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-THQ Wireless (2005) -Played on a Motorola Rokr
Anakin must protect Ob-Wan from his bad piloting skills.
Battle Above Coruscant puts you in the role of Anakin as he pilots his red Jedi fighter during the opening battle of Revenge of the Sith. The awesomely visual battle isn’t quite as impressive on a cell phone, but it does last a bit longer than the unfortunately brief space war from the movie. The overhead shooter contains six stages with a few different goals in each stage. In the first stage Anakin must take out as many droid fighters as he can. Level two has Ani fending off homing missiles. In the third level Anakin needs to defend a Republic battleship by destroying all the droid fighters he encounters. If any enemy fighters get past him, the health bar of the battleship decreases. In level four a Separatist cruiser is jamming the Republic’s Grievous-sensors. Oddly, it can only be destroyed by shooting out its gun turrets. Level five is a dreaded escort mission. Anakin must protect Obi-Wan from annoying buzz droids. The final level is somewhat a combination of all the stages. Obi-Wan needs protection, homing missiles target both Jedi fighters and the shields to Grievous’ ship need to be taken out, again by destroy a few gun turrets. Whoever designed ships where the turrets power the shields or the ship itself is an idiot. The graphics are pretty good. They are detailed enough and the stages that aren’t just black space look great, especially the opening stage with the massive battle looming below. The music is also very good for a mobile game. Familiar Star Wars music is present and although it’s all in MIDI form, it stills sounds good. The sounds of the exploding fighters, however, are typically unimpressive mobile crashes. I found it strange that the Jedi fighter’s lasers don’t fire nearly as fast as they do in the movie. The ship starts with a slow alternating shot. When a weapon power-up is collected the laser are upgraded to dual lasers and fire faster, but not that much faster. When a power-up is collected again then the lasers go rapid fire: but it only lasts for a second. The ship goes back to its regular dual shot. The slower laser fire makes it a little difficult to take out enemies at times because you’ll have to time it so that they will both connect as you’re flying around. There is also a more difficult Jedi mode that will continually pound you. An inventive idea is R2-D2’s role in the game. In missions five and six it is necessary to keep buzz droids away from the two Jedi starfighters. R2 uses an electrical discharge that takes out the droids easier than normal lasers can. R2 has only a limited amount of power though so it’s important to collect the power-ups that replenish his battery, or whatever part of R2 needs charging. Other power-ups include dual lasers, points, and a red force explosion thing that outwardly burst from the ship. There is also health because you have to complete each level in one life. If you die you start from the beginning of the stage, and in the case of stages five and six, that can be quite a challenge. Battle Above Coruscant isn’t anything new for shooters, but its pretty solid overall. The few varied missions objectives keep it interesting for a little while.
-Shawn
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