E3: Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes
Send in the clones.
If LucasArts can keep the robot varieties coming, and build a range of clever situations around them, it may be just the thing to add a simple puzzle element to the wall-running and glum-faced Jedi brawling that makes up the rest of the first campaign.
The clone trooper game is much more of a shooter, employing - this is a genuine surprise - a twin-stick control method that should be entirely familiar to anyone who's played Robotron 2084 or downloaded any of the swarm of variants available on XBLA and PSN, the left stick controlling movement and the right allowing you to aim and shoot. Whether it works as well as it did for Eugene Jarvis without the benefits of a top-down view (the Clone campaign, like the Jedi offering, uses a standard third-person action game perspective with the camera parked behind you for the most part) remains to be seen, and the Wii version, which opts for a kind of guided laser pointer with the remote, sounds potentially rather fiddly and annoying, but it's an unexpected pleasure to see a game in which different campaigns really promise to play in a radically different way.
Alongside shooting, there's lots of cover and a decent thermal grenade option for the clones, both of which you'll need to use fairly heavily, as the linear levels switch between narrow hallways and small arena-type areas quite quickly, and the game misses no opportunity to fling hordes of enemies at you. Clear a room and you may be offered the chance to complete an impromptu mini-game (the one we're shown asks you to mow down a certain amount of baddies in ninety seconds) which loads directly into the game world without breaking the flow of the campaign, but despite such unexpected challenges, and regardless of the number of on-screen enemies, even when things get tough, respawns are pretty seamless, and the checkpointing seems suitably generous.
While the stylings are all lifted from the TV show, then, Clone Wars' developers have clearly been paying a lot of attention to the LEGO games, particularly in the way Republic Heroes uses a hassle-free drop-in, drop-out co-op system, and allows you to unlock a freeplay mode on completion. With more than 30 missions to play through, and around 16 or so characters to choose from, the game is similarly attuned to play directly to that strange form of OCD kids who like science-fiction shows all seem to possess.
LucasArts sees Clone Wars as an "intergenerational brand", but that's probably wishful thinking. Colourful and friendly, yet rather slight, Republic Heroes seems a little too simplistic for adults, who tend to prefer the complex interpersonal dynamics and philosophical rumblings of something like, ooh, let's say The Force Unleashed. So if you belong to the age of Ackbar, and remember when sets were made of wood, R2D2 was largely immobile, and Han Solo ruled the space-lanes, you're probably going to find the latest Clone Wars title something of a letdown - for kids, however, this looks likely to be almost terrifyingly effective.