And so after 28 years, the Star Wars saga has reached its conclusion, and apparently, it’s all an allegory for Bush’s rise to imperial dominance in American politics. Far-sighted man, that George Lucas. While the world waits with no doubt baited breath for the revelation that an army of cloned Governor Schwarzeneggers has been created to bring out Dick Cheney’s turn to the dark side and rise to supreme dominance over the galaxy, the rejuvenated LucasArts (well, it’s been over a year since their last questionable release, that’ll do for now) has set itself the far more minor task of dominating the action/adventure genre with what purports to be the ultimate Jedi action experience. It’s probably a good thing that they didn’t promise the mediocre Jedi action experience. That just wouldn’t sell.

The rise and fall of Star Wars as a videogame licence is a fascinating saga for fans of both gaming and the science fiction epic. Once held up as the golden exception to the age-old rule that movie-licensed games were guaranteed to be terrible, Star Wars is now generally held to be one of the worst offenders. Whatever your take on the varied but largely mediocre attempts at cashing in on Star Wars' prequel-fuelled return to cinemas worldwide, there’s little denying that LucasArts haven’t yet offered anything of the same calibre as the X-Wing or Dark Forces series or the Super Star Wars games based on the classic trilogy. One theory is that the games became increasingly focused on milking the Star Wars brand rather than producing the best examples of the genre, as X-Wing in particular was. Revenge of the Sith is thus an odd affair, predictably failing to reach the heady heights of the action/adventure genre, yet benefiting immensely from capturing the feel of Star Wars better than any game for a long time.

Developed by The Collective and seemingly based around the engine that powered their enjoyable if unspectacular Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Indiana Jones titles, the meat of Revenge of the Sith is a fairly standard 16 levels of third-person melee combat goodness sticking extremely closely to the plot of the blockbusting new film. Suffice it to say those who are planning on seeing Episode III in the cinema should steer clear of the game until they’ve seen the film, as the inclusion of initially unskippable clips interspersing the action guarantees spoilers. The similarities to The Collective’s other games are most obvious in the visual style of the game. Levels are nice and large with plenty of background detail, but textures and character models are repetitive and lacking in detail. The visuals aren’t bad per se, but they’re certainly not reflective of what cutting-edge developers can do with the hardware and that is mildly disappointing. The primary differences from The Collective’s other current-gen titles lie not in the realm of technology but in the gameplay. Whereas Buffy and Indiana Jones primarily focussed on hand-to-hand combat, this is the first major Star Wars title to feature nothing but lightsaber combat. OK, you have the obligatory Force powers as well, but short of a few in-combo moments of fisticuffs, the majority of your time is going to be spent swinging the weapon all Star Wars fans would secretly sell their own souls to possess a real example of.

For non-fans perhaps not getting why this is such a major factor in understanding the quality of the game, the various Star Wars films, particularly the prequels, make lightsaber combat look as graceful and energetic as any of the swordfights from the likes of Hero or House of Flying Daggers. In other words, a grace and energy that action adventure games typically haven’t been so great at when it comes to swords and other melee weapons. On the other hand, any game that managed to nail lightsaber combat once and for all would be like manna from heaven to the average Star Wars fan, coming as close as anything to making the player feel like a Jedi. Does it work? Yes, extremely well. By employing a powerful beat-'em-up-styled combo system, a bit of practice will have Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi dancing around the various Star Wars locales like true masters of the Force. The secret to success is, as it should be in any form of swordfighting, timing and in Revenge of the Sith getting your timing right gives you complete control of battle, letting you initiate saber locks as and when you want, parry shots, counter, dodge and go in for the undefended kill. For the first time in the long history of Star Wars games, you feel as if you have complete control over your weapon.

