I'm here today to talk about an amazing game series: Star Wars games. Some of them are amazing, some don't feel like Star Wars at all, and some are just plain bad games. In honor of my SW blowout next month, and just because I feel like doing it, I'm going to list all the current SW games I own and what I think about them. I'll hopefully get around to doing another post sometime with all the SW games I get next month and what I think about them, but we'll just have to see what happens. Here's how the format will go:

(The name of the game) - (The platform the game is on)

Release Date: (The date of it's release)

GS Rating: (The rating I'd give it on GameSpot)

SW Rating: (How much it feels like Star Wars. From 1-10)

(My opinion on the game)

Was I clear enough? I hope I was. Now to go onto my List of Star Wars Games:

Star Wars: Dark Forces - PC

Release Date: Feb 28, 1995

GS Rating: N/A

SW Rating: 6

Star Wars: Dark Forces is an interesting SW game. I hear it's much like Doom, gameplay-wise, although I can't confirm that since I've never PLAYED Doom. It's an old game, to be sure, and all the enemies are just 2-D sprites in essence. It's pretty fun, although I can't give it a true rating since I had to play it with no sound and couldn't save my game for some reason, so I only got to like the third or fourth level.

Star Wars Episode I: Jedi Power Battles - PS

Release Date: Mar 31, 2000

GS Rating: 4.8

SW Rating: 7

Jedi Power Battles is a game I used to love... a while back. Now when I get into it I get bored in the first minute. It's beaten big time by Revenge of the Sith. The graphics are awful for the PS, and it makes controlling Jedi feel clunky and uncontrollable, which is never good. The voice samples for the characters are also way off, and the sound effects are nothing to speak of. Overall it's a badly done SW game, that goes to show how SW should NOT be.

Star Wars Episode I: Racer - N64

Release Date: May 19, 1999

GS Rating: 7.9

SW Rating: 8

I bought racer a long time ago for the PC and enjoyed it alot, but as I went back to it I thought it wasn't running too well on my PC, so I decided to buy it for the N64 instead. It's a very fun podracing game with excellent sound effects and a superb sense of speed. The problem is unless you want to turn all the great sound effects off, every time you repair your pod, bump your pod, ect., your racer will say something. Most of the time screaming. Having your alien racer screaming the whole time takes alot away from the game, and Anakin isn't much better. (You'll hear him say "come on, come on, come on, work!" at LEAST 20 times in a single race.) There are a lot of cool tracks, and it almost feels exactly like a real podrace!

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the SIth - PS2

Release Date: May 4, 2005

GS Rating: 8.7

SW Rating: 9

This is the game that just plain betters Jedi Power Battles. The single-player mode is rather short lived, and has some fun moments, but chopping up droids gets old after a while. The highlights of it are the boss duels. Luckily, the game decided to add in an entire mode about dueling other lightsaber weilding opponents. There are lots of unlockable characters and arenas for the dueling mode, and in my opinion that's the main part of the game. Althogh I don't think they put that much work into it, since there are no extra modes or anthing like that, for some reason it's really lasting and fun because they get controlling your lightsaber and the force down perfectly. One of the game's biggest faults is there's no Episode III music in it, so that really takes away from the final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan, but the music they choose from SW normally fits pretty well.

Star Wars Glactic Battlegrounds Saga - PC

Release Date: 2002

GS Rating: 9.0

SW Rating: 9

The king of all RTS games, Galactic Battlegrounds does an excellent job of merging SW with Age of Empires gameplay. Since the Saga edition includes Episode II, there are 8 playable factions, the Rebel Allaince, the Galactic Empire, the Gungan Army, the Naboo, the Confederacy, the Republic, the Wookies, and the Trade Federation. My personal favorite is the Trade Federation. The game has an excellent mission creator and a decent campaign mode as well, but most of the fun comes from the mission creator and skirmish mode, especially the multiplayer. Some of the voices for heroes, like Han Solo, are pretty bad, but what else is new?

 Star Wars Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadren II - GC

Release Date: Nov 9, 2001

GS Rating: 8.4

SW Rating: 10

Rogue Leader is a game that captures the essence of SW dogfighting. It let's you take to the skies in many different craft from the original trilogy, including an X-Wing fighter and the Falcon. Instead of using movie footage it makes the movie scenes with it's graphics engine, which looks really cool. While the value is a little low, and it gets boring playing old levels over again, it's great the first time through. It feels like it could've been so much more if it was more solid and had more replay... oh, well.

