Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Hot Lightsaber Action

There's a new Star Wars movie coming out next month, bringing with it a fighting game that pits the best and the glowiest against each other in an all-out, drag-down lightsaber duel to the finish. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a fighting game for the Wii that focuses on the Jedi side of things. Each character in the game is a lightsaber wielding bad ass of varying degrees, from the single saber of Obi-Wan to the quad-wielding General Grievous. Is the the lightsaber combat game fans have been demanding since the Wii's motion controls were first revealed, or is it just another fighting game using licensed characters?

Perhaps a little bit of both. I got to watch a couple of LucasArts employees take on one another in a couple of duels during E3 last week, and while it did indeed look like they were waving those sticks around like lightsabers, I got the impression that the controls weren't being handled any different than they would in any other Wii fighting game.

First off, the game shares the same stylized CGI look of the upcoming movie and television series, which fans either love or hate. It certainly takes a bit of getting used to, especially considering I've already acclimated myself to an entirely different Clone Wars animated series. Still, with cartoony graphics come fluid movement, and the game certainly flowed nicely.

Each of the games stages has different phases to better represent the epic battles taking place. One level they showed off took place on a sky platform, which eventually separated from the building it was attached to and began plummeting through the atmosphere, combatants slashing furiously all the while. It isn't all saber rattling either - players will be able to slice bits of the environment and then use force powers to make said bits into weapons to fling against their foes.

There is a nice assortment of characters as well, with old favorites returning and new characters introduced, such as Ahsoka Tano and Asajj Ventress, adding a few more girls to the roster as fighting fans get a kick out of such things.

My overall impressions as they stand? Without getting my hands on those controls it is hard to tell, but the interactive stages and interesting new characters have intrigued me. When you get right down to it, this is a Star Wars lightsaber fighting game, and there's no way I am going to be able to resist that anyway, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on it.