Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi

The Good
The things I liked about this game was that it is a Star Wars video game, which to me means fun to play. It does have a fun factor to it, with options to customize your game play, and five secret characters to unlock--Darth Vader, Mara Jade, Stormtrooper, Jodo Kast, and Princess Leia! (in bikini). The characters have two costumes each, believable voices, (though not the actual cast members), and the locals are accurate and recognizable. The controls are fairly typical for a fighting game, and each character has at least two "super combos" they can perform once their combo meter is full.

The Bad
The concept of this game was good, but it didn't live up to its potential. The graphics are poor, much less than what the PlayStation is capable of. Although the controls are fairly easy to use, they are kind of sluggish, and the fighting engine is substandard--it's more like Battle Arena Toshinden than the Street Fighter series. The characters are unbalanced, and the locals are much too obviously "squared off." There are virtually no real "endings" for the characters, usually just a few seconds of yawn-inspiring video, or in the case of two characters, the character's portrait and a few lines of text is all you get.

The Bottom Line
What this game could have been is not what this game is. A Star Wars-themed fighting game is a good concept, but this is a poorly-done game. If you are a die-hard Star Wars fan, you might find this game fun when you are extremely bored. One redeeming quality is that you can put the CD into an audio CD player and skip the first track to listen to some Star Wars music (though for some unknown reason, the main theme is missing from these tracks).