Alright, so people might be a little disappointed from the recent Star Wars movies. Ok, so most of us ARE disappointed, but at least we can still have some fun with the games, right? Star Wars: The Clone Wars for the Nintendo Gamecube, coded by Pandemic, basically takes up right around the end of the second installment of the Star Wars movies, "Attack of the Clones." From there, you are thrust at light speed into the Clone Wars across multiple landscapes around the Star Wars universe.

Star Wars: Clone Wars for the Nintendo Gamecube is a pretty standard action game. Most of the game is centered around vehicular combat with a little on foot lightsaber action added in as well. Throughout the game you will battle the most in tanks, a little bit in the Republic Gunship, the precursor to the AT-ST (the AT-XT) as well as a speeder bike level and even a lizard called a Maru running around the wookie planet.

Clone Wars features some pretty slick graphics as we have come to expect from Star Wars games. The vehicle models are nicely detailed and look great. Most of the vehicles have been seen in the movies and are instantly familiar, plus there are a few new surprises thrown in that really look awesome, like the Dark Jedi Tanks which you have to fight at one point in the game.

The levels, for the most part, also have a lot of detail, although sometimes they tend to fall apart with bad textures when you get too close to an area. You can also encounter some tricky collision problems that can bounce you around like a pinball which was pretty annoying, but at least it didn't happen a lot. Most importantly, everything did at least fit into the Star Wars universe with planets having a single theme such as desert, forest, ice, etc.

The gameplay is generally pretty fast and thrilling. The epic battles can really get your trigger thumb going, however, most of the land vehicles control exactly the same. The tanks control the same as the speeder bike and the lizards, which might throw some people off. It just kind of feels like there's different graphics thrown on top of the same exact thing. It's not really that big of a deal, but sometimes it makes the action feel artificially generic.

Especially later on in the game, the scale of the battles tend to expand, creating some of the most fun in this title. Most of the missions feature multiple vehicles on your side that give support and luckily aren't that dumb like some of the support we've seen in the past. The missions feature multiple sections and objectives which we've all seen before. Escort missions, seek and destroy, etc etc etc, been there, done that.

The missions fall apart when you have to go on foot. As much as I wanted to love swinging around a lightsaber as Samuel L. Jackson, I just couldn't. The on foot parts of the missions just come off as a choppy mess. The character animation isn't all that stellar, the control feels like you're still controlling the tanks and it just isn't as much fun as it should be. How can running around with a lightsaber not be fun?!

There is one saving grace of the on foot missions, the Jedi Academy Training Geonosis multiplayer level. The camera angle takes a higher arc in this part of the game, which makes the graphics pretty decent as you face wave after wave of enemies in an endurance match in the Geonosis arena from the end of Attack of the Clones. The gameplay isn't anything stellar, it's mainly button mashing through tons of enemies with the occasional force push and throwing of the lightsaber, but it's a nice little add on to the game. Along with this, there are also vehicle training levels as well as a host of different multiplayer games and maps which you can unlock by completing extra agendas during the normal in game missions.

The cut scenes in the game move the story along however you have to suffer through sub par character models and mediocre voice acting from people trying to sound like the real actors from the films. Hell, even Anakin sounded more flat than the movie if you can believe that. For some reason, some of the intro cut scenes are even a little choppy which really shouldn't happen in this day and age. The music is what you expect from a Star Wars game. It's straight from the movies and top quality stuff from John Williams, as usual.

Every once in a while during the really huge battles the action with clog up a bit. It generally doesn't happen to often but you will certainly notice it when it does. This is generally more forgivable since it's in the middle of a giant firefight, but some people really freak out over this sort of thing. Overall, the game is rarely choppy and plays fast throughout. I'm sure Pandemic could have cleared the minor problems up with a little more tweaking. I think this game was rushed just a bit to make it out for an early start to the holiday buying season.

Clone Wars offers some of the most fun when you get to pilot the Republic Gunships. Those ships are armed to the teeth and really cause a ruckus in the battlefield. Unfortunately, you don't see them enough in the game for my taste. The tanks are also a lot of fun to use since they play very fast and are exceptionally maneuverable on the battlefield. You use the tanks the most throughout the game. Thankfully, the speeder bikes only show up once as well as the maru lizards which just didn't thrill me to play.

The Gamecube controller works exceptionally well for Clone Wars. Button placement didn't interfere with anything and it never feels like it was getting in the way. Dare I say that I would prefer the Wavebird to the Dual Shock when it comes to this game without a doubt.

One thing which is bound to annoy people is the difficulty of this game. It's just really not a hard game to get through and it feels like you have a god code on in the easier levels. If you are looking for a challenge, look elsewhere. One of the features that I liked was if you failed a mission and you were in the third section of it, you only had to continue from that third section. It saves a little frustration of having to repeat goals, but it does also make the game even easier.

Overall, Star Wars: Clone Wars is an average game. The difficulty of the game makes it hard to recommend this title as anything more than a rental. Most of the action is actually pretty good and I did have a lot of fun with this title while it lasted, but some of the levels just felt bland. Pandemic made Clone Wars into a reasonably solid title, and hardcore Star Wars fans should enjoy it, but there are just so many other top shelf quality titles out there this holiday season.