" A good game suited perfectly for a boring weekend afternoon as a rental, nothing more."

As we all know, games based on movies, generally don't turn out very well. So what makes anyone think differently about Star Wars Episode III? A good reason for why user ratings are so high is because it's Star Wars. I am a BIG Star Wars fan, no doubt about that, but there just isn't enough in this game to justify a purchase.

*This review contains spoilers of the movie/game, so anyone who has not seen the movie and doesn't want anything spoiled is advised to leave now*

Story:
The story is fairly simple. You play as Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi through 17 missions based on the popular Revenge of the Sith film. The game does stay accurate to the movie, and ties in some movie footage with in-game cutscenes, which fans can appreciate. Although, be warned, if you have not seen the movie, this game spoils pretty much everything their is to know. If you have seen the movie, than you know what happens in this game, so there is really no reason to explain it here.

Gameplay:
Surprisingly, Revenge of the Sith's gameplay is actually interesting for an action game, mainly because it's Star Wars. Who wouldn't want to run through a level cutting up a whole bunch of droids with a lightsaber? The problem here is that the game is so short and the combat is not incredibly interesting. Thankfully since the game is so short, this justifies the games gameplay, since the game is over before you really become sick of playing the game.

If you have ever played the Lord Of The Rings "Two Towers" or "Return of the King" game's by EA, you will feel pretty much at home here with Star Wars. After each level your character is rewarded a whole bunch of experience points depending on how well you did against your enemies. When you kill your enemies you will either be rewarded "fair", "good", "impressive" or "masterful". Points are awarded for the number of each that you have. Now that you have your experience you can distribute it into either force skills or combat skills. The biggest problem is RIGHT here. My first impressions of the skills to distribute points into was NOT very good. In LOTR games the new moves and combos you can get are useful and interesting, in Star Wars not so much. You can go through the entire game without really using any of these skills at all. The only skill I really ever used was "force heal" when I was near death. You can also only level up each skill a total of two times.

Another big problem with the game is that the game is very repetitive. You basically go from point A to point B cutting up guys and cutting down doors or wall units and destroying important technical devices so you can proceed to the next area.

The enemie AI is actually fairly impressive although the Clone Trooper AI (your allies for most of the game) is disturbingly poor. They pretty much stand around being useless until they die, so you can basically just use them as meat shields, or to get some distance between you and your opponents.

The most interesting part of the game would definitely be the final fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader at that point). They managed to pull off this portion of the game very well, and it was a lot better than I expected it to be.

Graphics:
Although the gamespot review gave this game an eight, I can't help but feel that Alex overrated the game a little bit here, I mean generally throughout the game the character models are passable, but there are a lot of graphical "glitches" and things that just don't look right throughout the game. The best looking character models would have to be General Grievous. Something about Obi-Wan Kenobi just didn't look right to me, and the others could have definitely looked better. The environments are good, but not great, and some of the textures arn't very appealing to the eyes. However, all things considered the graphics are at least what you would expect from the average game. Just don't be expecting a PS2 game that looks as good as God of War.

Sound:
Star Wars, famous for it's music and sound. Unfortunately things didn't pan out as well as they should have in the game. Even the biggest Star Wars fan knows that the acting in the Star Wars movies could have been A LOT better, but it appears as if the actors from the film just cannot act AT ALL unless they are being filmed on camera. Hayden Christensen is most definitely one of the worst video game VA's I have ever heard in my entire life. He was just so monotone and unimpressive in this game that is was ultimately disappointing and just as bad, if not worse than his acting was in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. On the other hand Ewan McGregor does a decent job, but it's still less than impressive.

On the good side, most of your favourite Star Wars music remains undamaged in the game and it's always great to hear the opening theme. The lightsabers sound good and all the weapons sound good as well.

Value:
Disappointingly this is not really a game to own, and it is NOT worth $50 of your well-earned money. This game has a bunch of fun-to-look-at for 5 second unlockables. There are a small handful of unlockable bonus missions as well, but these are not overly interesting since they pretty much involve you standing in a small room of one of the other main characters cutting up endless enemies until the game decides to stop throwing them at you, and that's pretty much it. There is also no gratification from doing these missions either, so it all really feels more like filler. The duel mode where you can fight a computer controller Jedi or a friend is fun for the first 5-10 minutes, but even that gets old pretty fast. Then finally there is the co-op mode, but this isn't even worth looking into since you basically kill guys, until you can't kill guys anymore.

Score:
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 8
Value: 5
Tilt: 7

Overall: 6.8
This really isn't a game to own, no matter how big of a Star Wars buff you are. Rent this game, play through it on a boring weekend and you will find a few hours of enjoyment. If your not a big Star Wars fan, there really is no point of playing this game, since it is essentially fan service. If you really want to own this game, do yourself a favor and wait until it's $20. Otherwise I recommend Star Wars: Battlefront or Star Wars: Battlefront II (which actually comes out tomorrow).

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/05