Star Wars Rebel Strike: Rogue Squadren III - GC

Release Date: Oct 15 2003

GS Rating: 8.7

SW Rating: 10

Rebel Strike's single player mode decided to try on-foot levels as it's "new thing". It didn't work. The flying sections were also vastly worst than the last game's and overall it just didn't meet up to the last game's standards. Why then, the better score? Because of it's multiplayer mode, which includes the entire game of Rogue Leader in co-op! It also has a great dogfighting competitive multiplayer mode which has lots of different modes and ships. Overall it's too good of a package to pass up, and while it STILL lacks that special something that could make it a truly awesome game, it's so very close.

Star Wars Trilogy: Aprrentice of the Force - GBA

Release Date: Sep 21, 2004

GS Rating: 8.2

SW Rating: 9

This simple GBA game didn't get enough credit from GameSpot. It's a decent legnth and has pretty simple action, but it's still really fun. You go along the adventures of Luke Skywalker from Dagobah to Hoth. The graphics are amazing for the GBA, and overall it's a fun, if not small, SW game.

Star Wars Battle for Naboo - PC

Release Date: March 11, 2001

GS Rating: 8.2

SW Rating: 8

Battle for Naboo is another game I bought a long time ago for the PC. It's still fun now, although I haven't played it in a while. You follow a Naboo Captain as he fights for the freedom of his planet. There's some nice voice acting in the game as well, which is a good touch. It's made by Factor 5, the makes or the Rogue Squadren series, so it shares some resemblances with those games. You can also command tanks as well as air fighters in the game, which is a very fun part of the game.

Star Wars: Battlefront - PS2

Release Date: Sep 20, 2004

GS Rating: 9.3

SW Rating: 10

Battlefront is what all SW games want to be when they grow up. It combines amazing gameplay, great sound, a fantastic idea, and very movie-like content to make this truly remarkable game. In fact, I was just playing it a few minutes ago. It provides almost unlimited replay, even though it doesn't have many different modes or extra content, but playing the levels over and over again provides enough fun alone. There are a good number of maps over all the classic SW locations, including Bespin, Kyshyyk, Kamino, and many more. You can be four different factions, the Republic, the CIS, the Rebel Alliance, and the Galactic Empire. Battlefront's gameplay is a free-form shooter, where you can go around the map with many other AI opponents/allies and just be a normal grunt in the army you chose and fight any way you like. You can man turrets, get into vehicles, toss grenades, take over command posts, and more cool things as you try to turn the tide of the battle. This is hands down, by far, the best SW game ever. (No WONDER it sold so well!)

Star Wars: Battlefront II - PS2

Release Date: Nov 1, 2005

GS Rating: 7.4

SW Rating: 8

Battlefront II is Battlefront's dissapointing sequel. It took Battlefront mechanics, and added a bunch of new content! From interesting contraptions in the stages, such as switches you can destroy to open doors, to new troops! The problem is they lost the QUALITY GAMEPLAY of Battlefront I and instead it turns out being much cheaper. The graphics are horrible compared to the original and the gameplay is much more of a simple shooter. While the core elements of Battlefront still seem to be there, they're buried under the cheap gameplay. It's not a bad game, but it's not a great one either. If you own the original Battlefront there's nothing really to see here, except the Hero fights are fun. Oh, yeah, that's they're big thing. You can be Jedi now. But isn't that specifically what Battlefront I was trying NOT to do?

Star Wars: Demolition - DC

Release Date: Nov 19, 2000

GS Rating: 6.9

SW Rating: 4

Well, Star Wars has made alot of different genre, they made RTS, shooters, flight sims, racers, and more, but one thing you'd never think they'd make is a car combat game. Well, they aren't exactly cars, but close enough. Demolition brings Jabba's newest idea to life. Since podracing is gone for him he's having competetor's, including Boba Fett, go against each other in a fight for survival. While this isn't too fun of gameplay, it's pretty funny seeing a SW car combat game. They have some odd remixes of SW music, and seeing a fight between Boba Fett and an AAT at Naboo with a flashy remix of an episode I song is pretty odd.

Stars Wars: Flight of the Falcon - GBA

Release Date: Nov 18, 2003

GS Rating: 4.6

SW Rating: 7

Flight of the Falcon is a rather bland on-the-rail space shooter that just doesn't really offer much at all. While it's entertaining to hear SW music being done on the GBA, that isn't lasting at all. It's simple gameplay and it's rather hard difficulty along with having no save feature save for passwords really make this game... lacking.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - Xbox

Release Date: Jul 17, 2003

GS Rating: 9.2

SW Rating: 2

KotOR is a masterful and amazing RPG, with excellent voice acting for every bit of dialogue and superb gameplay. It feels nothing like SW, so hardly counts, but there are blasters and lightsabers and stuff in it, but I often forget it's source material. (And the Jedi, the Sith, and the force play major roles, so it's an odd thing.)

