Star Wars: Lethal Alliance is the latest Star Wars title to take place in the still somewhat vague period between Episodes III and IV. The game mostly takes place in the weeks leading up to the destruction of the first Death Star as Rianna, the Twi'lek mercenary that you play as, is apparently one of the many people who helped to liberate the plans for the Empire's super weapon and get it into the hands of the Alliance.

Graphically, the game pushes the system pretty hard. I didn't see some of the shortcuts that games like Kim Possible and Totally Spies have taken (i.e. displaying little or no detail in order to up the number of objects on the screen), and yes there was still plenty of processor space for everything from enemy grunts, mines, crates and of course Rianna and Zeeo (her droid sidekick).

Sound was only fair in Lethal Alliance, though the game sported classic SW soundtracks from John Williams. It is kind of hard to expect anything else in this license. Where the game falls apart audibly is the vocals. There are some, for instance, Stormtroopers that yell out "Halt!" when they notice you ... but oddly enough, the Black Sun smugglers sound exactly the same when they yell, "Halt!". There are a few vocals, but none from your characters and what sound bytes are there, are used over and over again.

Star Wars: Lethal Alliance's gameplay is pure third-person shooter. There is the occasional simple puzzle where your droid has to slice through some computer system or you need to decrypt some map, but for the most part, you will be running through halls shooting anything that isn't you and your droid.

I found that some of the more interesting parts of Lethal Alliance were when I was controlling Zeeo alone. This little hovering droid had to make it through enemy infested territories with only an electrical zapper as his weapon. You fly through tunnels in a Descent-like fashion and avoid mines and humanoid enemies while trying to get to some location or computer in order to advance the story. These were not too frequent, but happen often enough to break up the same-old, same-old feel of the rest of the game.

During the game, you will meet up with a couple of major Star Wars characters. The main ones being Kyle Katarn and Princess Leia, but outside of these, you aren't really a part of the overly-explored main storyline, which is a nice twist. Rianna is, like I said above, a mercenary, thief-for-hire type character. She isn't a force user, and she doesn't have any powers, which, unfortunately helps to give the game its third-person shooter with a Star Wars theme feel.

Early on, Rianna meets up with and inadvertently frees a droid, Zeeo, and the two of them wreak havoc on Coruscant, Mustafar and everywhere in between. While in fights, you can use Zeeo as a weapon. You can have him attack enemies that are far away, and then have Rianna shoot them down to finish them off. These combination attacks add power to your Alliance Meter. When filled, your co-op attacks become even more effective. Though most, if not all, of Zeeo's attacks require energy and if you use him too frequently, his energy will get too low and he will become erratic. Then your Alliance Meter goes down a bit. It is an interesting mechanic that kept the game interesting a little longer.

Star Wars: Lethal Alliance never really feels like an impossible game. As the levels progress, you will find yourself facing more enemies overall, but its rarely anything overwhelming. What made the game the most difficult was its less-than-fluid controls (but that is for the next section).

I found that I was able to make steady progress throughout the game with death occurring fairly rarely and only when I was trying to perform some new mechanic or facing off against a boss.

I have mixed feelings about Star Wars: Lethal Alliance's controls. On the one hand, the game is a third-person shooter, which is fairly rare for this system, so the developers haven't had the benefit of seeing how a lot of other games have handled things. But there were plenty of times in the game that the controls just didn't feel up to par.

The issue I noticed right off the bat was the control over the camera with the shoulder buttons. I found that the camera rarely moved in the direction I was thinking it would and it just wasn't fast enough for my tastes. Thankfully, the former complaint was mostly resolved when I found the Menu option that let me reverse the camera's axis.

However, the game made up for the camera issues with a fairly good auto-lock system so that you really didn't need a perfect view of the room in order to take out all of the enemies.

The other controls, like moving Rianna and using her and Zeeo's various attacks, were okay but not completely solid. It is during some of the game's less frequent mechanics that the rest of the control issues really showed up. For instance when controlling gun turrets, one of the control options was to use the stylus to aim while shooting with the shoulder buttons. I found the guns didn't move fast enough when I tried using this scheme, and ended up going back to the D-pad (the alternate scheme) when I approached a turret.

Overall, Star Wars: Lethal Alliance feels like your average shooter with a Star Wars skin put on. Sure you get to meet up with a few of the characters from the series, and you can easily see where your story fits in the overall scheme of things, but there isn't really anything abut the characters or the game's mechanics that screams "Star Wars" to me.