Oh lordy, more Star Wars. Thought this was all supposed to be over now? You know when Vader turned into Vader and it ended? But no, here’s another game for all the Star Wars fanboys to pretend they enjoy and everyone else to realize that it’s just not very good.

Unfortunately Star Wars didn’t end with the films. There’s this whole Expanded Universe thing as well which allows for books, comics, radio shows, fan fiction… and anything else that can be seen as a marketable commodity and sold onto men who still haven’t grown out of making vzzuum noises or naming their kids Luke or R2-D2.

Anyway Star Wars: Lethal Alliance on the PSP take place in the tenuous space between Episode III and Episode IV and sees you playing as the Twi’lek Rianna Saren who has been employed as a mercenary by the Rebel Alliance. Princess Leia, looking rather polygony, personally asks Rianna and her robot chum Zeeo to infiltrate the Empire and steal the plans for the Death Star. Obviously the mission is successful whether you play through the game or not since the Rebels have the plans and destroy the Death Star in Episode IV. How’s that for a spoiler?

From a technical standpoint, Legend on the PSP is a marvel, retaining much of the graphical frippery seen on the PS2. Each of the varied environIf you do decide to help with the inevitable success of the mission then you’re in for a linear adventure filled with repetitive blasting and, and... not much else really.

Rianna and Zeeo must work together to clear each and every room they come across of the enemies to progress through to the end of the level. Sometimes your mission objective is clear enough and you can be pretty sure that you are actually working towards some sort of goal, be it destroying marked crates or stealing intel from specified computers. Other times the words Mission Complete flash up and you’re left wondering what you were doing and what the point of it was. The whole ‘steal the plans for the Death Star’ premise doesn’t hold enough weight when you’ve been scootling about on ceilings using Zeeo as a magnetic seat.

For Lethal Alliance the gimmick, aside from all the Star Wars stuff, is co-operation. Sure this is something more akin to Sesame Street, but this is all about shooting aliens in the tentacles, we said tentacles, rather than trying to make a two-headed purple monster get on with itself, although… no, no there aren’t any two-headed purple monsters, even in the Star Wars universe. But, co-operate Rianna and Zeeo must. Most of this co-operation leads to Zeoo hacking into computers, but he does have a few other abilities. Rianna can use him as a battering ram to stun enemies for a few seconds; the bleeping robot can also be picked up and used to deflect laser fire and bounce it back letting you destroy other targets. If Rianna performs a dodge when Zeoo is close to her they perform a bullet-time dodge which allows Rianna to get a few more shots off. Zeoo makes a handy moveable platform for Rianna to jump to, helping her climb up to parts of the level that would be inaccessible if she was on her own.

While Zeoo is hacking into something and Rianna is on her own, you’ll find she’s pretty handy with her blasters and close combat techniques. But it is more advantageous to use Zeeo as much as possible, since with each successful co-op kill her attack power goes up. Because you can’t leave certain areas until all the enemies are dead you really want to get through them as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately it’s not long into Lethal Alliance that the getting-rid-of-all-theenemies- in-the-room formula starts to grate and as most of the shoot-outs descend into you standing in front of an enemy shooting at it until it dies it gets pretty boring. Once you’re done blasting all the aliens you’ve been auto-targeting, your next task is laid out right in front of you and usually just involves moving to the next room by using one of Zeoo’s abilities. The places where you use Zeoo are all highlighted, so it’s just a matter of finding one and using the robot to get to the next room. Where you’ll have to shoot more people.

Eventually Star Wars: Lethal Alliance livens things up with some platforming sections, but these are made really frustrating because Rianna doesn’t jump – instead she rolls, usually to her death. It’s made that much more frustrating by Rianna’s large turning circle, which leads you to controlling her like you would a car, reversing and lining her up correctly. At other points she can take control of a laser canon and shoot some more aliens while Zeoo repairs the gun or keeps it from over-heating, and it’s as dull as we’ve made it sound here. In all it just proves that nothing Star Wars related will ever be as exciting as The Empire Strikes Back.

Tim Empey