Star Wars games have had a disparate history in video games, with some being smash hits and others flopping harder than Jar Jar’s jokes.
So, with the highly-anticipated Battlefront releasing shortly, we decided to look at the games whose quality and execution tended towards the dark side of things:
Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi
While it was ambitious of LucasArts to attempt a Star Wars fighting game, it was also inevitable given the popularity of fighting games at the time.
Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi isn’t the worst game ever made, but it’s a pretty horrendous Star Wars game.
There was no real impact when making contact with opponents, and even the characters wielding weapons like lightsabers felt like they were swinging around bamboo sticks rather than cutting through enemy limbs like butter.
When ranked up against other fighting games of the same era, namely Soul Calibur and Tekken 2, it’s hard to not think of Masters Of Teras Kasi as nothing but a cash-in.
Star Wars: Demolition
A fond yet somewhat disturbing memory from the PlayStation days is that of playing Star Wars: Demolition.
This was LucasArts’ attempt at capturing the vehicular carnage appeal of Twisted Metal, but of course it was Star Wars. How could it go wrong?
The vehicles were what you’d expect – an AT-ST walker, speeder bike and so on – but they all handled like a toy car in superglue.
Worse still, the levels were dull and empty, offering you no real strategy or anything to look at besides your opponent awkwardly trying to line you up in their sights.
Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing
We love kart racing as much as the next guy, but merging the genre with Star Wars just seems wrong.
Loose controls and the rather unsettling experience of seeing characters like Darth Maul and Boba Fett in bobblehead form proved way too much for us.
Besides, any game that uses the Gungan city of Otoh Gunga as a race track can’t be good.
Star Wars Kinect
Kinect Star Wars had a bad rep from the get-go for its franchise-milking exploits, but the line had been crossed when Star Wars Kinect’s infamous dance-segments were confirmed real.
While there was a slight charm in wielding a virtual lightsaber in the other modes, the beloved Star Wars fantasy was brutally mutilated to become a theme-park-esque ride of childhood dreams dying, thanks to bad voice overs, the over- and under-use of rail-styled gaming and unresponsive controls.
Star Wars Kinect is just not the game we wanted it to be.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes
Strangely, there have been successful and well-designed platforming and combat-based Star Wars games (looking at the likes of The Force Unleashed and Jedi Power Battles), so it’s a mystery why Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes decided to abandon all of those fundamentals put in place.
We were excited to play through the quirky animated world from the Clone Wars TV show, but it became impossible because the game features poor controls so wonky that even a minor task like successfully jumping from one platform to another can be a serious chore, not too mention the minimalist visual style of the show did not translate well to the game.
Article courtesy of MenStuff.co.za.
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