Previews

Hands on with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

THQ Wireless' new N-Gage game breaks cover at Nokia World

Hands on with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

If you want to cause a stir at a mobile technology trade show, try striding around in a huge Stormtrooper outfit. That's how THQ Wireless is drumming up attention for its just-announced N-Gage game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, anyway.

Not that the game needs costumes to cause a stir. I had a hands-on demo of it this morning at the Nokia World show in Amsterdam – although, sadly, the hands in question were those of THQ Wireless' Ville Levaniemi, since the game is so secret squirrel for the moment that journalists can't have a go.

Still, it didn't stop me from noticing it's one of the nicest looking N-Gage titles so far, with beautifully drawn backgrounds, well animated characters, and proper Star Wars sound effects backing them up.

Although it looks like a free-roaming adventure game from the screenshots, it's not. Instead, your character moves around automatically, but you control their use of the Force by hammering out symbols using your keypad.

What? Well, above enemies' heads are displayed symbols, which correspond to patterns you type on the keypad (for example, a square would be '1', then '3', then '9' then '7' then '1' again, while a triangle with the point on the left would be '2', '8', '4' and '2' again).

It's a bit like playing dot-to-dot, at speed, to control chucking boxes around and killing enemies. So not much like dot-to-dot, but it's the best way I could think of to explain it.

Only one level was on show, although we'll have a video going up later showing other snippets of the game. The control method certainly solves the problem of trying to move around and shoot in a 3D action adventure, although it might not please all gamers.

Still, there's plenty more levels to come, so this was just a taster. Click 'Track It!' for alerts once we get a play with it for ourselves

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)