Star Wars, it's the bane of man's existence, one half of the nerd-galaxy, pioneer of digital visual and audio special effects and mother of an absolute truckload of games, both good and bad. In my time on this earth, I've played many Star Wars games. The extended list includes: Super Star Wars on the SNES and Star Wars on GameGear (still a proud owner!), X-Wing on the old LCIII Mac and Rebel Assault II on Playstation, the brilliant Shadows of the Empire on Nintendo 64 (best Snow Speeder take downs, ever), the terrible Pod Racer also on 64, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II first-person shooters and awesome games on the Power Mac. I've dabbled in Knights of the Old Republic, the Battlefront games multiplayer at Dave's house (you don't know Dave) with a few too many brews and the last one I've played is the one I'm supposed to be reviewing right now, Lethal Alliance on PSP.

Just a little longer, I discovered colours DO exist!

The reason for describing my history with the Star Wars games is to point out the brilliant history Star Wars has actually had with video games. With all its complex laser battles, wars and starship skirmishes, you'd think it would be hard to make a Star Wars game boring, slow or unimaginative. I'm here to tell you, they have ... but more on that later. Firstly, I'll point out some good things with Lethal Alliance, starting with the plot.

Lethal Alliance takes place shortly before the events in Episode IV A New Hope, when Leia is captured by Darth Vader. Protagonist of Lethal Alliance, Rianna Saren, a Twi'lek mercenary, is hired by Kyle Katarn to investigate some random stuff and is eventually hired by Leia to capture Death Star plans for the Rebels. The story sits very nicely in the Star Wars world and helps to mesh the universe together, as every game, book and film has done before it. Familiar locations are visited too, including Tattooine and the Death Star itself, and characters such as Vader and Boba Fett with Leia and Katarn puts you back into the familiar territory. As usual, characters are voiced convincingly and act in those ways that make them special. Rianna, however, doesn't seem to have too much depth to her. She's hot, though, for an alien chick. Some back-story exists between her and slave master Kheev (available between 1am and 5am EST, book now), however it's not really Rianna's story we're interested in, so it gets lost pretty easily. Throughout Rianna's adventures, she encounters droid Zeeo, who has contacts within the alliance and is found imprisoned on Coruscant. Lethal Alliance has a pretty good story line, now if only you could bear the gameplay enough to discover all the nuances missing from the movie series.

Bad boys get punished, through the head! Mwahahahaha!

Essentially, Lethal Alliance is a shooter/platformer, with Rianna's four weapons including grenades, blasters and a sniper rifle. No awesome powers of the force here, so no light-sabre or force-push. That's okay though, if we were to include the light-sabre I'm sure the controls would be so touchy you'd be able to kill yourself with it in-game. Killing is as simple as locking on and firing whilst strafing, dodging can be done too, with a dive or cartwheel in any direction under the sun (make that four directions of the d-pad). There's also some melee action (rock!), with Rianna wielding a wrist mounted, laser-dagger thingy that pops up in close proximity and allows for some slashin' and kickin' action. The blade can also lend itself to stealth kills, which results in some pretty cool, though slightly clipped, back of the knee to knife in the head contact. Progress through the game provides Zeeo with some cool functions and team moves such as the ability to slow-mo dodge further by flipping with Zeeo, which also provides more powerful and accurate shooting. Team kills become available, which allows Zeeo to charge up and knock enemies down and before Rianna finishes them with the dagger, and Zeeo can put up a shield to repel laser attacks to wipe out annoying security devices.

The control scheme is pretty simple, locking on is done once you've fired (or walked close enough for stealth kills) and it's possible to change targets with the shoulder buttons. However, the locking scheme becomes annoying when you're trying to select a specific console for Zeeo to hack in the middle of battles (such as one boss battle in particular, grrrrr) and weapons like the sniper rifle are clumsy, boring and useless. Some of the team moves are unresponsive as well and Zeeo tends to get stuck on walls in the thick of battle leading to a relatively quick death if you need to stun somebody. The battles themselves consist of strafing and shooting, which isn't exactly the most satisfying form of combat and on occasions when you are able to fire first-person, like say on a cannon, the controls are too slow to make it enjoyable. It's not a very tactical game, with the majority of thought power going into wondering if you'll need to bother blowing up a drum in battle because you're going to be overwhelmed by inaccurately firing morons.

Donuts! ooo look, it's also a form of martial arts .. errrm?

Platforming action consists of running around, sending Zeeo to move a lift or platform, using Zeeo to jump to another platform (think over simplified and slower Prince of Persia puzzles), and then running to a door in time.(...and then dying because the screen failed to track properly and you've mistimed that strange "roll-jump-dodge" thing that is the only jump available, which also forces you to replay the last annoying four minutes prior to your death.) At a few points Zeeo needs to go it solo, leading to small and claustrophobic ventilation shaft "mini-games" where you've got to make it through protected tunnels avoiding lasers and mines. Zeeo is actually pretty fast and nimble, with the screen turning all "computer-ish" and these sections aren't too bad at all. Sometimes, during escape or infiltration sequences, you even get to fly around on Zeeo over lava pits and through city streets, where the controls change so that Zeeo spins horizontal with Rianna to avoid beams and falling rocks. These aren't too bad on-rail sequences that generally serve to demonstrate the intensity of escape.

Look, I know I've been pretty cruel to poor little Lethal Alliance here, I mean, it is of course on PSP (actually that would be more of a reason for me to love it) when really it isn't that bad a game. The background and depth of characters is pretty spot-on in relation to the Star Wars universe, and the graphics and sound, whilst a little blocky and occasionally 8-bit (respectively, graphics then sound, though, I'm sure you all understood), aren't too dodgy either. It's just the battle mechanics and platforming that are a little bland and uninteresting, it just doesn't feel good enough to bother playing through. At times I found Lethal Alliance enjoyable, but those times were far outweighed by utter boredom. Fan-bois and gals, I'm sure you could enjoy this, but with platformers like Daxter's and Ratchet and Clank, I don't see the point. Just look at the games I've already listed (or search Wikipedia) and you'll find a stack of old Star Wars games that are far worthier of your time.