Disclaimer: if you or your child is a Star Wars fan under the age of 12 this game will blow their minds

everyone else, read on

Over the last few years working in gaming, this decrepit robot has noticed a trend in Star Wars games. They seem to lean on the theory that fans will buy anything with the franchise name on it, and therefore deliver a sub-par experience overall. (Knights of the Old Republic, and Lego Games not included, and Battlefront was ok too.)
And following right in line with the assembly line of generic games comes Republic Heroes.
Upon first booting the game it has quite an amount of charm to it, visuals matching the quality and style of the animated series, well done voice-overs, and a heavy duty battle scene introducing you to the characters, they  even have witty banter to keep you engaged.

Upon taking control of Anakin, I began jumping around all ninja and jedi-like and thus far the game controls are functioning. See droid, see lightsaber, see droid die. Wash, rinse, repeat. See droid, jump on droids head, take control of droid, shoot lasers. See pile of boxes, push b, boxes are destroyed via the force. See narrow platform, push A, your Jedi awesomeness allows you to make the jump perfectly. Thus far I’m happy with the experience enough to shove on. And now we get to boss fight number one, where apparently the development team just stopped making the game.
My AI counterpart Padowan Snigsnoobity or whatever fancy alien name she had, literally stood in the center of the map and got shot for the entire battle (thank god for unlimited lives). At least the other characters in the Lego games help you hit stuff, faking that they want you to succeed. Using my force powers I pinned the giant droids legs to the ground, and was commanded by Rex to, “Climb the leg and destroy the blaster cannon!”. So I climbed the leg and swung my lightsaber at said blaster cannon…for 30 minutes… I’m not saying that I had everything figured out… I mean it turns out that if you sit in exactly the right middle spot of the leg it will randomly launch you into the air to attack the droids giant head(not its blaster cannon, unless there’s a Star Wars joke I’m missing. ) But getting launched only happens if you are in EXACTLY the right spot, which my guess is probably a pixel that’s white instead of gray on the droid that you can see if you purchase the George Lucas “DROID SLAYING” x-ray specs or some horrible thing like that. But the point stands that literally the entire fight was broken. And all the while Snigsnoobity stood at the same point getting shot in the face, dying, re-spawning, running to the same damn spot she got shot to death in before, and then…. take a guess… Got SHOT AGAIN!

Overall playing this was as frustrating as playing hide and seek with a child you’re babysitting that just tells you the carpet you’re standing on is lava before you catch him so you’re dead and you can’t win.

Star Wars fans deserve better..

And young Star Wars fans, won’t know any better.

• graphics – 8
• controls – 2
• story – 5
• sound – 8
• overall – 5.5