by:	April 10, 2004

What began as the successor to the Jedi Knight titles for the PC turned out to be something different. The Jedi Knight first-person shooters were known for their clever and grand level design. They featured varied gameplay and a considerable arsenal of weapons, including lightsabers and Force powers in the second installment. And of course there were the familiar sights, sounds, and Stormtroopers of the Star Wars universe.

Obi-Wan would have been the follow-up to the Jedi Knight games, detailing the adventures of a young Obi-Wan Kenobi sometime around the period of The Phantom Menace movie. However, it ran into troubles last year that gave rise to speculation it would be canceled. Instead, late in the development process, it was retooled and converted to an Xbox exclusive title. The result is a confused game that hardly feels worthy of the Xbox or the Star Wars license.

Obi-Wan does have a great basic premise in terms of the gameplay: give the player a powerful character with a bunch of wizardly skills and turn him loose in a series of action scenes. Whereas most console games gradually reveal their tricks over time, Obi-Wan starts you out with the whole kit and caboodle. You don't have to learn powers or find weapons. You begin with your trusty lightsaber and all the Force powers you're ever going to know. You can push enemies away, pull guns from their hands, telekinetically throw objects at them, fling your saber like a deadly whirling boomerang, slow time John Woo style, and jump really high. It's up to you to figure out when and how to use these tricks, which you'll have to master to get through the more difficult levels of the game.

The mechanics of using the lightsaber itself are one of Obi-Wan's strong points. One analog stick controls Obi-Wan's movement, and the other controls the direction of his swing: left to swing left, right to swing right, up to slash overhead, and down to block. Double taps perform combo attacks. You can defeat early enemies just by swirling the stick around frantically, and this sort of thrillingly confused saber play can be gratifying, with flying sparks, arcs of light, and the familiar zrrRRM zrrRRM sound effects. As you face more and tougher opponents, though, matters of timing and facing come into play. There are calculated standoffs in which you have to wait for an attack, parry it, and then counter-attack. You'll have to use your Force powers to knock back some enemies so that you can take on one bad guy at a time. Getting drawn into crossfire can be deadly, so you'll have to watch your position and pull guns away on one side while deflecting blaster bolts with your lightsaber on the other. With the emphasis on saberplay, Obi-Wan presents a refreshing new dynamic in third-person combat games.