Full Review

Star Wars: The New Droid Army is set a short time after the Episode II movie. You play Anakin Skywalker after he’s fully healed from loosing an arm at the end of Attack of the Clones. The Jedi Council, led by Yoda, has found out about Imperial forces building a new droid army and you are sent in to investigate. As you can imagine, your investigation means that you have to chop down lots of bad guys with your light saber.

The game is played using a top-down view set at a weird diagonal angle, sort of like my previously reviewed He-Man game for the GBA. I don’t like this type of visual representation because it is hard to see what is going on. Instead of using your up, down, left, or right directional pad buttons, you constantly have to move diagonally and at weird angles, making the controls seem awkward the whole time you play. It is also difficult to line up your character to deflect droid blaster shots because Anakin will rotate in a weird direction depending on where you push up/down or left/right. In other words, the controls of this game are a bit annoying and greatly reduce the fun of playing.

Your action buttons are limited to A for attacking and B for blocking. Press and hold B to deflect blaster shots, but good luck with that. The previous Jedi Power Battles game handled this better on other console systems, but here the controls limit you from lining up properly the first time, meaning that you will get hit a lot. If you press and hold the attack button while moving in a direction, Anakin will do a flip over his opponent. This is especially nice when enemies surround you. A really nice mapping feature is also available by double tapping the Select button, and you can double tap the Start button to see mission objectives.

The New Droid Army combines elements of role playing games with action titles. This one reminded me a lot of the Baldur’s Gate game for GBA, although that game was much better. When you are in towns in this game, only a few people can be spoken to and they are highlighted with a bright green exclamation point. This is nice to know where exactly you need to go, but it takes away from the role playing freedom aspect. Basically, you just end up walking around a lot more to go find people who will talk to you. Why make a game populated with a bunch of people you can’t talk to and buildings you can’t enter?

The graphics are pretty good for this type of game and some of the building and character details are nicely done. I was especially impressed with the droid graphics and how the desert town buildings looked just like the sand huts from the movies. Most of the game maps tend to be a little too big when you have to walk all through them fighting the same few enemies over and over again. Most of your game objectives involve either finding something or someone and killing a bunch of bad guys to get to that something or someone.

I was really unimpressed with the sound in this game, considering that it is a Star Wars title. Most Star Wars games always feature impressive sound, but in this one the music doesn’t even sound like Star Wars music. The light saber sound effects are okay and some of the animated cutscenes are good, but the in-game music is really lacking.

The New Droid Army is a pretty good game, but it would have been a lot better if the maps were just a little bit smaller and the control system was more responsive. It takes too long to get used to the perspective and control mechanisms, and games like this should not require a learning curve.