When you get close to 40, it's tough to justify playing with Star Wars action figures.
But thanks to Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and an army of video game programmers, we older kids have an outlet for our enthusiasm now that George Lucas has revved up the 25-year-old franchise with today's release of the latest movie installment, Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.
The filmmaker's gaming company, LucasArts Entertainment (www.lucasarts.com), has turned out great and not-so-great titles over the years using the characters and story lines from the Star Wars pictures.
Priced from $30 to $50, the games are usually faithful to the movies' themes, but often take players on extended jaunts to worlds and situations outside of the Star Wars movie universe.
The action runs the gamut from starship combat to light-saber dueling to serious strategy gaming. Almost all have John Williams' thunderous scores adding to your movie, er, gaming experience. But what really makes the games appealing is that you don't have to know Boba Fett's relationship to Jango Fett or memorize the names of all of the cities on Tatooine in order to play and understand what's at stake.
Even so, if you're not quite up to the challenge, Prima Games (www.primagames.com) publishes several strategy guides that can help you find bonus mission objectives and unlock hidden goodies with cheat codes. No honorable Jedi would use these, but if you're swayed by the Dark Side of The Force, they're a good investment.
Here's what we found:
Space combat in Jedi Starfighter (PlayStation 2 and Xbox) places you in the ship that Obi-Wan Kenobi boards in Attack of the Clones for a harrowing chase with Jango Fett through an asteroid field. You play the Corellian Jedi Master Adi Gallia and several other characters in nimble spacecraft challenged by Droid starfighters, scarabs, planetary defense guns and battle droids.
Background: The Trade Federation has a stranglehold on the Karthakk system, and your job is to stop the evil and solve the mystery of the weapon of mass destruction being used on the local citizenry.
Your Jedi Starfighter happens to be a special test craft with four Jedi "Force Powers," in addition to regular spaceship lasers. Using the force shield at maximum power with "force clarity" allows you to deflect shots from enemy fighters back to their ships just as Obi-Wan does with his light saber. Just remember that this nifty defensive move isn't always available, and once used, its power must be regenerated as your mind rests.
