Phantom
Menace™: A Jedi's Game
by James "Z-Man" Zamkotowicz, Kalidor 6
Published 9/18/88
Note: Images are courtesy of Lucas Arts official web site.
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| Obi-Wan querying a protocal droid. |
Slicing and dicing a battle droid.Note the reflection. |
Once again, Lucas Arts has released spin-off games for Star WarsŪ. This time, the games are related to the newest movie Episode 1: The Phantom Menace™. I was one of the many who pre-ordered the Episode One: Phantom Menace™ game, but one of the few that actually waited until after the movie to play it. (Granted this was because I broke my joystick a day earlier on a multiplayer game of Mysteries of the Sith™, and needed to replace it, but I still waited.) So I saw the movie. It was good. It obviously wasn’t the movie to end all movies, but it was worthy of the name Star WarsŪ. That’s enough of that, this is a game review, and not a movie review. So…Episode One: Phantom Menace™ for PC.
This was sweet. Out of any movie to-game-transfer, this may be the best I’ve seen (well, maybe Tron, but Tron is nowhere near as fun.)
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| More battle droids. | I'm winning, but not fast enough. |
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| Maybe running away would've worked? |
These Droidekka droids are a pain. |
Once again, Phantom Menace™ can only be played with a graphics accelerator (sorry, Mom). This game was fun to play; it is between a 3D Platform game and a standard RPG. In the game you play many characters from the movie: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Qui-Gon Jinn, Captain Panaka, Queen Amidala; and you must not only shoot’em up, but think your way through various situations. It is important, though, that to be very successful, you must have seen the movie first. There are times where the movie provided hints as to what to do:
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| Obi-Wan & Qui-Jon in the Naboo swamps. |
Dealing with the Naboo invasion forces. |
:::SPOILER:::
Hold down mouse button to highlight this section.
For instance, in the escape from Tatooine, in the movie you see that Qui-Gon’s mission was to protect Queen Amidala and that meant simply getting out of there. It is the same in the game, if you stay and fight Darth Maul, you will probably die. However, if you devote your efforts to getting away, you live to fight another day (besides, you can’t kill him; if you succeed in the battle on Tatooine, he simply comes back again and you are worse for the wear)
:::END SPOILER:::
Also, Phantom Menace™ for PC has at least one bug; it is a simple one, though. In some parts where you are leading around another character, there is a tendency for those characters to get stuck. Sometimes you can un-stick them, sometimes you can’t, so I suggest saving often. This is a good idea for other reasons too. A circuit breaker blowing during the final level when you haven’t saved in an hour is VERY annoying.
There were two things I didn’t like about the game:
1. Phantom Menace™ did not
include anything from the land battle with the Gungans against the droids
2. Phantom Menace™ did not include anything from the all too
short space battle with the Naboo fighters.
Other than that, I was not disappointed.
Fun:
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| Queen Amidala dealing with a pair of battle droids. |
Queen Amidala & Captain Panaka retaking Theed. |
There were certain parts of Phantom Menace™ I found to be fun. In this game, LucasArts has finally found the best way to address the issue of returning blasterbolts with a light saber. In some games (the original Dark Forces™ platform) you are unable to deflect blasterbolts. Other times they make it too easy having the blasts deflected automatically (Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight™). In this game, you return bolts when your lightsaber comes into contact with them (you have to swing the blade to use it. Personally, I think that this is the most realistic representation of the use of the lightsaber (and it’s fun too).
Interesting:
There were a few things about this game I found particularly interesting. First, the only main characters that used the same actor as in the movie were Jake Lloyd’s Anakin, Ahmed Best’s Jar Jar and Andy Secombe’s Watto. The rest of the HUGE voice cast was not played by the original actors. This surprised me because in many cases (Padme, Queen Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi, it really did sound like the original actor… (the guy that played Qui-Gon’s voice was a little off, but not bad).
Second, while there were a few minor changes in the game, it was very close to the movie, and even helped me understand certain parts in the movie.
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| More pesky battle droids. | Shoot-out in Theed castle. |
In conclusion, I liked it, and it IS worth the price of the game, I liked it, and played it several times each time finding new weapons, and other “goodies”.
(James "Z-Man" Zamkotowicz is a lawyer-in-training / History major at the University of Delaware. While not cramming for the next battery of tests, the Z-Man flies Black Ops missions for Kalidor and contributes regularly with new stories and interesting tidbits about the Star Wars universe. He's usually the first to find out about the newest book, comic, or movie trailer release on the Internet. Hmmm… must be all those Bothans he knew.)
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