What's the Best Way to Watch 'Star Wars' For The First Time?
- 2 years ago
Star Wars: Jedi Challenges is an augmented reality game that lets you and your kids train to become Jedis through a suite of different games. The game includes a headset, a lightsaber, and an app, which holds said games. The best, Lightsaber Battles, involves slicing off the limbs of battle droids with your saber until they collapse into a heap of parts. The other games include HoloChess, “the ultimate game of concentration,” which you might remember from A New Hope; and Strategic Combat, in which you are a general commanding troops in a large-scale ground war. But, as we all know, that sort of combat functionally ended in World War II and, anyway, who wants to think when you can slash?
But before you can kill things, you have to don the headset, the Lenovo Mirage. Beyond any epistemological qualms about AR, there’s this physical thing to contend with. The Lenovo Mirage is heavy, 1.42 pounds without the phone in it (the brains of the system are in your phone, so you must snap yours — it plays nice with Apple and Android phones — into the visor). Ever see those HBO 24/7 episodes of boxers, I’m thinking of Floyd Mayweather in particular, who attach a weight to their neck to strengthen it? That’s what wearing a Lenovo Mirage feels like.
After 15 minutes of combat, a sheen of sweat and glory covered my flesh. I had chosen, perhaps unwisely, to wear a wool Missoni bathrobe. (The one thing I know about Jedis is that they wear robes.) But the game is a workout. It’s HIIT from a galaxy far, far away. As I lifted the Mirage from my eyes flushed with victory, a few things became clearer, the fogged up headset being the least important.
But before you can kill things, you have to don the headset, the Lenovo Mirage. Beyond any epistemological qualms about AR, there’s this physical thing to contend with. The Lenovo Mirage is heavy, 1.42 pounds without the phone in it (the brains of the system are in your phone, so you must snap yours — it plays nice with Apple and Android phones — into the visor). Ever see those HBO 24/7 episodes of boxers, I’m thinking of Floyd Mayweather in particular, who attach a weight to their neck to strengthen it? That’s what wearing a Lenovo Mirage feels like.
After 15 minutes of combat, a sheen of sweat and glory covered my flesh. I had chosen, perhaps unwisely, to wear a wool Missoni bathrobe. (The one thing I know about Jedis is that they wear robes.) But the game is a workout. It’s HIIT from a galaxy far, far away. As I lifted the Mirage from my eyes flushed with victory, a few things became clearer, the fogged up headset being the least important.