Star Wars Battle Pod looks amazing - a completely enclosed cabinet with a parabolic projection screen inside. It costs a whopping two pounds to play and you get to choose between five different stages - where you get to fly an x-wing, snow speeder, speeder bike or even TIE fighter, depending on which stage you choose. Controls consist of a control stick and a throttle lever, although this is a rail shooter. And as I soon found out, it's not a very good one.
So I put my money in and picked the first stage - the Death Star battle at Yavin. Then the game begins - all two minutes of it. Up go the first red flags - we're starting off right above the Death Star trench with a large, intrusive reticule in the middle of the screen. The second red flag was the redundant throttle lever - it doesn't actually do anything besides make 'speed lines' appear on the screen and blow air in your face (while inside a space ship), but doesn't otherwise appear to speed up or slow down the game.
Once you're eventually given control of the game, you then fight off the single TIE fighter that attacks you in exactly the same way every time. It shows up on the screen, conveniently hanging around in front of you until a 'Danger' sign appears next to it. If you don't manage to destroy it in time, it suddenly shoots off ahead before turning around and hitting you. TIE fighters are the only enemy you face and they all follow this same exact same behaviour pattern. None of them attack you from varied angles or follow an interesting or varied path. Destroying enemies is simply a matter of lining them up on the screen and pressing fire, which rewards you with large, intrusive yellow text and numbers ('GOOD'/'EXCELLENT' etc. or 'LOW POWER', which keeps flashing in front of you with annoying frequency every time you fire too many shots) as if to remind you that you're playing a video game - and the 'change view' button doesn't make them go away. TIE fighters, which die after a single shot in the movies and every previous Star Wars game now have to be shot repeatedly for some reason. Occasionally, you'll encounter multiple TIE fighters on screen and be prompted to press a different fire button, at which point you'll be rewarded with an immersion-busting slow motion sequence and more large yellow text.
Eventually, you'll enter the final sequence where you have to fight off Darth Vader (who, like all the other enemies, just flies in front of you and takes hits - no challenge whatsoever; I don't know if he actually fights back) before hitting the exhaust port and completing the level.
Quite possibly the poorest, most anti-climactic interpretation of the battle of Yavin I've seen to date. Too lazy, too short, with too much immersion-breaking junk on the screen, as well as the modern movie trend of having too much going on at once. So on to the next level...
Oh wait - that's it. Game over. You don't get to progress regardless of how well you did. So you don't get a lot for your money. The second stage is the battle of Hoth where you're flying a snow speeder shooting down TIE fighters (even though there weren't any in the movie) - it's basically the previous Yavin level all over again - all 2 minutes of it - but with a different background and practically nothing else to shoot at. The other stages aren't much better, with little to no variation in gameplay or replay value.
The website offers a super deluxe version of this cabinet for a meagre $100,000, which seems a little steep for twelve minutes of inferior gameplay, in my opinion and Star Wars Battle Pod doesn't hold a candle to the 1998 Star Wars Trilogy or even the 1983 Arcade game with its wireframe graphics. It's too easy, too short and ironically - too dull. There isn't really anything redeeming about it besides the graphics, but that's a given nowadays. Don't believe the hype.
So I put my money in and picked the first stage - the Death Star battle at Yavin. Then the game begins - all two minutes of it. Up go the first red flags - we're starting off right above the Death Star trench with a large, intrusive reticule in the middle of the screen. The second red flag was the redundant throttle lever - it doesn't actually do anything besides make 'speed lines' appear on the screen and blow air in your face (while inside a space ship), but doesn't otherwise appear to speed up or slow down the game.
Once you're eventually given control of the game, you then fight off the single TIE fighter that attacks you in exactly the same way every time. It shows up on the screen, conveniently hanging around in front of you until a 'Danger' sign appears next to it. If you don't manage to destroy it in time, it suddenly shoots off ahead before turning around and hitting you. TIE fighters are the only enemy you face and they all follow this same exact same behaviour pattern. None of them attack you from varied angles or follow an interesting or varied path. Destroying enemies is simply a matter of lining them up on the screen and pressing fire, which rewards you with large, intrusive yellow text and numbers ('GOOD'/'EXCELLENT' etc. or 'LOW POWER', which keeps flashing in front of you with annoying frequency every time you fire too many shots) as if to remind you that you're playing a video game - and the 'change view' button doesn't make them go away. TIE fighters, which die after a single shot in the movies and every previous Star Wars game now have to be shot repeatedly for some reason. Occasionally, you'll encounter multiple TIE fighters on screen and be prompted to press a different fire button, at which point you'll be rewarded with an immersion-busting slow motion sequence and more large yellow text.
Eventually, you'll enter the final sequence where you have to fight off Darth Vader (who, like all the other enemies, just flies in front of you and takes hits - no challenge whatsoever; I don't know if he actually fights back) before hitting the exhaust port and completing the level.
Quite possibly the poorest, most anti-climactic interpretation of the battle of Yavin I've seen to date. Too lazy, too short, with too much immersion-breaking junk on the screen, as well as the modern movie trend of having too much going on at once. So on to the next level...
Oh wait - that's it. Game over. You don't get to progress regardless of how well you did. So you don't get a lot for your money. The second stage is the battle of Hoth where you're flying a snow speeder shooting down TIE fighters (even though there weren't any in the movie) - it's basically the previous Yavin level all over again - all 2 minutes of it - but with a different background and practically nothing else to shoot at. The other stages aren't much better, with little to no variation in gameplay or replay value.
The website offers a super deluxe version of this cabinet for a meagre $100,000, which seems a little steep for twelve minutes of inferior gameplay, in my opinion and Star Wars Battle Pod doesn't hold a candle to the 1998 Star Wars Trilogy or even the 1983 Arcade game with its wireframe graphics. It's too easy, too short and ironically - too dull. There isn't really anything redeeming about it besides the graphics, but that's a given nowadays. Don't believe the hype.
