to interact with the film's inventions for a while. Enjoy the tour, we've got a few years 'til the next movie! Grade: B.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
[street price: $41]
LucasArts
ESRB rating: Teen ("T"),
"animated violence"
Lighter Blue: Mini-Reviews
A Brief Look at Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
Imagine taking Cavedog's popular real-time strategy (RTS) game, Total Annihilations, and moving it to a fantasy/magic-enabled medieval type of setting. This isn't exactly what they did for Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, but it should give you a pretty good feeling for Kingdoms if you've already played Cavedog's first epic. Unlike the last few releases from Cavedog, Kingdoms is not an add-on pack for the original Total Annihilations game; it is entirely standalone, in terms of software and story.
Hand-to-hand combat in Total Annihilation: Kingdoms. |
| Click on the thumbnail for full image. (51K) |
The conflict played out in Kingdoms is four-sided, and if you wallow through their 48-mission campaign, you'll get to play as each of the four armies. A necessary ingredient for success here is the balanced capabilities of one side versus another, a feat tuned to perfection in Kingdoms. The wonderful music, the 3-D graphics drawn so pleasantly you'd swear they were 2-D sprites, and the lush battlefields all add up to a rich and exciting multimedia experience. The real-time strategy software engine running the show is familiar and pretty full-featured, though heavy RTS players may bark about weaknesses in the artificial intelligence, or no major leaps ahead for the genre. For me, Kingdoms represents a solid entry in a very crowded niche of the PC game market. Grade: A-.
Total Annihilation: Kingdoms
[street price: $30]
Cavedog
A Brief Look at Radio Control Racers
Like real radio-controlled cars, the simplicity of Radio Control Racers from Dynamix/Sierra allows you to just pick up a joystick and start playing. It's attractive and addictive. The fixed overhead view of the tracks and smallish 2-D graphics allow some older computers to get in on the fun, but it's all still nicely detailed and quite playable. Power-ups are added to the R/C racing experience, giving your car speed boosts or weapons to slow the other cars, like electro-shock, oil slicks, firecrackers, or missiles. The more outlandish power-ups are in keeping with the "3D Ultra" line of games, in which silly, unrealistic elements are added to a familiar game for fun. Like lawn gnomes that throw bombs at the passing cars.
A small variety of cars is offered, each with different handling characteristics, but the main driving effect with which you'll need to contend is sliding -- oh boy, how those rear tires like to slip out from under you. The feel of the cars seems similar to R/C cars, with the realism strengthening as you select higher difficulty settings. Unfortunately, Radio Control Racers features no on-line multiplayer capabilities. Nor is there a design-your-own-tracks feature, but it would have been difficult to make some kind of software generator for these graphically distinct tracks. Ultimately, the fun of Radio Control Racers wears thin too quickly. Considering its low price tag and instant accessibility, it's still a good bargain package. Grade: B-.
3D Ultra Radio Control Racers
[street price: $20]
Dynamix/Sierra
A Brief Look at Extreme Rodeo
Courtesy of Justin Boots and a handful of other sponsors, Head Games brings you Extreme Rodeo. It's a collection of six playable rodeo events, from calf roping to barrel racing. The event called "bull poker" is almost subversively anti-rodeo, as you control the bull that's trying to catch those pesky rodeo clowns. (No goring; you get to flip the clowns away with a toss of your horns.) Other variety comes in the form of six arenas, and you get to choose your persona from 20 different riders.
Sounds and music in the game are quite reasonable, and commentator Don Gay sounds perfectly at home doin' his thing. As with so many Head Games, Extreme Rodeo's potential is stunted by unimaginative graphics work served up with a chunky old 3D engine. It's curious, Activision certainly has access to slicker graphics engines than this! Playability issues get in the way, too, like controlling a bull that runs as if crossing a river, or driving that funky "move the little wedge" interface that firmly holds your concentration away from the on-screen action.
Grade: C-.
Extreme Rodeo
[street price: $17]
Head Games Publishing/
Activision/
Radish Works
A Brief Look at Millennium Falcon Playset
Wow! Looking at the hardware component, what young boy wouldn't want the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon (from the older Star Wars movies) strapped to his keyboard? No special ports required, folks, its elastic belt wraps around your keyboard, and plastic ridges on the bottom keep it positioned over the right keys. When you push down on Han's chair, a little plunger on the bottom presses a key on your keyboard. Chewie's chair pushes its own key, too. The hyperspace throttle gets its own key, as does the blue ball thingie. You get the idea. If it moves in the toy cockpit, it presses a key.
Choosing a destination for the Millennium Falcon. |
| Click on the thumbnail for full image. (97K) |
The software is strictly grade-C material, a flimsy excuse for fiddling with the toy. Images and video bits were strung together by some skilled software artisans, but the game design is too simplistic. Kids may have fun with it for a while, but there's hardly any challenge at all. Say, is anybody concocting some alternative gameware for this thing? Well, it's fun-looking enough to be a collectable. I don't keep up with these things, but it's possible this is the only computer hardware that has increased in market value since I've had it. Such is the power of Star Wars toys. Grade: C, for enthusiastic kids or collectors only.
Star Wars Millennium Falcon CD-ROM Playset
[street price: $40]
Hasbro Interactive
