Fans of the TV series are sure to be drawn in by Republic Heroes’ faithful aesthetics. It captures the look and feel of the show, with the over-exaggerated character designs and original cast lending their voice work to the game. The story feels like a bunch of lost episodes, and fans will be pleased to find a multitude of different characters, from fan favourites Anakin and Obi-Wan, to villains Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress, and even some of the lesser known characters, including the many Clone Troopers. Fans will definitely get a kick out of this stuff, but that’s where the fun begins to fade away.

The first thing you’ll notice is how bad it looks. Republic Heroes looks better suited to the PS2 with plenty of ugly low-res textures; jerky, lifeless animation and a lack of any eye-pleasing effects. It’s all extremely bland and plain looking with only a few bright sparks every now and then in the shape of some of the background action.

Disappointingly this is only the start of the problems. The campaign can be played alone or on local or online co-op. It’s split up into two distinct gameplay styles, using either Jedi’s or Clone Troopers over the eight, or so, hour adventure. Surprisingly it’s the Jedis that receive the blunt end of the lightsaber, with some frustrating platforming and repetitive combat. The platforming is billed as being guided, dropping you onto platforms so you can swiftly move through each environment with little trouble. In reality it’s a mess, causing plenty of unnecessary cheap deaths as the poor level design and terrible camera angles maliciously frustrate, time and time again. Unless you jump from the exact spot at the right angle you’ll fall to your death. But the fixed camera is placed in such a way that combined with the muddy and confusing visuals, it’s needlessly difficult to work out the angle of each jump, or even where you’re supposed to be vaulting to. Republic Heroes is supposed to be a kids game but they’ll easily give up after the umpteenth cheap death just like I felt like doing.

The combat isn’t much better. One button for lightsaber – with modifiers – another for force moves. It’s simple and that’s fine, but problems arise with the unresponsive controls. Stringing together combos is harder than it should be as your character slugs behind your button presses. None of this is helped by repetitive enemies and tactics for defeating them. Almost everything revolves around jumping on droids to clear a path, and doing this over and over in each level gets old extremely quickly.

The Clone Trooper action is mildly better. It plays out like a duel analogue shooter, and you can use cover to avoid enemy fire. It can be enjoyable in short bursts, but just like the Jedi sections it eventually gets tedious as you grind through each of Republic Heroes’ bland, uninspired levels.

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes feels like a cheap cash-in to milk the Star Wars franchise around Christmas time. Kids will no doubt want it as a gift since they love the show, but they’ll be left disappointed and frustrated with the terrible platforming and tiresome combat. It’s just poorly designed and feels rushed for no apparent reason. I encountered myriad glitches during my time, including one game breaker, so it’s difficult to recommend this to anyone. The Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars video games, if you will.

While Tales of Monkey Island progresses the story of mighty pirate Guybrush Threepwood, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition takes the classic franchise back to its roots with some added polish for the HD generation. Essentially this is the 1990 classic all over again, so if you still have fond memories of that game then there’s plenty to love here. Back then it was one of the most hilarious games you could ever play and the majority of the humour remains just as relevant and funny today. Of course now there’s also another dimension to the humour never seen or heard before that makes this entry one you‘ll want to spend your 800 pieces of eight on. This is a special edition after all and that means updated visuals, sound and functionality to give The Secret of Monkey Island a refreshing new facelift with it’s improved production values and streamlining.

Right off the bat the most obvious change is the new visual style. Updated for next-gen systems, the new art is stylish, smooth and highly detailed. It fits in with the look we’ve seen from the more recent entries in the series and it works well. Some characters look a bit odd, but overall this is an impressive update that adds plenty of grandeur to this classic adventure tale. Although, if you’re not a fan of the new look you can always switch back and forth between new and old on the fly. With a simple press of the back button you can travel back to the early 90s and play through the original game with all the same pixelated goodness you remember. Entering a new area for the first time and being able to see what it originally looked like is always a welcome site to behold, and it just shows how big the new changes are in adding to the whole experience. They aren’t large enough to stray away from what made the game so brilliant in the first place, just subtle nuances like the light of a full moon glistening off the water at the pier, or the new high detail revealing things that were a little too difficult to notice first time through. The updated visuals should be good enough to impress and please everyone, but for those not too fond it’s excellent that you can just switch back to the original at any time and carry on from there.

