Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Xbox
Nostalgia Factor:
I first played this game back in... hmm. I want to say it was 2005 or 2006. I remember buying it at a used video game store by my house. It came packaged together with Tetris Worlds on the same disc. I remember thinking how that was such an odd combination. Star Wars and Tetris? Uh, okay.
To be completely honest with you: I barely remember anything about this game. I didn't think it was anything special. I remember playing it. I remember it being composed of mainly flying stages. I remember beating it. That's about it. To be fair, this was during the heavy drinking phase of my life, which I like to bring up on this blog from time to time. I don't remember much of anything that happened during that timeframe.
What happened to my copy of the game? I ended up trading it in for something else. Like I said, this game was only mediocre in my opinion, and it didn't seem like something I'd want to play through again.
Let's jump forward about 20 years into the future. I randomly stumbled upon this game when looking for something to play online. Immediately, it caught my interest. I'm always intrigued by games that I know I've played, but I do not remember anything about. I decided to take the plunge.
Would I find this game to be any better here in 2025, or would I still find it to be completely unremarkable? Let's find out.
Story:
I didn't pay much attention to this game's storyline. It is very inconsequential. I was more focused on the driving and the shooting and the blowing shit up side of things.
But if you must know, the game is based around the Clone Wars (obviously). The earlier stages cover the events on Geonosis that take place during Attack of the Clones. But the majority of the game focuses on Clone Wars battles that take place after the movie, and before Revenge of the Sith. Completely uncharted territory, if you've only seen the movies.
The main goal of each level is usually pretty simple. It's normally something like destroy a base, protect a ship, wipe out all enemies, that kind of thing. Don't come into this game expecting a deep narrative, or any kind of interesting plot twists. It plays things very safe. It's just you and the Republic fighting against Separatist droid armies. It's like if you plucked a few random episodes out of The Clone Wars TV series and made a game about it. Although this came out before the series.
Gameplay:
If you like vehicle-based shooters, this is the game for you. There are some on-foot levels, but they are few and far between. Thank god, because they aren't good. The controls for them are quite questionable. It is very clunky. Fallen Order or The Force Unleashed this is not. If the entire game was just these on-foot sections, you are looking at one of the worst Star Wars games ever made. Luckily, there are only about two or three on-foot sections the entire game. The rest is all flying. The flying is definitely the meat and potatoes of the game.
You're going to take control of a large number of vehicles in the game, from speeder bikes to tanks to walkers to fighters. Each vehicle handles differently. The buttons all do different things for each one. The controls are never explained in the game. And since I was playing a digital version of the game, I didn't have access to an instruction manual. I suppose I could have looked one up online, but I decided to just roll with it instead and figure things out on my own.
Luckily, it is not too difficult to figure out. Each vehicle generally has a fire button and a zoom button, where you can lock onto enemies with your blasters. Each vehicle generally has missiles you can fire. Some vehicles offer special perks, like shields, the ability to speed up or slow down, or powerful laser attacks that serve as a secondary weapon. And of course, each vehicle handles differently as well. A walker is not going to move the same as a speeder bike, obviously.
Each stage is relatively short. Some can be beaten in less than five or ten minutes if you know what you are doing. There are 16 stages in total. It took me a week or two to play through this game, because I was only doing a stage or two before bed each night. But if you really wanted to sit down and dedicate some time to the game, you could probably beat it in a day or two. Maybe even in one sitting if you were truly dedicated.
While the game is short, it is tough. Some of these battles can be quite intense. You are under constant bombardment, and you take damage left and right. I found myself dying quite often, and having to replay large chunks of the game at a time. That's kind of annoying. If you use save states *wink wink* you don't really have to deal with that. But yeah. I play everything on the normal default setting, and I found this to be a super tough game. Especially right at the end. There's a stage where you have to protect a squadron of walkers and I tell you: it is a son of a bitch. The final boss is insane also.
If you are persistent, you'll eventually power through with trial and error. Once I "learned how to play" I was able to breeze through most of the game pretty quickly. Move slowly. Stay at a distance. Use your zooming ability. Don't be shy with your missiles, as the game is relatively generous with refill power ups.
When the action is time sensitive, like with an escort mission, my strategy would change a bit. I was big on strafing and laying waste to the enemy with as big of a bombardment as humanly possible. Then I'd fly away, regroup, and come back for another pass. You always want to have a strategy. You never want to blindly just fly in, especially when there are a lot of enemies to fight. You can go from having a great run to getting completely obliterated in seconds. So you have to be careful. But you can't be too careful, or you'll run out of time.
All in all, I found this to be a relatively fun, but shallow experience. I can see why it didn't stick with me when I first played it. It's a decent game, completely forgettable in the long run.
Graphics/Sound:
It looks like Star Wars. It sounds like Star Wars. I don't have much to complain about here.
The graphics are fine. This clearly an Xbox/PS2 era game. Things look okay on the surface, but when you start examining them closely, you can see the rough edges. But its fine. I didn't decide to pick up and play this game for its graphics, not that they are bad by any stretch of the imagination. It is a perfectly serviceable looking game. The most impressive thing visually is probably the scope of some of the battles, and the size of some of the ships you must face.
The music, on the other hand, is great. This game doesn't limit itself by only using music from the prequels. It uses music from the original trilogy as well. It really adds a sense of fun and excitement to the game. I'm sure the prequels have fine music, but aside from Duel of the Fates, nothing stands out much compared to the soundtrack of the original movies.
Sound effects are great, too. All the normal Star Wars effects are present, from the piercing sound of blaster fire to the hum of a lightsaber. Voice acting is okay... for the most part. Line delivery can be a little stiff, but the characters mostly sound like their film counterparts. Obi-Wan is my favorite. He is quite zesty in this game.
Overall:
I liked this game. I didn't love it, but I liked it.
My problem is that it is so utterly forgettable. It's similar in structure to something like Star Fox, or even the Rogue Squadron games. But it has absolutely zero personality carrying it. There's nothing memorable here. It didn't even do much for me as a Star Wars fan. In one week, I'll have forgotten basically everything about the game.
But as I said, I still liked it. It's challenging. I like the mission variety. Never at any point was I like "wow, this game sucks!" as I was playing. It's a perfectly short, enjoyable game. It just doesn't do much to stand out. There's honestly not much else to say about it.
If you like vehicle-based Star Wars games, you will probably like this, as I did. If you aren't a fan of the genre, you'll be missing absolutely nothing if you decide to skip this.
Will I ever play this game again? Nah. It's like the video game equivalent of cotton candy. You like eating it. It's enjoyable while it lasts. But when you're done, you are still hungry. And five minutes later, you've moved on with your life, the cotton candy long forgotten. As much as you liked the cotton candy, you're never going to think back on it and be like "wow, that was so good!"
So while I can't give this game much more than a slightly above average score. As much as I enjoyed it, it did almost nothing for me. And I certainly will never be coming back to it again.
THE GRADE:
C+
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