Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

The best part about the action is your ability to combine force powers to form different and more complex moves that cause huge damage to the enemies. There's enough good content to keep you going through the game. The levels are perfectly spaced and non-repetitive, so you never feel the monotony setting in.

Using the touchscreen as a control system is a great move, as it enables you to pull off complex moves with ease. You have your main abilities (lightsaber, force push, force pull, force lightning, force jump and lightsaber throw) defined as individual boxes on the touchscreen. For the more complex abilities, all you need to do is slide your stylus over the force powers you wish to combine. The simple control system goes a long way in not hindering your action just because you  forgot a button combo.

Of course, you can't even begin to compare the physics-based options of the home console versions with what you can do here, but surprisingly DS does come up with innovative ways to keep that aspect of the gameplay alive. Specific objects placed throughout the levels can be used to smack your enemies, and still others can be used as traps. You don't have much control over picking up items and flinging them to a particular direction, but due to the limited level design of the DS you don't really miss it.

The Force Unleashed is definitely one of the best-looking action games on the DS. Everything you see in the levels is done up completely in 3D, without skimping on important details. Often you'll notice some action taking place at the back of the levels, which really adds up to the sense of action. n-Space really knows how to squeeze the last drop of power out of the DS and they've done a great job here as well. The levels and environments look great without giving you much of a dip in the framerate.

That said, the biggest issue I had with the game was with its bad camera angles. Quite often I would be constantly attacked by an enemy I couldn't see. I had to use some of the force powers and a lot of guesswork to finally get them to stop shooting me.

The soundtrack and sound effects are just as Star Wars as it can get.

For a DS action game, this is very solid, and one of the better action games on the console. But if you own the game on the Xbox360 or the PlayStation 3, getting it again on the DS would be quite pointless.