Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes (Wii) Review

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Republic Heroes drags the saga of Star Wars subtitles further into oblivion, with this latest game coming straight from Aussie developer Krome Studios. Set between seasons 1 and 2 of the series, Republic Heroes appeals to Clone Wars fans with heavy use of the lore, but anyone less than a dedicated Star Wars fan will struggle through an incredibly limited and frustrating action adventure game.

Starring a variety of playable characters, the story has a lot of dialogue with every sentence having at least one or two made up terms. It plays to the fanbase, but also makes it particularly hard to follow if you’re not up on your Star Wars knowledge. Obi-Wan, Mace Windu and several more characters are playable throughout the game, with Anakin and his apprentice Ahsoka Tano getting the most screen time and a lot of in-game dialogue to help establish character.

Republic Heroes does a decent job of capturing the feel of the Clone Wars series but everything else in the game breaks down under a poorly developed and unattractive action adventure game. Firstly, the game has a constantly wavering frame rate that struggles to keep up with its linear environment, which is both bland and lacking in detail. Jagged character models with static animations again in no way explain the poor frame rate, and the background scenery follows suit.

Despite poor graphical performance, it can actually be overlooked somewhat due to an even worse control scheme and camera issues. Basic combat is fine, with the B button used for attacking and character movement assigned to the Nunchuk’s analogue stick, but any platforming section is incredibly frustrating due to a strange lock-on system used for jumping. To jump across ledges, players must first trigger a visible marker on a ledge by running towards it before jumping. This means if you jump first, don’t trigger the marker or basically move in any way outside of the pre-set path, you will fall to your death. Not only does this ruin any fluidity in the game, but it also gets in the way of combat, since jumping anywhere can randomly lock-on to a far off ledge.

To make things even worse, the pre-set camera angles are often awkward and make depth perception difficult, not helped by the fact no camera controls allowed. The game simply has to have the stupid lock-on jump system, otherwise it’d be near impossible to logistically navigate a Jedi through each level with the terrible camera angles that can leave enemies or important objects off-screen. To make things easier there’s no death penalty, except for arbitrary point loss, and your health recharges within seconds of leaving combat, so that’s great if you’re 4 years old. There’s also enough endless respawn checkpoints to make this game a breeze, even on the harder of the two selectable difficulties.

Occasionally the gameplay can mix up a little and feature a few levels of third person shooting action where players control other characters and use the Wii remote’s cursor to aim and shoot at the screen. These levels actually aren’t too bad, although incredibly easy, as it’s fun when the gameplay expands beyond the basic hack and slash repetition. The ability to control many enemy droids also spices things up—each droid has a unique ability—but they aren’t saved from the blight of the horrid controls.

Most enemy droids are quickly diced with one or two sweeps of a light sabre, but for some reason your co-op team mate will need ten times as many hits to take down one enemy. Maybe it’s indicative of the AI at play. Different enemies will do their job at repeating attack patterns, but anything is too much for your AI partner, who will glitch out and die at any random occasion. If it’s not getting stuck on a single object, or repeatedly dying to the same enemy, the AI for the co-op partner is atrocious and doesn’t even attempt most jumping segments, simply plummeting to their death until they respawn into the next area.

You can bring one of your real life enemies into the game if you wish to let out some subtle malevolence, but even that’s a little cruel; I don’t know why you’d want to bring someone else into this mess. Apart from cramming as much Star Wars jargon into the story as possible, Republic Heroes fails to meet any expectations for a modern action adventure game. It’s a pain to play and unpleasant to look at, meaning it can’t be recommended as a rental or even a suppressant for Star Wars addicts.

Graphics 3.0

The visuals are way below standard but still have a constant lag on the frame rate.

Gameplay 2.0

Atrocious controls and awkward camera angles make a mess of a game.

Sound 5.0

Music like every other Star Wars game with enough laser beam sounds to suit.

Tilt 4.0

While any length is long enough, there are enough chapters to keep you playing for hours.

Value 2.0

A confusing mess that makes no sense for either gamers or Star Wars fans.