If only that were the whole story. Revenge of the Sith would trot off and live happily ever after as the greatest action/adventure game of all time. Unfortunately, the game is nowhere deserving of that accolade, despite getting so many things right. The biggest problem is that for all of the flexibility and smoothness of the lightsaber combat, for the majority of the game employing your finely honed saber skills is merely an expression of choice. In the majority of the standard levels, particularly those infested with relatively weak Battle Droids and Clone Troopers, the player can use fancy tricks if they choose, but they can equally just bash buttons and still come out victorious. If anything, rather than reward skilful play, the game punishes it, as in stark contrast to the speed of the likes of Devil May Cry, character movement in Revenge of the Sith is ever so slightly sluggish. Ultimately, stringing together intricate attack sequences simply leaves you vulnerable to more stray blaster bolts than running around like a veritable tornado hammering the attack buttons indiscriminately. It’s arguably less fun, but also sufficiently less frustrating to make it seem like the tantalisingly easy option.

To encourage more considered play, the game utilises a skill system whereby you get a higher skill rating the more attacks you string together in a small space of time and the less hits you take or attacks you block. It works efficiently enough, but falls just shy of similar examples from the best of the genre thanks to the fact that frequently you’re facing large numbers of opponents, many of whom are firing projectile weapons, and your only defence is a narrow beam of light that can’t be in all places simultaneously. No matter how hard you try, you will lose your skill bonuses at some point and have to start building the meter up again, and this simply serves to make the player reckless. Even mediocre play will also provide more than enough character upgrade points to max out a few Force powers and unlock a substantial portion of special attacks come the final showdown. All of this means that in many ways, you get out of Revenge of the Sith what you put in. Play it `properly`, sexy-saber-swinging if you prefer, and it’s mountains of fun. But there’s no compulsion to play it that way, and sometimes it’s just easier to bash those buttons. Even just a touch more responsiveness in character movement and slight refinements to the skill system could have made it far more worthwhile taking the time to master the Jedi arts. As it is, it’s far too easy to just let the game become monotonous and boring by tackling it from only the most basic of angles.

Where Revenge of the Sith truly excels, however, is in the one-on-one Jedi duels. These crop up in a handful of levels in the main game as boss battles to break up the standard adventure sections, and also make up the majority of the multiplayer game, the main component of which is a beat-'em-up-style versus option pitting two Jedi against one another. Here, whether against a typically superior opponent in the single-player game or against a practised human in versus mode, mastery of saber skills is necessary for victory and some impressive battles can be achieved, worthy of the films themselves. With the option to return to any of the single-player levels at will once completed, with your developing Jedi powers (there’s definitely something satisfying about returning to face early opponents not as the mere Padawan you basically are at the start of the game but as the fully developed Jedi Master you will be by the end), or to play the versus mode against a computer opponent, it’s these duels that will keep you coming back to the game again and again once the relatively slight single-player game has been exhausted.

Make no mistake, Revenge of the Sith is not a huge game. Following the plot of the film fairly closely, particular battles are simply elongated and split into various sections to create material for levels. The challenge does ramp up considerably in the second half of the game as the levels get longer and the opponents tougher and more numerous, but the game can easily be dealt with in a weekend. There are some enjoyable bonus missions to unlock, and those Jedi duels certainly are addictive, but the extent to which Revenge of the Sith represents value for money rests even more than usual on how big a Star Wars fan you are. By no stretch of the imagination is Revenge of the Sith a bad game. It looks fine if unspectacular, sounds typically excellent (the music is taken straight from the prequel films, and the voice actors do good approximations of Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor) and it’s never less than enjoyable to play through. It is, however, in many ways a relatively standard action/adventure game. The one thing it does do superbly is make you feel like a genuine Jedi Knight. For some, however, that presumably means absolutely nothing, and for those people there are definitely better titles. For Star Wars aficionados, on the other hand, whatever direction the Lucas empire takes the franchise in now that the circle is well and truly complete, there’s unlikely to be a game in the near future that puts a lightsaber so well and truly in your hands. The ultimate Jedi action experience? It just might be…