The instant the Wii Remote was first revealed the video game industry looked at LucasArts in unison, and shouted “Star Wars lightsaber game!” LucasArts, too busy destroying the narrative of the original trilogy of films with The Force Unleashed, shrugged off these suggestions, and deemed it an impossible task due to what they felt was a lack of necessary feedback required when using a 1:1 control interface. Krome Studios, the team in charge of developing the Wii version of The Force Unleashed, obviously felt otherwise, proposing that lightsaber combat could be handled by using gestures. Somewhere along the line, LucasArts decided to take Krome’s duel mode from The Force Unleashed and pop it into a game of its own to tie in with the new Clone Wars series. Then the new Wii Motion Plus add-on was announced, making it all irrelevant, so just like the associated series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Lightsaber Duels feels totally unnecessary.

Lightsaber Duels ties in directly to the recently released Star Wars: The Clone Wars film, which served as a launching point for the new animated series. Set between Episodes II and III, events and subplots of the film are mishmashed into the game, with a few sequences directly from the movie thrown in to provide context. Basically, all you need to know is that both the Republic and the Separatists are trying to negotiate an alliance with the Hutts on Tattooine, but the kidnapping of Jabba’s son throws a spanner into the works. Anakin Skywalker and his padawan Ahsoka Tano are sent to save the day. Older Star Wars fans dissatisfied with the story need to keep in mind that the Clone Wars series is meant for younger fans, hence its Saturday morning air time.

Credit must be given to Krome for faithfully reproducing the visual style of the Clone Wars series on the Wii. With most of the creative aspects already taken care of (Lucasfilm is notably strict on outsourced adaptations), the studio directed a lot of attention to the game’s visual effects, so the particle effects and lighting look really good. There is nary a hitch with the game from a technical perspective, with the frame rate staying smooth throughout the game. All of the voice actors from the series lend their talents to the game for some extra authenticity and the Clone Wars arrangement of the classic Star Wars soundtrack makes for some nice background music.

Upon starting the game for the first time, players will have to undergo a somewhat intuitive training session, where Anakin takes Ahsoka through the basics of Jedi combat for the first time. It is here that you learn basic movements, combos and usage of the Force. Don’t expect to wield your Wii Remote like a lightsaber like the box claims – Lightsaber Duels’ combat is simplified to gestural movement of the Wii Remote – think quick flicks of the wrist, rather than broad sweeping motions. Move the remote to the left, and you get a right-to-left slash, move it down, you get a downward slash and so on. As you become more familiar with the controls, you can link together combos for greater damage. Players can also use the Force to enhance the damage of their attacks, knock their opponent back or throw objects at them. There’s also the occasional annoying quick-time sequence thrown in for when players lock sabers.

Players will quickly realise that simply waggling the Wii Remote around achieves very little and Force attacks are entirely useless, and will come to rely on the game’s combo systems. If you were hoping to be able to string together your own combos, prepare to be disappointed – Lightsaber Duels relies on a pre-determined dial-a-combo system, not unlike that of Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat 3. Combos are activated by performing a string of Wii Remote movements, most of which the game will reveal on the loading screens. What makes combos more effective than regular saber play is that the last hit of the string is unblockable. Sadly, that makes for some rather tedious fights. Wii Remote recognition could certainly be better too; it is fine for basic swings and comboing, but more advanced moves like parries are difficult to execute consistently. It really feels like they have just replaced button presses with waggle movements; it does not make for an immersive lightsaber swinging appearance – in fact, it just makes the experience feel unnecessarily cheap.

Lightsaber Duels’ campaign is an extremely short-lived endeavour that gives new meaning to the concept of padding. You play through a series of fights from the movie, seemingly out of sequence, with a few CG sequences in between to give you an idea of what is happening in the war. You are limited to playing as the character the story deems fit for each situation, which is limited to Anakin, Ben and Ahsoka anyway, but you will fight the same opponents – Ventress, Grevious, and Dooku – at least twice, but not with each character. The whole ordeal struggles to take more than 90 minutes, making it shorter than the recently released movie on which it is based.

Despite being promoted as an action game, Lightsaber Duels is really a fighting game at its core as you only ever face a single opponent at any one time. Yet when you approach Lightsaber Duels as a fighting game, it fails to meet the basic expectations of the genre due to a distinct lack of depth. There are only 10 selectable fighters: Anakin Skywalker, Ben Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Mace Windu, Count Dooku, General Grevious, Asaji Ventress, Kit Fisto, Plo Koon and the EG-05 droid. Lightsaber Duels has a pretty interesting stage setup. Each arena is fairly unique, with different surface area size and shape, and hidden platforms/ terrain that can only be reached via Force jump in some cases. What is really intriguing is that some arenas have secondary levels, where the action will shift to after the first round.

Differences between the ten playable fighters only begin to show in the multiplayer mode. For the most part, the biological fighters are fairly much the same despite obvious differences indicated by their attributes. The droid based fighters are completely unbalanced; they do not have a Force bar or any of the Force jump or push abilities, but they do have the same Force strike attacks. However, since there is no Force bar attached, they can execute them as often as they’d like, and since those attacks are unblockable, there is no stopping them - a really poor design oversight. There is not really enough on offer to keep players coming back beyond the first hour.

Star Wars: Clone Wars – Lightsaber Duels is a half-baked, waggle-based fighting game that just does not cut it. The game looks nice, and has high quality production values, but it feels soulless and fails to offer anything remotely resembling satisfying or compelling gameplay. The Star Wars fans want a tactile lightsaber duelling experience – something immersive enough to make the player feel like they’re a Jedi. If we are not playing a Wii Motion Plus supported lightsaber duelling game in the next two years, LucasArts should just give up and let someone else do it.