"The adventure begins"
- Tagline.
The first games that I remember playing as kid were Star Wars games like Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo and Shadows of the Empire. All of these were great, memorables games, and the Phantom Menace is not one of them. You might probably be thinking "Wait, there was a Phantom Menace tie-in game?" That is right. Star Wars Episode I - The Phantom Menace is a action-adventure game , despite having the Star Wars license, it wasn't developed by Lucasarts, but instead by Big Ape Entertainment, a rather unknown studio that was apparently picked at random. And BOOOOOOY, does it show!! This game is not just bad, its nothing short of a calamity... It should come to no surprise, of all Star Wars prequels, Phantom Menace is the one that everyone riped it apart the most, followed by Attack of the Clones, I am pretty sure that 97% of people who did that never even heard of the movie-licensed video game. Its that sorta of train wreck that you can't simply take your eyes away from, and even as a kid, I struggled to beat it even though I knew it was bad. What is so awful, yet so mesmerizing at the same time about this game? To celebrate my 10,000 posts, lets find out.
Summary
The game loosely follows the plot of the movie. If you have not seem Phantom Menace, are you serious? *Sigh* Roll the text crawl.
Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. (WUT)
Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo. (HUH... OKAY?)
While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events (who cares for congress debates, srsly?), the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict... (nice, lets kick some ass)
Plot
If you played games based directly in movies, you already know the drill. The game tries condense plot, while still trying to follow it scene by scene, while at the same time expanding on things not present in the movie. Example: there is extended sequence where Obi-Wan has to follow Jar Jar through the jungles, explore Otoh Gungah and escort Queen Amidala to the hangar to escape Naboo.
I guess its a good thing they cut the most boring parts of the movie, but they can deviate from the source material in a certain fashion like that time where Obi-Wan murdered every Gungan man, woman and child in his way to free Jar-Jar Binks. Wait WAT? Did you know you could do that? Just watch this (seriously you can skip this whole review, but just watch these video)
As the video above happily shows, its possible to act in a very un-Jedi manner such as goading the Gungans to attack you, insulting innocent Naboo citizens, flirting with a Twi'Lek Ms. Fanservice, drinking and sharing booze with others and most glaring of all, MURDERING YOUNGLINGSKIDS. DAFUQ? Shouldn't this send Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan Kenobi down to the Dark Side laughing all the way through? I mean, its even possible for Padme to kill the Viceroy after he had surrendered in the final battle and Panaka to gun down some hobos in the Coruscant Underworld. You think Obi-Wan would remember that time when he painted the ways of Otoh Gungah with innocent Gunga blood when he confronted Anakin over his slaughter in the Jedi Temple, and realize he is not so different.
Its not like you can Kratos and murder the sh*t out of every character on sight. You will get a Game Over if you kill any of the important characters for obvious reasons, like Padme, Boss Nass, Anakin, unfortunately enough Jar Jar Binks and Jabba the Hut and so forth. Hell, you would get a Game Over if you did manage to kill Darth Maul in the Tatooine duel. Speaking of Tatooine, if you cause too much havoc, every character will turn hostile and try to kill you while none of your allies will speak to you leaving the level unable to complete. Endless waves of enemies will come from all sides to kill you much like in Skyrim, and the only way out is loading a early save.
Where in other games, where the consequences of your actions would have weight, be them positive or negative like in the KotoR games, and actions such as the above would cause one being driven to the Dark Side, there is no such thing in Phantom Menace. You can pretty much kill anything, even harmless creatures, always solve your problems with violence and still be considered a good guy. That is up until you turn your lightsaber against plot-critical characters and threaten to break the plot.
Characters
You play as four different characters throughout the whole game: Obi-Wan Kenobi during the first 5 levels, Qui-Gon Jin during the following three, Captain Panaka for a single level and Padme Amidala in the last two levels with alternating control with Obi-Wan at several turns. Even then, there isn't exactly much variation between them. All characters can carry the same amount of guns, each have a basic weapon/attack and only the Jedi are able to double jump. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are practically the same character. Other than a different voice, appearence and lightsaber colors, they are played exactly the same way.
Padme and Panaka fare a little better (or worse, depending where you are standing at) as their basic attacks and appearences are obviously different. Padme has a crappy eletrocutioner that has unlimited ammo, but takes forever to kill an enemy, while Panaka fights with hand to hand combat. I it looks cool at first to attack your enemies with Kung Fu, its completely impractical as they deal very little damage.
There are some cheats that allow you to play with any characters that you want during any level. You still keep, but your voice and dialogue options remain the same. If you want, for some reason play as Padme during Obi-Wan's levels, you still have his voice coming out of his mouth and has the option of performing the mind trick.
Gameplay
OH FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU---
The gameplay suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks. This whole game sucks but the gameplay is one of the biggest reasons why. Oh God I don't even know where to start... First off, the combat is a joke; playing as Jedi has you flailing your lightsaber with no technique or combos whatsoever. You can use the Force in combat, but you only have Force Push to throw your opponents away. Despite being Jedi, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon can carry blasters, grenades, rocket lauchers, rapid-fire rifles just like Padme and Panaka, while they do vary the gameplay a little and can be a little amusing to see a Jedi using such uncivilized weapon.
