All you need is your lightsabre! (Star Wars: Obi-Wan (Xbox))

Member Name: cranefly

Product:	Star Wars: Obi-Wan (Xbox)
Date:	14/11/03 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Plenty of action, no dull moment at all.

Disadvantages: Two player mode gets boring quite quickly.

This is one of my favourite games because it was one of the first games that I played when I first got an Xbox and secondly, I'm a big Star Wars fan.

With lots of great sound effects, and music from the film, the game requires you to guide young Obi-Wan through various levels and uncover a plot devised by the mysterious Black Heth. Armed with only a light sabre, you must defeat enemies and protect innocents where possible along the way. During the course of the game, you will sometimes receive instructions from Master Qui-Gon Jinn and you will have to carry them out if you want to proceed to the next level.

Obi-wan is quite fit and you can make him perform acrobatics, roll, and turn around quickly so that he is able to avoid attacks coming from all sides. Of course, as well as being extra fit, Obi-Wan has various force abilities, which he will have to use from time to time in order for him to complete his quest. His force abilities include:
· Force jump: This enables you to get Obi-Wan up on to high places that he wouldn?t normally be able reach with a normal jump.
· Force push: Push large objects out of the way or throw them at nearby enemies. You can also push enemies away from you and depending on their strength, incapacitate them temporarily or permanently.
· Force attack: This has several modes, you can: deliver an extra fast and powerful swing with your light sabre, see everything in slow motion and increase the accuracy of your hits, and probably most importantly, block any incoming laser beams.
· Force snatch: I really like this one. It enables you to snatch laser blasters straight out of an enemy?s hand rendering them almost helpless against your attack.

As well as making use of his light sabre, Obi-Wan is able to collect other useful weapons such as:
· Grenades: The grenades come in three different types: Fire grenades set enemies on fire within the blast range, you have to be careful that you are not stan

ding to close when it goes off. Ion grenades temporarily disable droids and Concussion grenades disable everything that is within its radius. The disadvantage of using grenades is that you have to get your throw just right otherwise you going to either throw it not far enough and end up blowing up yourself or to far and end up missing the enemy and alerting them to your presence at the same time.
· Sniper gun: Great fun! Shoot down enemies that are a long way away. Unfortunately, you only get five shots per gun you find. Use wisely.
· Trade Federation Cannon: When I first got my hands on the sniper gun, I thought that that was fun. It looks shabby compared to this! Blast everything within blast radius and blast more! It is a very powerful cannon, which enables you to shoot down any enemies that are around. There is an infinite amount of ammo so you don?t have to worry about running out! Unfortunately, Obi-Wan can?t carry the cannon around with him.


The levels are quite imaginative and you must guide Obi-Wan through five chapters, each chapter broke down into several levels. The five chapters include the planets featured in the film Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. The planets include: Coruscant, Naboo and Tatooine. The game has plenty of places to explore and many different objects to find. Try experimenting with different items and you?ll get different results. For example, hitting drums that you find makes them explode, so you have to be careful and look for ways to use them to your advantage.

However, despite the beauty of these different locations, I wouldn?t say the graphics used to portray the characters are brilliant and they could have been much better. The characters features tend to look rather blurred and the movies shown in between the completed levels look rather silly.

Non-Star Wars fans or people who are not familiar with Star Wars may or may not enjoy this game but for those who love Star Wars and are big fa
ns, t
his game is a must! Once you have mastered using your lightsabre, you will really, really enjoy playing this game. The game makes full use of the controller?s buttons giving you complete control of your character. Using the left thumbstick to control your characters movements and the right thumbstick to control your lightsabre gives you complete control of your character.

The game has a few drawbacks. These drawbacks include:
· Getting items from the inventory, (controlled using the D-pad). I found accessing things from it in a hurry difficult though as you have to scroll your way through all the items in your inventory before finding the thing that you want.
· Annoying characters: In some missions, Obi-Wan gets to be accompanied by a friend. For example, Master Qui-Gon Jinn sometimes accompanies him and at other times, Naboo Resistance fighters accompany him. Each of them, in my opinion is annoying in their own way! The Resistance fighters are a joke, they get in your way, sometimes shoot you (by accident I hope!), they pretend to be fighting but never seem to hit anything and they also have the annoying tendency to die when nothing seems to happen to them. Master Qui-Gon is always telling you what to do and when you fail a mission, he always tells you off even when he isn?t there (as if he helped) but at least he helps you defeat enemies (sometimes!). There is also another extremely annoying character called Asha who is always expecting you to do everything at once. Hearing her voice is enough to make you want to scream! Thankfully, these characters do not appear very often and Obi-Wan is alone in most of the game.
· Two-player mode: This is the most limited, and probably the most boring multiplayer mode that I have ever seen in a game. Here, you get to play as one of several characters e.g. Mace Windu (which you have to unlock along the way in the main game) against a friend and that?s about it! Its stupid because if you and your
friend bot
h decide to use the same characters, it gets very confusing as you don?t know who?s who!

On the whole, the game is almost perfect. I would advise anyone who is a major Star Wars fan, or anyone who likes plenty of action in a game to play this!

Summary: