Clone Wars Adventures

Back in our June 13^th TCW Weekly Roundup we mentioned a cool feature added to Sony Online Entertainment’s Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures on-line game.  The folks at Sony have been working with the Lucasfilm team that develops The Clone Wars animated series and is integrating events that will be happening in the show into the game.

This summer Clone Wars Adventures launched a bridge story leading up to the Season Four premiere of The Clone Wars.  The “Mission on Iceberg Three” campaign consists of four mini-games: Iceberg Approach, Race to the Tower, Emergency Evacuation, and Frozen Showdown.  As your intrepid Clone Wars correspondent, I signed up for Clone Wars Adventures and took on the Separatist menace for some Clanker killing good times.

While Clone Wars Adventures is technically a free game, you need to purchase a membership in order to play all four of the levels, only the first one, Iceberg Approach, is available for non-members. The Clone Wars Adventures is also geared to a younger audience and as such the games have simple controls that, once mastered, makes them easy to win.

Iceberg Approach may be the most fun of the games, you are in a Jedi Star fighter in an arcade style dogfight with Separatist fighters and cruisers. Strategy is largely irrelevant; simply hold down the fire control bottom and you can shoot your way through the level.

Race to the Tower looks like an old side scrolling Atari game with better graphics.  You move your 2D LAAT up, down, back and forward on the screen and destroy all the different Separatist ships and droids that get in your way.  Once you destroy a target it leaves behind a bonus that you need to try to collect.

Emergency Evacuation is a tower defense game that gets a little repetitive as you are wading through seven waves of clankers.  But it does hearken back to The Empire Strikes Back’s battle on Hoth, as you are fighting a delaying action simply to allow time for your transports to escape.

Frozen Showdown is a lightsaber duel game where you take on General Grievous.  Using the directional arrows on your keyboard, a series of arrows appears on screen that you need to match quicker than the computer does.  If you input the commands the quickest your character will score a blow and a point versus Grievous, if you mess up or take too long entering the commands then Grievous will score a blow.

Truth be told, I didn’t play the Iceberg Three campaign for the game play, I really wanted to find out what plot points it might have leading into the Season Four Mon Calamari trilogy of episodes.

The story begins with Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Jedi Master Plo Koon receiving a holographic transmission from a new character, Mon Calamari King Yos Kolina.  Apparently the Republic is receiving a special metallic ore from the Mon Calamari which is used to strengthen the armor on their warships.  The loss of the Mon Cal system to the Separatists would be a blow to the Republic’s war efforts.

What the Jedi do not find out until the task force led by Plo Koon, Clone Commander Wolffe and the 104^th Battalion (Wolfpack) arrive is that the situation in system is far worse then they realized.  Grievous has overrun almost the entire system; the race begins as the Republic forces must reach the final communications post not in Separatist hands to inform the Jedi Council of the situation, then they must fight a delaying action to allow Republic transports to remove civilians from Iceberg Three before the planet is overrun by Separatist forces.  Even though Grievous is eventually defeated in personal combat on Iceberg Three, victory soon turns into defeat as it is learned that Mon Calamari King Kolina has been assassinated.  The Mon Calamari home world of Dac is on the verge of civil war between the two dominant species on the planet the Mon Calamari and the Quarren. Apparently the King was a great unifier keeping the two peoples together.  In wake of the King’s death the Republic is sending Senator Padme Amidala and Jedi General Anakin Skywalker to the planet as Representatives to attempt to avert civil war.  Unfortunately for our heroes, the Separatists are also sending an envoy, Riff Tamson, a Karkarodon to cause trouble.

Tamson has appeared in some of the Season 4 teaser material, he is the shark-like alien who is having an all you can eat calamari buffet.

The cut scenes also mention a few locations, such as Sector 327 and the planet Mon Eron which is in the Calamari system.  Captain Wolffe gets some sick snowtrooper gear, Master Plo gets some nifty mittens, and we also see Captain Rex and some scuba troopers hanging around.  On Iceberg Three we get to see some AT-RTs and an AT-TE walking around.

I have a feeling that the events covered in the game will be the content that makes up the news reel at the beginning of the season premier.  Hearing the new dialogue was enough to get me craving a new episode of The Clone Wars, Season Four cannot get here soon enough.

-Peter

 

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