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire - N64

Release Date: Dec 3, 1996

GS Rating: 7.5

SW Rating: 5

Shadows of the Empire is a pretty good shooter. The gameplay isn't all that compelling, and the sound effects aren't even all actual SW sound effects, but overall it's pretty fun and has a good heart. There are also some fun vehicle levels in it as well.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - GC

Release Date: Oct 28, 2002

GS Rating: 8.2

SW Rating: 7

Although it gets a little reptetive after a while, The Clone Wars is a good vehicle-shooter game that shows the Clone Wars very well. It has some excellent multiplayer modes, and some bad ones, (such as the Geonosis: Academy), and is overall an excellent package.

Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance - PC

Feb 28, 1999

GS Rating: 8.3

SW Rating: 7

This flight-sim makes it feel like you're really flying an X-wing fighter throught he vastness of space. The most fun part is how you can ajust the shield deflectors to go full power in the rear as you lower cannon charge rate to get more engine output, and so on. The graphics look very nice and the voice acting is very good as well. There's quite alot to the game, and many different craft to pilot, so it makes for a very good and interesting game.

Well, that's the end of my rather long list. Soon I hope to add in the sW games I get in May which consist of:

Republic Commando - Xbox

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of teh Sith - PS2

LEGO Star Wars II - PS2

Racer Revenge - PS2

Rogue Squadren - N64

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast - Xbox

And that's all! Until next time, may the Force be with you... always.

Earlier in my post "Holdup On Shooters", I mentioned various shooters I'd been putting off. These were Metroid Prime Hunters, Jedi Outcast, and TimeSplitters 2. All of which I own/plan to buy. I bought TimeSplitters 2 back in late November/early December, and MPH sometime in December. I plan to get Jedi Outcast in a SW themed month in May, in which I'm getting LEGO Star Wars II, Republic Commando, Racer Revenge, the original Rogue Squadren, and Jedi Outcast. I also plan to watch all six SW movies in a row on May 25th.

 TimeSplitters 2 proved to be a little... lacking. It felt rather cheap, I didn't really like the style, and the multiplayer is a little too "run and gun" with some bad AI. (Especially in CTF mode.) MPH also proved to be worse than expected due to the annoyingly hard multiplayer mode when playing Wi-Fi, and liniar single player. Let's hope Jedi Outcast turns out to be better. I'm getting JO for the Xbox, against the advice of a friend who says to get it for the PC. (That friend is the one who keeps posting on my Blog, cowboydb59.)

 Republic Commando is also a shooter I've been putting off for a while, and while it doesn't seem very Star Warsy, it looks like a rather fun game. The squad seems rather... odd for clone troopers, and while I'd prefer it to be about normal Clone Commandos, I guess the weird ones willl have to do. Even though I didn't like Jedi Academy and haven't enjoyed Jedi Outcast too much from what I played, for some reason it still sounds really fun to me. Maybe I'm just setting myself up for dissapointment, though. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I'm not sure if I'll be getting Republic Commando and Lego SW II first, or the other three, but the first batch I'll probably get a week from tomorrow.

 I'm also getting Revenge of the Sith for the DS, which looks really fun, which I'll have when to play when we go on a trip in May. (Portable games are always helpful when traveling.) Jedi Outcast and Revenge of the Sith just arrived today, so I'm looking forward to playing those. Since my last entry I've actually gotten alot of games, and I'll list them here:

Viva Pinata - Xbox 360

Worms World Party - PS

Final Fantasy - NES

Rayman 2 - DC

Metroid Prime Hunters - DS

Sonic the Hedgehog - Xbox 360

Marvel Ultimate Alliance - Xbox 360

Time Splitters 2 - Xbox

Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition - Xbox

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - GC

Elebits - Revolution (I'm in denial)

Sonic and the Secret Rings - Revoluiton

Wii, I mean, Rev Sports - Revolution

Battle for Middle Earth II - Xbox 360

Cooking Mama - DS

 And more that I can't remember right now. And that's not in the order I got them it, it's just a random order. Oh, yeah, that includes getting a Rev since my last post. Well, I guess that's all for now. Maybe I'll talk about BFMEII or something on my next post.

I haven't posted on this blog in a long time. Managing this on and my one on Blogger is kind of confusing. I started writing one about the games I wanted for Christmas but I think it got deleted before I could post it or something. Maybe I'll post more later but I just wanted to remind anybody out there that's reading this that I haven't totally forgotten about it.

Charge

M&C's Walk-n-Shop...

That is the name of me and my brother's aspiring business on Anarchy Online. If you've never heard of Anarchy Online, you can either look it up on GameSpot, or listen to my descrpition. Either way, I'll tell you here. Anarchy Online is a Massive Multiplayer game where thousands of people role-play in the giant world of Rubi-Ka. Communities are built, friendship's are made, and glitches are found. (And exploited!) But, before I can go on with the description, I will describe how I came upon this game...