The camera is a annoying over-the-shoulder type in what should have been a third person game that restricts your vision and can be annoying to perform platforming persons. By the way, platforming is one of the most annoying parts of this game. Its difficult enough when you are using Jedi character, that at least, enjoy the possibility of double jump, but when playing as Padme and Panaka you will tear your own head out with your bare hands.
The Enemy AI can vary from being terminally stupid to very cheap, some enemies will attack you on sight, but if you stay out of their sight, they will not chase you and just stand there blankly, waiting for you to come out to attack again. Other times you will invariably walk into enemies that you are not supposed to fight like a MTT that has infinite battle droids or a Armored Assault Thank, which cannot be destroyed without cheats or some heavy weaponry. Allied AI in the other hand sucks f**king nuts. All of your allies can be killed and there is no health display to let you know how much is left, which is even worse during escort missions. You can leave them on a safe spot, but if you move too far away from them, you get a Game Over.
Perhaps the worst offense the game commits is the lack of a tutorial, hints or directions. You explore levels that don't explain where are you supposed to go or what you are supposed to do next. Your screen only shows your health bar, your Force bar, weapons and that is it. No maps, no hints. You can open your pause menu to check out your inventory, but that is mostly for the show as except for a few levels, what you are carrying has no importance. I will highlight the worst moment where a hint and tutorial is needed badly in the game.
When you first visit Tatooine, you must find Watoo's shop somewhere in Mos Espa. You will likely waste some time wandering the city looking for him, and when you do, he will agree to fund the Podracing if he finds two mechanical parts, a servo control and a mass coupler that are necessary to rebuild the Pod. Now you have no clue where these things are and you must interact with every NPC in this city to acquire these parts. You just need to take a guess to know which one does, for instance, you find a alien weeping at a building doorstep, where some bad guy has taken his son prisoner. After Qui-Gon agrees to free him, the alien repays you by giving you one of the items you need, but he doesn't say exactly it is until you check your inventory? At least you know where to get it now, but you have no bloody clue during your first play.
Mind you this was a very common issue with games made at the time, leaving important information and walkthroughs in the manuals (the games I mentioned above have the same case). But hell, I didn't have a manual when I played this game for the first time, you had to look up in the Internet what you are supposed to do.
Boss fights are so depressingly lame. Of course, the only one character that was boss material in the movie was Darth Maul, so they try adding new characters not present in the original to fight in some levels like a
And of course Darth f*cking Maul. Unfortunately, they never feel particularly exciting or difficult if you use a different pattern. In fact, you can fight them almost the same way as the basic enemies. Don't even expect a satisfying climax with Maul, you fight him briefly in the desert as Qui-Gon, once again in the hangar as Obi-Wan, you get separated from the fight and has to plow through a annoying section of platforming and when you get to confront him, this is how you can take him down?
Anticlimax doesn't even begin to describe it -_-
Sound Effects
The voice acting is such mixed bag... While none of the actors from the movie do the roles in their game (except for Anakin and Jar Jar, which is really bad when you think about it), some do a alright job in personating their movie counterparts such as Obi-Wan and Padme. Others like Qui-Gon in particular, sounds absolutely bored out of his mind its painful listen. The extras' VA range from mind numbing to unintentionally hillarious, some merchants in Tatooine will blurt out lines such as "Stand back, sir, because I am going to slash... All my prices" or some knife-wielding hobos in Coruscant screaming "HE IS A KILLAH! GEET HIIIIIIIIIIIM!".
Not even the score from the movie is used often, except in key moments of dialogue or boss fights very briefly, but otherwise, the majority of time you will be running the levels with no songs whatsoever, only with ambivalence sounds that get old after a while and left me absolutely bored out of my mind. The worst offender was in the Theed levels, when you keep hearing the same cannon blasters in the background that grate on the nerves very quickly.
Visual Effects
To say the graphics are muddy and low resolution would have been too forgiving. Characters models look like they are made out of paper edges while Jabba looks like a giant poop with red eyes, even more than he is supposed to be like in the movies. The FMV cutscenes that follow the movie scenes do fare a little better for a game released in 1999, but I think huge part of the budget was dropped in the rather brief cinematic segments.
There were some occasional glitches and I like to remind I played this game on PC. I didn't run into many but people posted a few ones in YT
Final Score - 2/10. There is a no justifying reason you should play this game, probably to see for yourself the madness you can inflict, break the canon for the lulz or just plain old black comedy. Other than that, its a shining example why movie licensed games are so bad, rushed in to make a quick buck out of the license and because of that, suffers some questionable designs, a lack of explanation or direction, boring combat and gameplay.
Thank you guys for reading it, I hope you enjoyed it. I want to celebrate my recent landmark, hitting 10,000 posts and I hope to still be around to have 10,000 more in the future. Lets all party =D
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