A serialized TV series like The Clone Wars would seem prime material for great Star Wars video game adaptations, turning episodes and arcs into bite-sized, action packed levels. Unfortunately, only a handful of The Clone Wars games were made, and none of them were particularly good.
After a six-year hiatus, The Clone Wars is set to return on Disney+ with its final season, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7. The animated series earned the praise of Star Wars fans for its exploration of topics and locations not seen in the Star Wars movies, and its six-season run time allowed it to flesh out characters who were previously one-dimensional. The Clone Wars, for example, fixed Anakin Skywalker's prequel arc, gradually revealing bits of his inner evil to make his turn to the Dark Side more believable.
The Clone Wars series created something genuinely interesting out of a product ostensibly meant for kids, but its video game spin-offs were less successful. Each The Clone Wars video game was shallow and repetitive - exactly the opposite of the show's charming variety and surprising depth. Here's how every The Clone Wars video game was received by reviewers on Metacritic.
The first The Clone Wars game released was 2008's Lightsaber Duels. This Wii-exclusive fighting game put players in a number of one-on-one duels inspired by the (rather mediocre) 2008 The Clone Wars movie. While its visuals captured The Clone Wars' signature CGI style, the game didn't deliver on the appeal of waving a lightsaber around with a Wii remote, consisting, instead, of silly "waggle" controls. Its combat system was also a shallow one, leading to a repetitive pattern of combos used to defeat most enemies. Lightsaber Duels scored a 56 on Metacritic, with 24 critic reviews.
Jedi Alliance released alongside Lightsaber Duels, and it succeeded and failed in many of the same ways as its Wii counterpart. Jedi Alliance's graphics are impressive for a DS title, and reviewers found its story to be surprisingly compelling, following Jedi heroes on a quest to recover a stolen shipment of Jedi Kyber crystals. But Jedi Alliance's gameplay faltered, with touchscreen-based controls that led to plenty of frustrating, accidental inputs. Jedi Alliance scored higher than Lightsaber Duels, but still only earned a 68 on Metacritic, with 10 critic reviews.
The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes reviewed worse than all other Star Wars: The Clone Wars games. The animated series' CGI style once again translated fairly well to the interactive medium, despite being significantly downgraded. But imprecise controls, wonky camera angles, tedious puzzles, and repetitive objectives made Republic Heroes an overall boring affair. It scored a 43 on Metacritic, with 37 critic reviews.
A sort of "baby's first MMO," 2010's The Clone Wars Adventures allowed players to create their own characters and wander around the Jedi Temple, meeting other players and participating in various mini-game activities. In a somewhat dystopian take on Star Wars' Jedi Order, players had to pay real-world money in order to rise from Padawan to Knight status, and the entire game was filled with microtransactions. The Clone Wars Adventures - more Club Penguin than World of Warcraft - earned a 65 on Metacritic, with four critic reviews.
The final The Clone Wars game, Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars, was to some extent a victim of circumstance. As the fourth Lego Star Wars game and the eighth game in the main licensed Lego game series, it seems developer Traveler's Tales saw the traditional formula becoming stale. To mix things up and to take advantage of The Clone Wars' large-scale battles, Traveler's Tales incorporated light real-time strategy segments. These The Clone Wars "ground battles" didn't do enough, however, as each one played out mostly the same as the others. Lego Star Wars 3 was full of repetition and aimless wandering in an attempt to solve unclear objectives. These problems plagued some of the earlier Lego games, too, but the allure of advancing through the Lego-fied story of A New Hope and other nostalgic movies gave players the motivation to soldier on. In this case, The Clone Wars' serialized nature may have worked against it, creating a more disjointed experience than previous Lego games. Lego Star Wars 3 received a Metacritic score of 76, with 36 critic reviews.
Part of the reason all these The Clone Wars games failed may have been that they came out before the series really came into its own. The Clone Wars Season 3 was a big turning point, introducing an improved animation style, more mature looks for the main cast, and deeper storytelling. The Clone Wars Adventures was the only The Clone Wars game to contain content from after the show's second season, but as a microtransaction-filled mini-game collection, Adventures was hardly the kind of The Clone Wars experience most Star Wars fans would be looking for. Perhaps if other developers had stuck with the series a bit longer, better The Clone Wars video games would exist.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7 will come to Disney+ on February 21, 2020.
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