Star Wars: Lethal Alliance

"Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me!"

Who is Rianna and what the heck is a Twi'lek? If you are a big Star Wars fan and don't know, well fair enough; the latest videogame set in a galaxy far, far away features a completely new pair of protagonists, as they make their way through yet another mediocre 3rd person action title. I've had just about enough of poor licensed attempts, have you?

Visuals – 5
Sound & Music – 6
Gameplay – 4
Controls - C
Longevity – B (4-6 hours)
Replayability – C (Speed Runs are worth replaying… for a short while anyway)
Difficulty – Moderate

Multiplayer – ? (Didn't bother to try…)
VERDICT – 3.0

Loss of Gloss
Star Wars: Lethal Alliance was produced exclusively for the PSP and DS portable consoles. With more focused development it should have been of higher standards than the average money-making licensed title. However without big-name funding to back up a relatively small-scale project, this title may have already been destined for failure. But the most likely explanation for this poor attempt at a new Star Wars side-story is simply a lack of ingenuity.

You may have come across advertising material showcasing some pretty sharp looking visuals. Well those were taken from the PSP iteration. The DS version is pretty much a stripped down affair of that game with some added touch screen functionality. Now it is clear that the DS hardware is no match for the graphical capabilities of the PSP, but the 3D models here are still some of the ugliest I've ever seen. The dual screen wonder may excel in 2D, but it can definitely move some polygons with some conviction. What I see here are lots of glitchy animations of awkward looking models straining to look pretty with some rather garish textures.

Episode 3.9
Lethal Alliance is a 3rd-person action platformer. You play as the new-to-everyone female twi'lek, Rianna, along with her companion bot, Zeeo, as you ultimately make your way to steal the Death Star plans for the Rebel Alliance, thus leading up to the beginning of Episode IV: A New Hope. Team-play is encouraged throughout, but all the Alliance manoeuvres you can perform look really bad and aren't that much better than your trusty infinite blaster. This means that the star of the show is Rianna as you guide her through corridor after corridor. The control scheme is highly unresponsive, and very reminiscent of Castlevania 64. What I mean to say is that making precise movements, especially important in those jumping sections, is unnecessarily taxing, and the stupid ‘living' camera doesn't help too.

The action in this game consists of lots of button mashing as you try to smoke the enemies before they do you. Interspersed between these repetitive bouts are a series of puzzles which you must solve in order to open a door or activate a nearby sentry bot etc. etc. These activities range from tapping nodes in a sequence shown quickly beforehand, to aiming some lasers to destroy a floating security pod, to rolling some marked cubes onto corresponding floor markings in order to eliminate them all (quite fun this one). The touch screen is used here and while it works well for some, the extremely dodgy touch-detection in others (especially in that ‘fun' cube rolling mini-game) can make for some frustrating repeat cycles. Not too mention the instructions can be a bit vague in description, and they only appear once – miss them and you will have to restart your last save to read them again. While they aren't all that bad, they definitely feel forced into what is otherwise a generic shoot ‘em up.

From Hero to Zeeo!
It's not all just mindless shooting outside of the puzzles though. There are times when you gain control of your little bot, Zeeo, when Rianna can't pass a certain barrier. Because of his small size, Zeeo can do some vent infiltration Solid Snake-style, sneak past some unsuspecting guards, and deactivate the console to let Rianna through. These sections are played from a first-person perspective and things look a bit better than what you see from Rianna's point of view. The controls leave more to be desired however, and the ever annoying view-switch-glitch is present here (having your viewpoint suddenly reset as you try to turn around – the King Kong DS team still can't help tearing polygons apart!); this makes the Nikita-like guidance of missiles a really big hassle, and you'll understand what I mean once you get to those two parts.

The best part of the game (in relative terms) is undoubtedly the Speed Runs, otherwise known as those sections where you ride Zeeo like a speeder bike make a break up a vertical wall, not unlike those futuristic car scenes in the film Minority Report. Your goal is to make it to the end (or top) in one piece and you'll have to contend with proximity mines, attack bots and blocky architecture in your way as you zoom through. There are less than 10 of these wall races scattered throughout the game, but it is always a pleasure to take a break from the 3rd-person plodding. Upon completion you can go through all of these races in your own time, unlocking an additional stage to boot once you run through all of them. It is fun, but not something that will hold you for very long.

Rianna: another nobody, just like Jar-Jar Binks
Star Wars is an incredible saga, encompassing a humongous universe, full of the weirdest and wackiest critters ever conceived. It is also arguably the most milked franchise of all time. While Lethal Alliance came in with good intentions, attempting to bring in some new ideas with its new heroine and such, it is yet another victim of the not-another-licensed-game curse. Shooting lots of stupid enemies, traversing some barren locations, solving the odd (annoying) puzzle is the basis of this game. There are some Prince of Persia-style acrobatics you have to perform at times with Zeeo helping you defy gravity, and these are quite enjoyable although it does seem they were just added in without any real integration into the actual stage design. This formula has been copied so much these days that just having these elements does not instantly put you at the top.

Some other bad points to note include the high frequency of automatic checkpoints without any health refills, making it nearly impossible to progress in certain situations as one hit is all it may take to kill you. You have a choice of 3 different guns, but they all work in the same ways and their secondary functions aren't worthwhile apart from those few boss characters you will encounter. On the subject of bosses, the first few are pure blast-a-thons, but the last two take some thought and tactics to bring down. If it wasn't for the terrible controls, these duels would have definitely been the highlight of this otherwise generic spin-off.

When I see the ‘next Star Wars' game, I immediately think gem or trash. Most of the time, these titles are a lot of fun, or entirely fit for a raccoon. Unfortunately, Lethal Alliance is one that should be chucked out. It has its times, especially in those wall races and some of the wall crawling antics, but everything else is totally under-developed. The sounds of Star Wars are always a treat, but this game even does injustice to that aspect; the original tunes here are sleep-inducing and a lazy copy-and-paste job would have been miles better despite lack of creativity. Rianna successfully obtains the Death Star blueprints for the Rebel Alliance. You now know how it goes, so don't bother with this one.

3.0/10 – Leave this one far, far away…

My Score System – a score of 7 from me denotes a good, solid game. Excellence earns a higher grade, whilst 4-6 reflects a below average product; glitchy, unplayable games deserve less.

30/01/07

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/07