The Force was never strong with this one…
The release date of Episode I is still one of those things that makes me feel entirely too old. I was a mere 19 years old when Star Wars finally returned and the hype was through the roof. Everything was Star Wars. Toys, lunch boxes, clothing, and of course, video games. At that time there was a themed Episode I game for just about every scene in the movie. Power Battles was one of the ones that me and my friends were truly excited for. Who doesn’t want to play as a Jedi taking down endless droids and fighting Darth Maul?!? Well, much like any other licensed items, Power Battles suffered from some truly horrid controls and bad platforming, but we didn’t care back then. The question is, will we care now?
So let’s kick this off with some positives. The amount of content here is nice. Aspyr has brought over all the characters and made them available from the beginning, which is really awesome. Being able to kick off the start of the game as Darth Maul is very cool. The visuals have also been remastered well. The new textures are nice. There is a nice gloss to everything that makes the game look even better than you remember. The models are still wonky and some of the art is well…questionable. The game looks and runs well, which is about where my compliments end.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $9.99
The combat, oh my the combat. It is so stiff and does not flow well. Combos feel bad, just bad. The flow of combat feels like I was constantly wrestling with the controls. Attacking enemies is awkward and half the time I am swinging at air as the droid moved two centimeters to the left. The game feels like I have a ton of input lag when playing, like those people that turn on motion smoothing and think their game is running at 60fps. It just feels awful.
The force powers suffer a similar fate. They are unique to each character, but they rarely match the character themselves. These are just made up and kind of ridiculous. That isn’t the worst part though. Half the time they are either ineffective or simply do not work. Seriously, there are moves from some characters that just do not trigger. It is just perplexing how a game can play so bad at times, and it just keeps coming.
The one bright spot is that the platforming is not awful, but it is also not great. Jumping feels weird, like the character is magnetized to the ground and just wants to fall. The perspective doesn’t help either as I sometimes had to jump four times before landing where I wanted.
What happened here? Well the original game wasn’t great, so Aspyr definitely had their work cut out for them. You can only polish a turd so much. The new visuals are nice, the content is cool, but playing the game is just a painful exercise in frustration. It is never fun. I was constantly thinking about turning it off. I had to force myself to finish the first level when I started playing. This game is just not fun, and it should be. How they managed to take the easiest layup in gaming, making Jedi fun to play, and completely airballed it. I would skip this one entirely.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
