Star Wars: Lethal Alliance

"Why all the complaints?"

When playing this game, the most recent Star Wars game, I find it to be much better than many games. For example, the lack, for the most part, of glitches, the lightsabers being replaced with blasters for a good old-fashioned shooter, and a lengthly game with medium difficulty.

The Story: You play as Rianna, a mercenary Twi'Lek who has accepted a series of missions for the Rebel Alliance. She gains three missions altogether, first navigate across the rooftops to reach the top (The tutorial level), infiltrate the Black Sun warehouse (Level 2), and steal the Death Star plans (Levels 3 and onwards). Along the way she meets the droid Zeeo, who becomes a valuable ally.

Gameplay: Throughout the course of the game you wander around, shoot down gradually tougher enemies with your often upgraded blaster, and take control of a small droid to navigate hidden areas and hack into computers. The game is scattered with mini-games, some fun and some annoying, and all of which are required to advance. Rianna can use three blasters with varying degrees of power, a thermal detonator launcher, a homing grenade launcher, and a sniper rifle. Zeeo can fire electricity. Rianna's blaster can target enemies, though the target system doesn't always work effectively.

Graphics: Rather good for a medium life 3-D DS game. The backgrounds are rather good, buildings are recognizable as buildings, plants are obviously plants, and traffic jams can't be anything but traffic jams. The colors are somewhat varied, but a few worlds seem similar to each other. Characters look like what they are supposed to be.

Cutscenes: Decently written, nothing you have never read in a book or seen in the movie, but several famous faces make an appearance, though I can only say Kyle Katern appears in level 1. The cutscene graphics are the same as the game.

Music: Rather a mixed bag, the battle music gets annoying after a while and some of the boss music is the battle music, but the Hoth theme goes well with bosses, and the background music, though rather recycled, never gets annoying due to the common replaying of the battle theme. Sound effects are rather good as well.

Controls: What you would expect. B is shoot, A is roll (No jump), the D-pad moves you around, L and R move the camera, and X and Y control your droid. They are usually functional, though occasionally slip, as with targeting, which has trouble getting you the right enemy.

Load Times: About ten seconds between levels or new areas. Can get a bit annoying to lose to a boss and wait a while to restart.

Glitches: Losing all special weapon ammo if you die on a speed run, targeting messing up, health items occasionally vanishing.

Replay Value: The biggest trouble with the game is that after you beat it your choices are playing through the best of the mini-games, the speed runs, redoing the final boss as much as you want, and resetting your slot to start from the beginning. There is no level select, and due to it never realizing the final boss is beaten, your slot is permanently held at 99%.

Price Range: For thirty dollars I wouldn't buy it, because it is usually sold nowadays for ten or twenty. It's worth about ten to twenty dollars, depending on how much you like shooters or Star Wars. Never buy for forty-five dollars (Never buy any normal DS game for forty-five dollars).

Final Estimation: A decent 3-D Star Wars shooter that allows you the fun of mowing down Stormtroopers. Buy if you like Star Wars or mowing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/09

Game Release: Star Wars: Lethal Alliance (US, 12/14/06)