For the most part I’ve always enjoyed Star Wars games, I’d be hard pushed to find one that I have played that I didn’t enjoy (well maybe the Rebel Assault games), hell I even loved Shadows of the Empire on N64 which seems to get an unfair amount of hate these days. But there is one Star Wars game that I love more then any of the others (well any of the others that aren’t called X-Wing or Tie Fighter that is) and that game is a little game that came out very early on in the DS’s life a game that I’m sure most people looked over for 2 reasons, 1 being it was a movie tie in and the other being that the game looked like nothing more then a quick and dirty port of the Game Boy Advance game, however in this case that’s not a bad thing, let me explain.

I’m sure a lot of you will recall back when the DS came out a lot of developers did not know what to do with it so what they would do was make a quick port of a GBA game that they had just released and add in a few touch based mini games (for more information see The Urbz, Robotz [god I’m other games with Z at the end] among others), it was stupid and lazy as hell & was not the right way to showcase the DS to the world, for the most part that is, enter Star Wars Episode 3 for the DS. The main game itself was presented as a 2d side scrolling beat ‘em up much in the same vein as say a Turtles in Time (The good one, not that abomination that came out on XBLA a few weeks back). Instead of playing as one of four Pre Adult Mutant Turtles with Ninja powers and weapons, you could play as one of two Young Adult Jedi Masters with Lightsabers and Force Powers, and that my friends alone would be worth the price of entry.

I’d say I’ve played my fair share of 2d brawlers over the years, from Spider-Man & Venom to the aforementioned Turtles in Time on the SNES or some Double Dragon or Battletoads on the Game Boy and of course the amazing Castle Crashers on XBLA. As awesome as all of those games are they still don’t hold a candle to Star Wars Ep 3 on DS, it’s a freaken amazing little brawler. The controls are so tight and you have complete control of your Jedi you can attack in front of you, behind you (which looks amazing as you see your Jedi thrusting his Lightsaber behind him into whatever was sneaking up behind) or you can use your Lightsaber to block oncoming fire and shot it back at whatever was shooting you in the first place. On top of that you also have the Force powers which include things like being able to move enemies around, stun them, choke them and so on. And the game is by no means a short one; you have 2 choices of characters being Anakin and Obi Wan each with 9 levels that branch of into their own distinct levels ultimately leading to a final showdown between the 2 ala the movie. The game more or less stays true to the movie albeit the usual liberties most movie based games take (oh the end of level boss is a giant Droid Tank). The main mission is the same on the DS and GBA, just as amazing on each, however it was the addition of one awesome feature that really made the DS game oh so much more then just a GBA port.

As I said at the begging barring the amazing X-Wing games this is my fav Star Wars game. There is just something about Space flight sims set in the Star Wars Universe I love. Be it the Rogue Squadron games, X-Wing games, hell even the short levels in the old 8bit/16bit Star Wars games that put you in the cockpit and shot down a few Ties I loved. So guess how over the moon I was when I heard that this game on DS would have a full Space Flight battle mode somewhat reminiscent of the Rogue Squadron games. Hell not just somewhat reminiscent, if they had made Rogue Squadron for the DS, this is exactly what it would of looked like. They could of gone down the road Star Fox had gone down a year or so later and had the touch screen do all the control as you’d think flying would require a hell of a lot more precise controls then what a D-Pad and a few face buttons could offer but you, thank god they did not. It controls like magic and feels just right and if you get the controls right everything else will fall into place. When I first saw the screen shots of the Flight mode, I was not impressed and to be honest they look like ass, but my god when you see them in motion your jaw will just drop, soo fluid, so smooth, it was just looked well damn.

It’s a shame they did not build the whole game around this. You can tell it’s only really been added in to make this something more for the DS over the GBA version. That doesn’t make it bad or half arsed though. You’re getting a full experience with this. When you select multiplayer mode you can either do WiFi play or Skirmish (no online play alas). Skirmish is fun but it’s just playing against bots still that can keep you busy for hours. Multiplayer is single card play which meant I had to get a friend of mine to pick up a copy of the game so we could duel it out. When I got this game, the DS had only been out a few months and a friend and I were really looking forward to the system, every time a new game with Multiplayer would come out, we’d get it and just spend ages playing together. The amount of time we poured into playing this and Polarium against each other in those early days was awesome. It got to a point were we would do 10 min dog fights and not even get a single kill on each other, man we loved playing this game against each other. It’s a real shame that there was no WiFi connection when this came out, man I think that even to this day I would be playing people online with it if I could. Why no one has gone back to this and made a fully fledged game out of it with online play is well beyond me.

I guess this game was very lucky that it came out very early on in the DS’s lifespan. It would have been in the first 2 or so months of the systems launch down here and there wasn’t a hell of a lot else to get for it. I was just hungry for new games to get so I would get any I could. Had this come out 6 months later I would not of picked up, it’s a rather under the radar game and I guess most people didn’t even give it a look in due to it being a movie tie in. But I’m glad I did, its still to this day one of my fav games on the system. Heck I still chuck it in from time and again trying to beat Anakins mode on Master difficulty (I’ll beat you yet Mace Windu). I will still remember those times when my friend and myself would just spend hours playing multi against each other, locked in epic dog fights and ending in a draw after 10 mins of trying to out fly each other. I’ll agree that this is not a game that really shows off the DS’s potential, but at the time that’s not what I needed, I had Pac Pix, Polarium and Wario Ware, this was a good and fun game and sometimes that’s all you need. If you see this around lying unwanted and unloved in some bargain bin, pick it up, give it a look, I can assure you, you won’t be disappointed.

Pictures Source:IGN