The weekend saw the release of Star Wars Kinect for the Xbox 360, which got mixed reviews among the game critics. One of the recurring complaints about the game is how unresponsive the controls are. There's much more to lightsaber fighting, blaster shoot-outs and deep space combat than just waving your hands around in front of a TV set, although it appears that the makers of Star Wars Kinect didn't get that memo.
OK, so this makes Star Wars Kinect one of an ongoing series of Star Wars games that doesn't quite succeed and hopefully the next one will be a success, right? That would be true, except that it didn't have to be this way. Had they made something like this game for the Nintendo Wii and its Wii MotionPlus feature, it would've been much, much better. How do I know this? I played Red Steel 2, which is proof of concept that the Wii would've been the perfect system for a first-person, motion-interactive Star Wars game. Forget the over-hyped but underwhelming Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels Wii game from a few years ago; Red Steel 2 is the real deal, and I can't fathom why the game designers at Lucas Arts didn't figure this out.
If you have a Wii and haven't played Red Steel 2 yet, go get a copy of the game now. It's a mash-up of Japanese samurai adventure with a cowboy western, and the game alternates effortlessly between gun combat and sword duels--no controller glitches at all. On the basis of what I've heard about Star Wars Kinect, Red Steel 2 provides the interactive gaming experience that Star Wars Kinect promises but fails to deliver.
I know, Wii lacks the computational power that the Xbox 360 has so it would've been a shorter game, blah, blah, blah. All I know it that Red Steel 2 speaks for itself and had the latest Star Wars game been made for the Wii, chances are they wouldn't have had enough extra space to add a dancing mini-game where Han Solo prances around in a carbon freezing chamber. Check it out:
Better luck next time, Lucas Arts.
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