Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Review: Showing the Potential of AR Gaming

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I've demoed a lot of smartphone-based, augmented reality (AR) headsets, and while they've always seemed to have potential, cypher most them was very compelling. Lenovo and Disney are working to change that this holiday season with a well-idea-out game based on Star Wars, called Jedi Challenges. There are quite a few cute AR games at present, just most of them rely simply on your phone's display, so they're inappreciably immersive. Star Wars: Jedi Challenges ($199.99) (Meet it on BestBuy.com) goes quite a bit beyond that.

Leveraging Disney's expertise in entertainment, and Lenovo's inexpensive-but-clever Delusion AR headset, the game does a skillful job of making you believe you lot are interacting with holographic objects. The crowning affect, though, is the AR light saber. You control information technology by using a physical light saber handle, modeled later the ones in the movies. The cameras built-in to Lenovo's Mirage AR headset track information technology and provide the deadly beam of energy Star Wars fans have come up to know and beloved.

What You Go For Your $200 Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Kit

First, yous become Lenovo's Mirage AR headset. It is definitely a low-terminate model and relies on your smartphone for its display, but if you accept a higher-end phone, the visuals are quite good. It has velcro straps for adjusting to your caput, simply having the phone cantilevered out from your forehead is always going to make it experience a fleck heavy and front-weighted. It uses your phone's IMU for rotational tracking (which is probably one reason simply some phones work with it), and you're provided with a small lit "orb" that you place on the floor to serve every bit a tracking beacon.

My but upshot with the headset is the tray mounting system is cumbersome, so information technology takes some time to get a phone in and out. The headset comes with short connector cables for micro USB, Lightning, and USB-C phones. There are sliders that clamp your telephone in place, so information technology will work with devices of different dimensions, although there doesn't seem to be plenty room for a case.

The headset image is projected from stereoscopic images on your smartphone: 1 in front of each heart, reflected off a half-silvered mirror into your centre. And so the ameliorate the display on your phone, the better your results. I used the game with a Moto Z Strength (2d gen), and overall the paradigm was excellent. You tin't see it in bright calorie-free, which is to be expected. I also saw a certain corporeality of chromatic aberration (where each color appeared slightly shifted from the others), but not enough to be really distracting.

The light saber is modeled after the original, and its sounds are the same as those in the film (ane nice reward of Disney developing the game). Like the headset, it's pretty much all plastic, but probably doesn't surprise anyone. As you level up, you can also change the colour of energy your light saber emits. Speaking of audio, the headset comes with an okay pair of speakers, simply you lot tin utilise your phone's audio (or headphones connected to information technology) if you prefer. At that place isn't a dedicated audio jack on the headset itself though. Personally I'm okay with that, equally it is already a lot of piffling to become an AR or VR game setup and the headset on without worrying well-nigh another device.

Initial setup is really straightforward, equally the application walks yous through the Bluetooth pairing and orb placement procedure painlessly. You lot do need a reasonably large (preferably at least 6 feet past 10 feet) of space to play. However, since it's AR, you always have some sense of your surroundings, so you lot probably won't encounter a wall. You might send a lamp flight with the existent portion of your calorie-free saber, though, if y'all don't have plenty room or get too carried away.

Supports iOS and Android, but Only Certain Models

You use your gaze plus the Light Saber trigger to play Holochess As I write this, Lenovo supports fifteen models of smartphone officially, although some users take reported success with other fairly new handsets. Supported models are the iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone seven, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S7 border, Galaxy S7, Google Pixel Forty, Google Pixel, Moto Z² Force Edition, and LG G6. Lenovo says information technology will exist adding additional models over time.

Curiously, Jedi Challenges is the only game supported by the Mirage AR at this fourth dimension. Since it is a fairly standard phone-based AR unit, I assume there volition be more than games for information technology over time. They may wind up using or even requiring other accessories, though, equally the light saber is a fairly specific weapon. In the meantime, Lenovo has teased a multi-player mode for the calorie-free saber battles (that is what the second color on the orb will be for, apparently).

The Jedi Challenges

While I would actually have been happy only dueling enemies with light sabers, Lenovo and Disney have gone a lot further in modeling some of the competitive aspects of the Star Wars series. They've likewise modeled Holochess and Strategic Combat. To progress, you need to prove your worth at all three.

You're guided a bit by a grapheme called The Archivist, who explains there are six different worlds (levels), each of which have challenges in the three categories. Every bit you'd look, the game starts with all just the commencement planet, Naboo, locked.

Using the Light Saber

Once activated, you use the Calorie-free Saber simply about the way whatever Jedi would. Yous can slash, cut, and deflect incoming attacks with information technology. The only issue I institute is that it becomes united nations-centered fairly often, when the lite from the saber is no longer aligned with its physical hilt. Conspicuously this was an anticipated consequence, every bit Lenovo has provided a dedicated button on the side of the unit to re-middle it.

Equally I suppose befits a Jedi using The Force, I found that the incoming rounds I deflected oftentimes ricocheted dorsum and killed the droid or bot that fired them. That's probably a good affair, as I don't recollect either I or the Light Saber are accurate enough for me to accept actually hit them back at that precise an angle.

Holochess and Strategic Gainsay

These challenges are quite different, in that they are essentially mental, with the Light Saber simply used to select, and sometimes to signal. But they are both pretty cool, as you practise really feel similar you're seeing holographs moving around the board or battlefield. In Holochess, you lot move your monsters to attack the AI'southward monsters, and in turn of course defend against them.

Strategic Combat is the most involved portion of the game, where yous create and control entire armies. I haven't had enough time to explore much of the potential here, only it is ane of the most complex AR experiences I've always seen in a smartphone-based headset. It'southward a bit difficult to draw what information technology feels like to play, so hither is the teaser video for that section of the game:

Glitches in the App UI

There are a couple annoying limitations in Jedi Challenges. Commencement, I couldn't detect any good style to share a phone but still have multiple user accounts. Lenovo confirmed that currently the game doesn't have that capability built in. Since this is the sort of game that is fun for merely about anybody in the family, only not anybody has a compatible telephone, it'd be great to share. You can wipe out the app data, but so y'all have to start everything over. Separate accounts on the phone itself are some other possibility.

The other odd thing is that there doesn't seem to exist a "quit" command from inside the app, at least on Android. Because y'all can't physically get to the phone's buttons, to exit the game you need to not only remove the headset and disconnect it from the telephone, but physically take the phone tray out of the headset, the phone out of the tray, and then exit the app.

Should You Put One Under the Tree This Vacation Flavour?

For $199, it is expensive for a single game, of course. But Star Wars: Jedi Challenges does open the door to an entire new type of gaming feel, and for serious Star Wars fans should provide hours of fun. I besides take to believe that if the game sells well there will be more titles for the hardware every bit well.