I have a confession. I don't really hate Episode One all that much. I actually kind of like it. It's my favorite of the prequel trilogy by far, which I realize is kind of like saying I prefer drinking bleach to battery acid. But what can I say? Some of the set pieces are kind of cool, I liked the lightsaber fights, and the pod racing stuff was neat. Sure, it's riddled with CGI and those awful Gungans, but it wasn't all bad. And we were finally privy to a new era of Star Wars lore that had only been hinted at in comics, novels, and roleplaying games.
And we all know that stuff doesn't "count".
Were Star Wars fans, even ones who'd been let down by Phantom Menace, hankering for the further adventures of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi? Lucas Arts seemed to think so. Following up on yesterday's Rogue Squadron rabble, let's take a brief look at Star Wars: Obi Wan, a video game equivalent for the Phantom Menace experience: the promise of something great, with disappointment to follow. Obi-Wan was one on the original X-Box's early titles. It's a third person action game in which you hack and slash your way through several planets worth of "go here, go there" and "kill that dude". Some force powers are at your disposal as well, allowing for shenanigans of the supernatural sort as you prey on lumpy aliens and blocky droids.
The graphics were pretty standard at the time, maybe a tad stronger than its contemporaries like Jedi Power Battles or the Kyle Katarn-starring Jedi Knight. Early concepts for the Obi-Wan game included and built upon some concepts from Jedi Knight, leading early reviewers to speculate if it was a sequel. Those ideas were then taken back and put into Jedi Outcast, and Obi Wan was left as a bare bones action game with little in the way of depth. Playing through it now, it feels like it was rushed througha production cycle. Some levels are very intricatelt detailed, while other surfaces devolve into the kind of texture mush you'd see on the N64.
The lightsaber combat is okay, but pretty mindless. The lightsaber slashes also look pretty silly in rapid succession and its easy to turn Obi-Wan into a spinning murder top of destruction. You feel empowered, to be sure, but it's just not fun.
There's some multiplayer dueling to be had, and with a few beers could be a nice way to shoot the shit and talk Star Wars with a friend, but the kind of combat seen here would be done better in future installments of the Jedi Knight series and games like Battlefront. The game seems limited, and it's allegedly the fault of poor performance in the testing stages early. I can only surmise that LucasArts had a product that wasn't good enough to put a big push behind, but was too far along to scrap. Potential sequels for other platforms like the GBA were shit-canned after Obi Wan came out to mediocre reviews.
The Rogue Squadron games over on Nintendo continued to reign supreme as the best Star Wars gaming experience for my money at that time. The Jedi Knight series was a hoot as well, but I've just never been too into the third person Star Wars action games. Even with the most recent Battlefront game for PS4, I feel like somethings amiss. Star Wars: Obi Wan is a weird little curio, and is remembered fondly by a few diehards, but much like the Phantom Menace, it was a letdown of Jar Jarian proportions.
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