Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

"Star Wars Ep. III is a decent DS game for those interested."

The DS has not had much third party attention, and the third party support does have is either majorly lacking, or almost a direct port of a GBA game, with minor additions. Well, you're probably thinking "Yeah, uh, this game is a GBA port you know", but you'd be wrong. True, it has some of the GBAs levels, but it has specific space shooter levels, similar to something you'd find in Rogue Squadron. And you can also argue that since this game came out at the same time as the GBA game, it's not exactly a port of a game you may have already played, and the additional features take advantage of its 3-D aspects, not it's touching aspects. Some touch screen interactity would have been nice however.

Graphics: 7/10
To be honest, the major thing I'm rating here are the 3-D graphics, which are actually quite good if I do say so myself. Everything is smooth, nothing is pixilated, and there is no slowdown at all. It runs smoothly. The textures are even good, and the view range is decent for the DS's standards, you can see as far as you might expect. The graphics in the 2D portions are no slouch either. True, they are something from a GBA game, but might I say, they are great GBA graphics. Everything is animated smoothly, the characters (for the most part) are very well done, and simulate the characters from the movie, though some say they look like something from the Cartoon Network miniseries, to be honest, I've never heard nor seen anything about it, so I really can't say. Decent for a DS title.

Game Play: 6/10
During the 3D battles in this game, you either drive around avoiding the walls and such, or dogfights fighting enemies and such. It's quite fun, feels like Starfox in some parts, and traditional Starwars games such as Rogue Squadron in other parts. It's quite fun. And then there are the 2-D levels, where you hack and slash a bunch of droids for the most part, and some boss battles to boot. You have a lot of force powers that you can choose from in each situation, and you can block attacks. Boss battles for the most part just know how to block your opponent's attack, which lets you combo them, but minibosses are still unique and challenging. After completing a mission, depending on how well you did, you can level up your force powers and your attributes as well. And you can play as two different characters, and different difficulties. To top it all off, there is even 4 player Multiplayer. It's just to bad all of this gets old after the first 5 or 6 levels.

Sound/Audio: 8/10
You will recognize all of the orchestral Starwars music throughout the game, and it doesn't sound muffled like games on the Gameboy do, which is very, very nice. The lightsabers sounds, the blaster sounds, and the explosion sounds all sound like they do in the movies. Very high quality. It would have been nice to hear some voice acting, but it's not a big deal really. This game really sounds great.

Story: 6/10
The story itself is fantastic from the movies, but the cut scenes are lacking. There isn't usually much action in the cut scenes, just players talking to each other. Of course, playing through the game, you don't feel any gaps in the story anywhere really, like you do in a lot of licensed games. Most of the speech is taken from the movie, and used appropriately, which is sometimes disturbing in licensed games. It's a good story, but they could have had much better cut scenes.

Overall: 7/10
This is a good game to add to your small DS collection, and it's good to know that third party games have a future on the DS. Lack of a PSP might drive a few to this version. However, at the time of this reviews revision, there are plenty of better games out there to get, and if you haven't gotten this, you may want to overlook it, and use your money on other great DS games.

Buy or Rent: Rent
This game has really cool multiplayer, and you'll probably want to play through the story mode more the once, at the most, probably 4 times, to unlock everything. Still, even completing it 4 times will only earn itself a rental, and the multiplayer gets dull pretty quickly.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/06/05, Updated 10/11/05