Although if you did that you’d also be missing out on the all new sound design. The original music remains intact but on a much larger scale. It’s easily recognisable and the added quality given to each track really helps give the music much more prominence within the game. However, the biggest change is the inclusion of voice actors. The original only featured text, so giving voices to these characters easily ups the comedy value and immersion in the experience. Most of the cast will be recognisable from other Monkey Island games, and the new additions are perfectly cast in most places. Hearing these characters come to life makes The Secret of Monkey Island that much more hilarious, and the quality of voice acting actually manages to add new jokes to the original script purely with subtle tones and changes in pace. The original was a complete riot to begin with, so now imagine that with a performance thrown on top. Fantastic.

However, the same cannot be said for the new interface. The various options took up half the screen in the original so you’ll be pleased to know that they’ve been hidden behind the shoulder buttons in the Special Edition. It’s probably the best way to use it with a controller but it can still feel too clumsy and clustered. There are so many options to chose from that navigating through them and your items is always a slow process, especially when attempting to combine different items to solve a particular puzzle. It’s not ideal but it’s one of the problems that comes when converting a game like this to a console and controller setup. The only other problems arise from the games old design. It’s to be expected from a game nearly 20 years old, but some objects are often quite hard to make out, particularly on the overhead maps. You’ll often find things by chance, just by hovering the cursor over an area and seeing the text pop up. As you can imagine it can be hard to find what you’re looking for at times. I know they wanted to maintain everything from the original game with updated sound and visuals thrown on top, but it would have been nice to see some objects highlighted to improve the games functionality.

Luckily the new hints system goes some way to pointing you in the right direction if you ever get lost. By holding down the X button you can reveal three stages of hints. The first will give you a general idea of what you may need to do; for instance, it may say “maybe you should talk to the prisoner”, or “look for a sword” and so on. The other subsequent stages give you bigger hints until eventually giving you giant arrows to follow. It’s a great system that eliminates some of the frustration that comes with the adventure game genre, and also stops you breaking the experience by searching online for FAQs. You may find yourself relying on it more heavily than you would imagine, but you just need to fight your own willpower in those instances.

It may have been a long time coming but Monkey Island is finally back and just as good as we remember it. It’s disappointing that LucasArts have taken this long to go back to their adventure roots but the quality of product on offer more than makes up for it. The Secret of Monkey Island is still one of the greatest games of all time and this new Special Edition presents it to a new audience with its fantastic production values and hilarious dialogue. There are some problems with the old game design and animation, but the subtle new additions like the hints system make it an easier experience for new players to enjoy. For the old fans that played it back in the day this is the game exactly as you remembered it. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from setting sail once again, so get your crew ready and remember to bring a helmet. Ahoy!

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10: 32: Treyarch head Mark Lamia comes out to the stage to show off Call of Duty: Black Ops demo.

10: 34: Running around in the jungles of Laos, a firefight commences. The smoke effects from a grenade explosion look particularly impressive.

10:37: Getting into a helicopter. It isn’t clear if you are flying the helicopter or if it is on rails. Nevertheless, blowing up stuff along the river is looking very nice.

10:38: The fighting starts up again, the water and smoke effects are really fantastic, it looks like a serious improvement over previous Call of Duty games.

10:39: Don Mattrick come to the stage. He announces a Microsoft-Activision deal, all Call of Duty map packs and add-ons will be exclusively released on the Xbox 360. Then he says that this is only a timed release (PS3 will get the content eventually)

10:42: Hideo Kojima takes the stage, he says that Metal Gear Rising footage will be shown off for the first time. He then introduces his protégé, Shigenobu Matsuyama, the next leader of the franchise.

