Review: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (DS)

Score: 74

As you may have spotted on this site, I'm not generally a big fan of movie tie-in games. Star Wars Episode III is, truth be told, a lot better than many other efforts, but there are still some caveats that you need to know about.

Choosing to play as either Anakin or Obi-Wan, you play through some of the major fight scenes from the film, first of all hacking your way through screens of battle droids and later on piloting a ship through various obstacles. The music, atmosphere and graphics are fairly well done, although I was disappointed that the dual screens of the DS weren't used more; in most cases, the top screen was the one used for action, in conjunction with the DS's hardware buttons. The bottom, touch screen was usually just used for faded status information and simple set up choices.

The reason for this wasting of the bottom screen becomes somewhat evident when you start playing the game for real. Star Wars Episode III is essentially what's known as a 'hack and slash' game, with a huge variety of different animations and moves for your character, dependent on which buttons (and combinations of buttons) you press. As a title that already works on other platforms, it would have been confusing to add the more-intuitive stylus input into the mix, or into the game engine.

So, for example, you move around with the d-pad, of course, but then you have different actions (that change for each character) assigned to A and B, to L (shoulder) and R, plus a wide variety of double-tap and combination moves. And herein lies, in my opinion, the only real weakness of the title.

Let me explain. My introduction to Star Wars Episode III for the Nintendo DS was seeing an eight year old Star Wars nut friend of mine in tears because he kept dying and couldn't get through the levels. Some moves require a staggering four keys to be pressed simultaneously (in addition to remembering the moves in the first place), and this is way too much for some of the main target audience. As an adult player, I was struggling, I'll admit, though there's probably a gaming sweet spot of 10 to 16 year olds that will spend hours on the game and master the moves. But be warned, don't just get the game because little seven year old Jimmy likes Star Wars, unless you plan to spend a lot of time trying to help.

There's a reasonable plot progression and plenty of levels to fight through, even if the never-ending waves of droids do get a bit monotonous. if you're prepared to put the hours in learning the moves and have agile fingers, this title is good value.

(Buy Star Wars III:Revenge of the Sith for the Nintendo DS Lite now)