Category: gaming

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Reviews for The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes

Republic Heroes

Now that the new video game Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Republic Heroes is out, reviews are starting to come in like Holofeed dispatches from the front, and it is looking more like a casualty report than a string of victories.

  • TheForce.net points out that it’s really for kids and not for gamers, and gives it 3.5 out of 5 stars, highlighting the co-op play.
  • TeamXbox gives it a 4.8 out of 10, likes the many levels and characters, but finds the game, especially the graphics and gameplay, unpolished.
  • BigShinyRobot warns that this game will blow fans’ minds — if they are under 12. Otherwise, the frustrating game controls negate the good graphics and sound to give a final review of 5.5 out of 10.
  • Gamespot likes how the game accurately looks, sounds, and feels like a lost episode of The Clone Wars, but in the end, the game “messes up nearly every single aspect of the familiar Lego formula, turning what should have been a quick-paced romp with cartoon Jedi into a dreary mess of clunky controls and confusing level design” – 3.5 out of 10.
  • Danny Willis, blogging for the San Jose Mercury News, hated it, and suggests that the game was ” personally designed by anti-gaming zealot and famed lunatic Jack Thompson.”

And if you’d rather read about the trivia of the game’s development, GameInformer has tons of things you didn’t know about the making of Republic Heroes.

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Taking a peek at ‘Senate Spy’, Friday on Clone Wars

...Puppets.The episode guide teaser page for this week’s The Clone Wars episode: ‘Senate Spy’ is up. Is there a Separatist conspiracy in the Senate? Padmé, at the request of the Jedi Council, goes undercover to find out.

Also, the next act of the ongoing The Clone Wars webcomic “Act on Instinct” is up. Cad Bane and Aurra Sing capture a Jedi seer.

CartoonNetwork.com launches a new The Clone Wars game online, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Game Creator as part of their overall site re-design, allowing players to customize their own game levels and pick a character and ship to use in them, and have other players rate it. Read more about it at starwars.com or just go ahead and play it online.

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The Clone Wars kids around with ‘Children of the Force’

After last week’s season premiere two-parter, we are back to single half-hour episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars – this week’s episode is “Children of the Force”. With a major story arc underway involving the list of every Force-sensitive child in the galaxy now in Cad Bane’s hands (and presumably, soon in Darth Sidious’ hands), the danger level has been ratcheted up.

Getting ready for this week’s episode “Children of the Force”, starwars.com has their placeholder episode guide and an interview with Ian Abercrombie, the voice of Darth Sidious on The Clone Wars, and who was at the first screening of Star Wars at Graumann’s Chinese Theater in May 1977. Examiner.com gives us a peek with the clip above where Darth Sidious details his plans.

Still catching up from last week? Check out Dave Filoni’s video commentary on “Holocron Heist” (Jocasta Nu and her impostor’s fighting style) and “Cargo of Doom” (Depicting the torture and death of Balla Ropal). Despite this season’s darker themes, the voice stars of the show reflect on how The Clone Wars is great for family discussions by giving lessons on life and morality in this video.

Dave Filoni gives dose.ca a big interview on Season Two, getting hired at Lucasfilm and not getting sick of Star Wars.

and for those wanting a little more The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes fun, starwars.com has a quick video on how to hijack and control a super battle droid. an online Clone Weapons Training game. The video game came out on Tuesday for pretty much every platform.

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The Tauntaun sleeping bag is coming! Really!

ThinkGeek's Tauntaun sleeping bagA prank no more! ThinkGeek (newly redesigned!) will be selling their internet-famous Tauntaun Sleeping Bag for real come November. Or you could win one in their Geeky Pumpkin Template Design Contest Extravaganza.

My first inkling of this was a tweet from Lucasfilm’s Leland Chee (@HolocronKeeper,) who also confirmed that a (licensed) lightsaber Wii remote will soon be available. Okay, so the Wii thing is old news, but my memory isn’t what it used to be… At least not for game peripherals.

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Gearing up for the second season of The Clone Wars

Here’s some of the top picks out of the media build-up for Friday’s premiere of the second season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars (8 PM EST/PST on Cartoon Network – 1 hour):

Some of the reports coming from The Clone Wars press event held at LucasFilm Animation:

Meanwhile, Geekdad at Wired talks up what the new season means in his household, and mentions that Seth Green will be doing the voice of Cad Bane’s droid, Todo 360.

And of course, StarWars.com gets busy:

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How to get a job at Lucasfilm (in the 80’s)

A peek at Tim Schafer's infamous cover letterGame designer Tim Schafer shares the tale (and scans) of how he got his first job in the industry, at Lucasfilm Games. (The LucasArts name didn’t join the party until 1990.) There’s some quality hilarity here:

I called David Fox right away and scribbled all the notes you see while I was talking to him. I told him how much I wanted to work at Lucasfilm, not because of Star Wars, but because I loved, “Ball Blaster.”

“Ball Blaster, eh?” he said.

“Yeah! I love Ball Blaster!” I said. It was true. I had broken a joystick playing that game on my Atari 800.

“Well, the name of the game is Ball Blazer.” Mr. Fox said, curtly. “It was only called Ball Blaster in the pirated version.”

Gulp.

But the best part may be his cover letter – which is in the style of a text adventure.