lethal alliance – 60%

Further into the game, I’m finding the game is still a mixed bag of good and bad. The autolock does indeed simply things, and the game is not all that challenging. Yet, I like it. It’s like playing GBA Doom II: familiar but fun.
Another problem is the inconsistent help. For example, when playing a puzzle like where you have to activate the LEDs in a particular order, you can get the instructions more than once. However, when trying to slice the computer to expose the hidden map, the help appears only once. And the first time it appears, it’s rather poorly written, so that you need to see the interface and then read the instructions again.

Here are some of the different game play in Star Wars: lethal alliance. the ubisoft site claims there is a “large variety of minigames.”

• shooter–shoot bad guys. duh. I’m not a big fan of the gun turrets. they’re too slow and should offer some shielding but don’t.
• platform–dodge objects to progress in the level.
  A variation includes a racing scenario, in which you have to dodge red mines and lasers as well as shoot green mines and attack droids.
• racing–a variation on the platform game. you are constantly moving, though you can slow down or even speed up, but you are not racing NPCs or a timer. you are moving quickly, dodging obstacles, and shooting green mines and droids.
• puzzle–to slice into computers, you have to solve puzzles or play a minigame. The following puzzles are available:

• minimap:to be honest, this is not much of a game. More than anything, the task is to remember the instructions the one time that they appear in the game. [I had to download a high res gameplay video that happened to have the instructions, which I then deciphered.] all you have to do is move the two lines until they become white and produce a particular computer noise, and you then use the stylus to scrape across the intersection to make the key appear. Then you drag a blue frame over the key to display the map. Unfortunately, the map is not very useful: the game has no real hidden areas, and the map itself is not a move-by-move update of where you are on the map.
• squares: a pretty simple puzzle of rolling squares to match the image on side to the same image on the board. This is not timed but you have a limited number of moves.
• leds: leds turn from green to red, one by one. Duplicate the order of the leds. it seems that you can start with either the first or last led in the sequence.
• generators: a variation on sliding puzzle games, you have to move create an open space to move the laster generators into, which allows you to then lock and shoot the generators.
• mines: used when defusing red mines, this minigame probably has the worst instructions of all the minigames. it’s a combination of matching and dodging a roving charge. This is a timed puzzle.
• capture the droid: used when playing Zeeo to take control of an attack droid, this game requires that you use the stylus to “fire” and control a laser from three different sides. When you hold the beam on the droid for several seconds, you form 1/3 of an enclosed circle around the droid. This is a timed puzzle. after you take control, you can move the droid and use it to kill stormtroopers.

I have the ds version of the game, as I don’t own a psp. But reading the forums for both, I can see that the two platforms have game differences:

• The psp appears to have more moves. Watching the videos and reading the manual, I see the psp has combo moves. These do not appear to be significant differences.
• The DS has the dual cannon whereas the psp doesn’t.
• Some of the puzzles, at least, appear to be solved differently on the ds than the psp because the sytlus is required on several, such as the minimap and mines puzzles.

I’m glad I bought this game, though I’d feel better if I paid $20 rather than $35. Is this game linear? Yes. But many a good platform game is linear, too. Is the game challenging? If you play a lot of platform and shooter games, then probably it isn’t. [I really doubt that people are finishing this game in four hours. I'm an average skill player, and I'm played about 5-6 hours to get to 60%--the racing/dodge parts are not my thing, and I have to attempt the race 6-8 times before successfully completing it.] It’s like frozen bubble, a game that is not terribly challenging but fun.

pros:

• variety. one professional review claimed that all the levels were warehouses. Hardly. The game has 34 levels in about 6-7 different locations: alderaan, mustafaar, black sun warehouse on coruscant, the death star, tatooine, despayre, and danuta. NPC fodder includes 12 different types, not including the bosses or named NPCs, each has some variation or significantly different attack.
• zeeo alliance. I liked having zeeo. sure, you could try to blast your way through without using him, but I found that it was easier and more interesting to use him. In places, using zeeo is absolutely required. I liked getting the ultimate alliance and using the dual cannon.
• star wars setting. though I saw all the movies when they first came out, I was never a huge fan. I liked the movies. Since my son got into it, however, I’ve become more of a fan, playing the miniatures and even some tabletop d6 star wars. I like playing the twi’lek and going to familiar and different planets.
• pacing. I like the fast pace of the game. You move through it quickly. For an action/adventure game, I think that’s an important trait. sometimes, games get bogged down too much in one setting.

cons:

• Not much weapon variety. There are four weapons in the game, excluding zeeo, and not that much difference in their damage. I didn’t mind the small number of weapons in sin episodes because they were different. Why wasn’t one of these a bowcaster?
• bad minigame instructions. unfortunately the minigames themselves were less challenging than the rest of the game. I understand that designers don’t want to prevent a player from progressing in a game, but these puzzles were far too simple.
• some leaps in the story. There’s not much of a story here, but it gets too rushed in a couple of places. I pieced it together but why couldn’t they have taken a little more time to clarify some relationships and developments.
• level sameness. there’s a pattern to the levels, and, even with changes in scenery and enemies, what you have to do in the levels feels the same.
• lack of polish. this could be two or three different points, but for a game designed specifically for handhelds, I’m surprised that there wasn’t more to it, such as the ability to choose different paths or to find hidden areas. plus, i saw several bad graphics in which objects were not seemless. I also encountered two places in which I can freeze the game up pretty consistently.

Overall, I still put this as a C game, though a solid C or C+. Two-thirds through the game, I’m nowhere near ready to put the game down or trade it in. I want to finish it. The shame is that this game could have been an A game pretty easily. Consider my cons: do any require that much more time to fix? No.