10:44:The trailer starts for the new game, showing off Raiden and a really powerful sword. The big idea is “cutting”, using the sword, doesn’t look like a stealth game, but perhaps a hack-and-slash.

10:48: Cliff Blezinski takes the stage, he is going to show off Gears of War 3. He calls up some other people from Epic Games who are going to be playing 4-player co-op with Cliff

10:49: Players can hand each other weapons. Good thing they can do this because here come mutant locust! They have long tentacles and are really bringing the pain

10:51: The fighting is showing off some of the new lighting effects. The light coming through the tree canopy above is nice.

10:54: Peter Molyneux, the creative director of Lionhead Studios,  comes out to the stage and reintroduces the Xbox 360 exclusive, Fable 3.  He announces that Fable 3 will be coming out on October 26.

10:55: The trailer for Fable 3 makes it seem as though the five decade gap between Fable 2 and Fable 3 meant some major technological improvements.

10:56: Phil Spencer returns to the stage, announces the new Crytek game, Codename Kingdoms, which appears to be a gladiator game—it doesn’t showoff much, just an announcement trailer.

10:58: Bungie creative director, Marcus Lehto come to the stage and talks about the success of the Halo Reach beta. He proceeds to show off the first look at the campaign and announces that Halo Reach will be shipping this September.

11:01: The battle against the Covenant starts again and this time there are Lady Spartans thrown into battle alongside the men.  The game looks much grittier, has a Gears of War look to it.

11:03: The Spartans are getting into a rocketship and are launching into space.  This spaceship is not just part of the cinematic, players get to fly it and engage in space combat.  The demo ends with the release date of September 9

11:05: Now we are onto the explanation of Project Natal…err…Kinect. Ron Forbes, an engineer on the Kinect team, is showing off screen navigation using motion controls. Kinect recognizes the person playing and allows them to navigate the menus using their hands. There is also voice controls, allowing the user to say “Zune” to start the Zune app. The interface looks very similar to the Wii’s home screen, but you don’t have a controller with this one!

11:08: Showing off a movie, the user can say “Xbox Pause” or “Xbox Play” to start and stop the video hands free. They also mention that there will be 15 games at launch.

11:10: Xbox Live is coming to Windows 7 phones…no one is clapping. They are busy typing on their iPhones or Android devices apparently.

11:11: Video Kinect is announced, another engineer from the team takes the stage, Laura. She says that you can talk to friends over Xbox Live and MSN messenger. She begins talking to her twin sister—wait, twins?!

11:13: You can watch movies and other things with the person you are chatting with, seems to be a facelift of some of the old Xbox features. The demo is really showing off more voice controls and more interconnectivity with Microsoft services.

11:15: ESPN 3 is coming to Xbox Live.  This service will allow users to watch certain live broadcasts of ESPN programming and “over 3,500 live events” exclusively over Xbox Live.

11:17: Trey Wingo and Josh Elliot, two Sportscenter anchors, take the stage to show off the new ESPN feature on Xbox 360. They show off some interactive features using voice controls—you can vote for which team you want to win, watch replays, and do other basic control functions using Kinect.  “Kinect will make taunting even easier”

11:21: The ESPN feature will be available for no additional cost to Xbox Live users.

11:22: Kudo Tsunoda, the creative director for Kinect, takes the stage to explain some more about Kinect.  He says that there are going to be 6 new games going to be shown off today for Kinect, obviously, all exclusives to Xbox 360.

11: 24: A young girl comes out to play with Skittles…the TIGER?! This seems dangerous. She uses the voice controls to tell the tiger to do tricks and uses the “touch” controls to pet Skittles.  There is a jump rope and you can make the tiger jump over it. It goes into Matrix style slow motion.

