Star Wars : The Clone Wars: Live Fire and Sharp Shooter

Sharp Shooter and Live Fire are the latest attempts by LUCASARTS to drive the hype bandwagon for the recently released Star Wars : The Clone Wars. In an attempt to appeal to the movie's predominantly younger audience, neither game is especially complex or long.

Sharp Shooter is essentially the training level from any futuristic FPS, the player takes on the role of a Clone Trooper and must prove his readiness for field combat by obtaining a high score in the Republic's training simulator. Using the mouse, players must shoot a variety of droids; a hit to the droids' critical areas (head and chest usually) earns players 10 points, whilst a hit anywhere else only receives 5. The aim is to get the highest score in the allotted time. Complexity is added by reflective surfaces that repel blaster fire and friendly units, like Anakin Skywalker, who the player must avoid hitting.

There are only 5 stages, each of which takes two minutes and the target scores to pass each stage are fairly easy to reach. The real point of this game it seems is to foreground the more complex Live Fire, and depending on your success in Sharp Shooter you are given a code that unlocks bonuses in Live Fire.

Live Fire takes the player into battle on Teth and Christophsis where your clone trooper must retrieve data packs whilst eliminating enemy droids who attempt to destroy the data.

The action plays out like a 3^rd person shoot-‘em-up. The player's character can be customised to some extent and a starting bonus is granted if the user enters the code from Sharp Shooter. The data packs that players retrieve unlock bonus content related to the recent film, content ranges from film clips to concept art and the difficulty level is such that most people should be able to see all the content on offer.

The carry over elements of both games are a nice idea and add complexity that is rarely seen in web based movie tie-ins but ultimately Sharp Shooter is just like any other shooting gallery game, albeit less challenging and shorter. Live Fire fares slightly better but if you've seen Clone Wars then there's little incentive to progress further.

If your son or daughter can't wait for the release of the retail movie tie-in games then point them to these but otherwise don't waste your time.