Tired of not owning a lightsaber? Annoyed that despite all it’s fancy features, your smartphone is still lacking a lightsaber app? Not keen on years of taking orders from a small green muppet? Well cheer up young Padawan, for to the rescue, Google has come.
Released just in time for (probably) the most anticipated film ever , Lightsaber Escape operates using a combination of your Chrome web browser and your smartphone. Visit this page in Chrome and you’ll be given a URL to access on your phone. Enter that in, and Google does the rest. Accelerometers in your smartphone translate your real world movements into on-screen lightsaber action. Within seconds you’ll be stalking the dark corridors of an imperial vessel, disposing of inept stormtroopers like a Jedi.
OK, so after a few minutes the concept wears a bit thin. The phone-lightsaber-web browser interface isn’t the most responsive, and dispatching the modest waves of stormtroopers does become quite tedious. Random flicks of your wrist are often more effective than trying to ‘aim’ your deflections as a true Jedi would. It certainly gives you a lot more respect for Luke’s progress in Episode 4. He was deflecting blaster fire – blindfolded – in a matter of seconds!
This isn’t the first of Google’s Star Wars themed efforts. Earlier this month Star Wars Street View (turn your volume down before clicking – Street View Chewie is loud!) gave us all the chance to pilot the Millennium Falcon down our street to the local pub. It’s only just beginning, for the foreseeable future we’re going to experience a deluge of Star Wars branded everything – there’s even a Star Wars makeup collection (no Wookie mask or Yoda ears included). But as Star Wars practically invented tie-in movie merchandising in the 70s, their comprehensive efforts in 2015 are hardly surprising.
Hey, even if the only upshot of the whole thing is that I get to wobble my phone about in front of my PC for 15 minutes, knocking over a few virtual stormtoopers, then I say it’s worth it.
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