11:26: Tsunoda says that “Kinectimals” will feature 40 different animals with 30 unique activities. He introduces Shin from Rare Studios who is playing Kinect Sports.  You can play soccer and run the hurdles.  Here comes a video showing off the sports available: Soccer, Bowling, Track and Field, Ping-Pong, Boxing, and Volleyball.

11:30: Here is “Joyride” the new kart racing game that will “completely reinvent the kart racing genre”. The woman demoing the game is able to do tricks midair, but it doesn’t look like there is combat elements a la Mario Kart.

11:32: “Kinect Adventures!” is shown off, you are on rails, and you have to dodge obstacles and collect items. Its like a theme park ride, it even has the random photo part of the ride.

11:34: They are showing off another part of “Adventures!”, two women doing some type of rafting. One woman screams, “Look at the water!” and another follows with “We can go anywhere!”. The press conferences are completely overacted.

11:36: The photos taken from Kinect games can be uploaded to Facebook and other social networking sites. I don’t think I will do this—I don’t need to have photos of me being a nerd to confirm my nerdiness.

11:37: Tsunodo says that there are many developers making titles for the Kinect launch. Ubisoft is coming out with a Kinect game,  “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved”. Apparently, all these games are only this one.

11:38: Felicia, from Ubisoft, is playing the game. She says that “Your Shape: Fitness Evolved” will redefine living room fitness. The game is able to detect the person’s height, muscles size, and other measurements.

11:40: Trainer to the celebrities, Michael George, comes out on the stage saying that he collaborated on the project with Ubisoft. He says that there is yoga, personal training, and other fitness activities in the game. This is totally feeling like a Nintendo press conference!

11:44: Here come the other game introductions, this time one from Harmonix, called “Dance Central”. BBD’s Poison begins to play and the woman on stage dances, extraordinarily well.

11:45: Alex Rigopolus takes the stage, officially announcing the game. He says that dancing shouldn’t be done with controllers or mats because it doesn’t capture the essence of dance. He says that the game will include music from across genres and highlights, Lady Gaga, No Doubt, and Beastie Boys. There will also be downloadable content.

11:47: Rigopolus says that Harmonix work with choreographers to get unique dance routines—600 moves and 90 different routines. Kasson Crooker, a nerdy engineer comes out and tells us that he couldn’t dance before “Dance Central”, I believe him. He begins to dance to No Doubt’s “Hella Good”, this game won’t teach you to dance, but it will allow you to move to music.

11:50: Phil Spencer comes back out on the stage and annunces that Kinect will launch on November 4 in North America with 15 launch titles. It will also be compatible with all 40 million Xboxes that have been sold.

11:51: LucasArts is making a Kinect game, a Star Wars game, which was already shown off last night at Microsoft’s other event.  Gameplay is being shown, but no one is actually playing.

11:52: Bill Giese and Dan Greenwalt from Turn 10 Studios come to the stage and show off Kinect features in the Forza franchise. Players can walk around the car and look at the various parts, even get into the vehicle and play around with the various instruments.  It is the “future of racing” and is coming in 2011.

11:56: Don Mattrick is back on the stage. He shows off the new Xbox 360—built in Wifi, 250 GB harddrive. He says it is “sleeker, smaller, and more quiet [sic]”, it is shipping to retailers today. He finishes up by saying that everyone in attendance is getting a free console on the way out.

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Thanks for joining us! Check back all week for more live blogs and information from E3 2010!

The Star Wars universe is one of the most expansive in modern fiction and allows for the creation of games that explore the initial success of the films. The lucrative franchise has given birth to some of the most impressive games but also shows how such a popular entity can be misrepresented and misconstrued.

From its initial announcement, The Force Unleashed has been advertized as the ultimate Star Wars experience. An experience which will not only let the player control Darth Vader’s omnipotent apprentice, but guarantees that the “force will blow your mind”. This promise is seemingly fulfilled at several points in the game because of the engaging storyline and the beautiful level design, but it is diluted by unabashedly annoying enemy design and interruptive technical glitches.