Well, I was looking on Gamespot for Massive Multiplayers and after many searches over quite a long time, the best ones were Dark Age of Camelot and Anarachy Online. I could get a free trail for both, and Anarchy Online's lasted until January 2007! Dark Age of Camelot didn't work out and a eventually, back in the beginning of September, I gave Anarchy a try. At first, it was confusing, and the frame rate was slooow around other users. I tried (in vain) to understand the interface, but only after a long time did I finally understand it, although I'm still learning even more to this very day. After testing around and making sure it worked with a "test user", I made my real character, a wanna-be-thug Cloyyd. My brother created a user named Mevikk, a aspiring syndicate leader. We joined force's and I was his thug, and he owned a syndicate, so our plan started to take shape. Once we got through the training, we both chose to be neutral and entered Bolerias, the beginning city for neurtrals. We went to get our apartments, but couldn't find out how. After trying for quite some time, and getting help from a friendly user, we got our apartments.

I won't go into detail, but eventually we started selling stuff we didn't need to users around the city, by going up and talking to them. Apperently this was an unusual idea, because some people were surprised, and others that it a cool idea. We sold a good number of wares, but alot of money came from higher-leveled users who could pass on thousands of credits without effecting them at all. Trying to make an honest living, we enventually stopped excpeting so much help, and try now to do things on our own. The store became our main thing and we got our name, M&C's Walk-n-Shop. We're currently level 10, and have quite a bit of money, and have just found out that with our computer's it's impossible to go exploring because our computers go veeeery slow in the wilderness.

Well, yet again the free trial for Anarchy Online has been delayed once more until January 2008. (Before it was delayed from 2006 to 2007.) So that gives is free players another year before we have to start paying. They're also including one of the expansion packs for free, because if you want the rest of the expansions, you have to start paying a monthly subscription fee.

Something I was surprised with on Anarchy Online was the community. Most of the people are very friendly and offer helpful advice, giving away free money and gifts, and helping the new players along their way. Although the infamous players to me and Mevikk are the PvPers. (PvP = Player Vs. Player) They always run up to you wanting to fight you, and beat you, even when they're a lower level, because they always do it when they have some special power that lasts a limited time. One day we'll beat one... one day...

Well, I've been writing a while, so I won't go any deeper into the gameplay of Massive Multiplayers, so I will close with one piece of advice. Give Anarchy Online a try. It's free.

"attack me."

-A PvPer out there somewhere, Anarchy Online

For some reason I can never seem to get around to getting any shooters. Sure, I buy some tactical shooters and such for the 360, such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, but the action-oriented shoot-em-ups are never very high on my list.

Take for example Jedi Outcast, highly reccomended by a friend, but just isn't very high on priority list. Why? Because... well, it just doesn't look fun.

Another one is Metroid Prime Hunters. Also highly reccomended by a friend, but for a long time, it also didn't look fun, but I think I'll finally get around to buying that sometime, but it has been put off for a long time.

And finally, TimeSplitters 2. This is a real... interesting one. I heard about it a while ago, and finally decided to look into. It looked pretty fun, until I found out what it really was. It is pretty much the weirdest game ever, where you run around as a mutant clown shooting human-ducks. Why, do you ask, am I still considering it? Well, in the multiplayer mode you can choose to fight opponents more nuetral, such as robots or soldiers. It looks fun, but too weird. Still can't decide on that one, and it's been put off for a little while.

Well, there you have it, the three shooters I've been putting off forever. But for now, the next game I'm going to get is Sonic, so those shooters are just going to have to wait.

Charge_Ittup2000

"Oh, I don't think so!"

-Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Well, it's coming. The new Sonic the Hedgehog game for the 360 and PS3. I cannot wait. I already have it pre-ordered with overnight shipping, and it should be shipping the 14th of November. That's very soon, in fact, it's in only in about 10 days, give or take a couple.

I've never been looking forward to a game more, so, needlesss to say, I'm really hoping it won't flop.:!:

Today I just saw some new screens showing Sonic carrying Elise and Sonic and Tails talking. Like I said before, I can't wait.

Charge_Ittup2000

"This way, please."

-Dr. Eggman, Sonic the Hedgehog

For some unknown reason my blog is not working. I will figure it out soon, but this message is simply a test.

Charge_Ittup2000

"But enough of this friendly banter, Sonic. You better be ready when we meet face to face again!"

-Jet, Sonic Riders

This is my first blog entry.

I am currently mad because GameSpot restricts many options from me, since I'm a new member, such as reviews and, from what I can tell, font on this blog. Well, for now I'll just have to utilize bold and italics well.

Charge_Ittup2000

"So, you're leaving this place?"

-Sonic, Sonic Riders