Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels

All of this sounds great. And there are some nice touches like creepy laughter from enemies coming through your Wii remote. But in the single player campaign, the fighting stages are vast. So there's a lot of running around, trying to get in position to attack your foe. Plus, the intelligence of some of the creatures could be better. If you get them in a corner, you can pretty much have your way with them unless you're in Grand Master expert mode. Also, the video cutscenes, full of British-accented narration, go on too long. These scenes are also interspersed a few times when you fight your foe. While wondrous to look at, they slow down your fighting action appreciably. It's kind of a buzz kill.

The multiplayer action is limited to adding one other player to create a duel. Kids will need to remember to wrap that Wii remote strap around their wrists because there'll be a lot of willy-nilly flailing (even though the tutorial discourages this kind of hack-and-slash). Otherwise, you might have the Wii remote flying into someone's head or into your fancy TV screen. Perhaps kids will learn to pull of the more intricate moves quickly. But they may find that they are simply being battered by thier opponent if it takes them too long to pull off a more complex move. Using the WIimote is never an exact science, however. Using the D-pad is far more precise. Sadly, there's no online play for this game.