Although fans of the Star Wars saga may find it particularly predictable, the story is still intriguing and fills in the largest gap in the canon. The main focus is on the secret apprentice of Darth Vader, but his own journey sheds light on the dissolution of the remnants of the republic while explaining the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Rebel Alliance.

While the story unfolds, you will travel to some beautiful locales. Both new planets and familiar places are among the bright and vivid worlds the apprentice explores as he attempts to complete his master’s bidding. Many of the levels are made up of wide open spaces that show phenomenal art direction and allow the apprentice to use his full repertoire of force powers. Yet often times the apprentice is contained-both literally and figuratively-in dark small corridors of space stations.

In addition to the story and the level design, the game does a number of things right, particularly at the beginning. Before you take control of the main protagonist, the player has the ability to fight as Darth Vader on the Wookiee planet of Kashyyk. The game gives an enticing preview of what an all-powerful Sith lord has at his disposal as Vader can force grip, choke hold, and throw his lightsaber among other deadly moves. The prologue level is one of the best parts of the game as you are in a vivid world, able to use all the force powers, and technical glitches do not hamper the experience as they do in later parts of the game.
It is the initial success of the game that makes the shortcomings of the later levels all the more unacceptable. Almost immediately after taking control of the apprentice (aptly named Starkiller as homage to the original name of Luke Skywalker) it becomes apparent that like in so many other games, the player must accumulate all of the force powers and powerful combos.

The prologue’s ease is completely reversed as the apprentice has problems mastering even the most basic skills of lightsaber combat-reflecting laser fire. At the same time, the apprentice has the ability to lift things with the force as monolithic as Tie Fighters but the power is often times rendered obsolete because of the horrid targeting system. In most games where there is an automatic locking system, the way the camera is facing will determine which enemies are targeted. In one of the biggest design flaws, the targeting system in The Force Unleashed is based upon what Starkiller is looking at. This makes beautiful level design burdensome as the confines of small corridors further illuminate problems with the camera.

In an ironic turn, once the player gains experience and chooses which force powers to power up, the enemy design makes the use of force powers less effective. Throughout the game, the player gains force spheres by gaining levels and finding holocrons which allows player to strengthen force powers, force skills, and force combos. However, once the player attains these powerful upgrades, the enemies become less threatened by the force. Some gain force shields and others can block lightsaber blows with ease, therefore making the most simple of enemies a difficult and frustrating affair. Adding to the frustration, many times enemies will glitch, either not having a health bar or simply stuttering around. This coupled with the fact that the player can only load from specific checkpoints (many times placed before unskippable cutscenes) makes many harder sections of the game simply not fun.

When Starkiller faces off against Jedi masters, the force powers become almost useless. Many of the fights will feel like they are more based on getting lucky hits with a lightsaber than any sort of skill or strategy. Lightsaber battles, a staple of the Star Wars experience, are never epic—rather the game relies heavily on the archaic God of War button press mini-game to dispose of bosses as well as the larger enemies such as Rancors and AT-STs.

The gameplay tends to lose most elements of fun and every sense of being fair due to the drastic changes in character design and the unoriginal boss battle mechanics. Yet there are still sections of the game that will prove awe inspiring to fans and non fans alike. As mentioned before, what really saves the game experience is the overall presentation and intriguing story. The game has incredibly imaginative and beautiful worlds and likeable characters which create a Star Wars film experience. One can argue that some characters mirror those in the films and that some take away from established themes, but they are crafted well and combined with John Williams rousing score, add emotional weight to the story.

The Force Unleashed is a Star Wars fan service-filling in holes in the canon and allowing players to have control of mystical force powers. It was promised to give the ultimate Star Wars experience and was hyped to be one of the best games of the year. While the game has impressive elements, unpolished and uninspired gameplay mechanics and frustrating enemies do not allow The Force Unleashed to achieve greatness.