Disney Interactive Launches New Star Wars 'Card Game' - The UpStream

Disney Interactive Launches New Star Wars 'Card Game'

posted Sunday Mar 30, 2014 by Scott Ertz

Disney Interactive Launches New Star Wars 'Card Game'

After Disney purchased Lucasfilm, they almost immediately shut down Lucasarts and sold the rights to game development to Electronic Arts. Well, the fruits of those efforts have come to light with Disney Interactive releasing a new Star Wars casual game that certainly feels like it was developed by EA.

Star Wars: Assault Team is a game designed to be a digital "trading card game" that feels a little card game and a little Final Fantasy, which sounds great, right? Well, add to that the fact that the game is available on iOS, Android, Windows Store and Windows Phone, it means it can literally played anywhere. Could it get better? Yes - with PvP abilities, you can play against other players all over the world. So, that makes the game a total success, right?

Unfortunately, no. While, from the outside, so much of the game seems well through out, once you start playing, that seems to end quickly. For example, say you have a Windows Phone and a Surface. Start the game on your Surface, get through the end of the first level and try and pick up the game on your phone, both signed-in with the same Microsoft account. You know what you get to do? Start over. There appears to be no state-saving whatsoever.

Now, accept your fate and decide to continue playing on your Surface in a restaurant on your lunch break. That restaurant had better have Wi-Fi, because without Internet connectivity, the game cannot be played at all. So, the game must have an always-on Internet connection, but doesn't use the Internet to connect your devices to anything. That makes sense.

So, no Internet connection, no ability to continue on your phone, what are you to do? It's time to waste what is left of your lunch break on Facebook, browsing through the random nonsense your friends have posted. Then you come across a Facebook ad for a new game: Star Wars: Assault Team. Of course, because the universe is just taunting you now, right? You click on the ad and it says that the game is Facebook integrated on mobile. Sure, so the game knows who you are, either from Facebook or your Microsoft account, but still has no way to sync your game between two devices using the exact same information.

Now, none of this is to say the game is no fun to play; that is mostly what we will discuss next. The game is really campy and the character collection is odd: with dragons and lizards, but maintaining Han Solo and Chewbacca. A lot of the story line feels like one of those arcade shooters where, every time you clear a room, it navigates on its own to the next room in a pre-planned order.

However, the ability to level-up your cards and edit your team from level to level makes for an interesting dynamic. The battle mechanics are also modeled after some of the best turn-based strategy games, making it quite addicting. That addiction is what makes the lack of device syncing so incredibly frustrating - I want to be able to play the game in different scenarios, but am completely unable to.

Have you tried out the game? If so, what platform and what are your opinions on the game? Let me know in the comments.

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