Star Wars: Battle for Naboo is a shoot-em-up from LucasArts and Factor 5 that rolls up the Rebel Assault feel with some of the arcade space-flight of Factor 5's last Star Wars game, Rogue Squadron.

I must admit I didn't expect to like this game at all. Like many Star Wars fans, I was hugely disappointed with Episode One: The Phantom Menace. Virtually everything about the movie seemed designed with the sole purpose of destroying the Star Wars experience: the gag-makingly cute bowl-cut young Darth Vader, the ridiculously silly story, the second-rate ship design, and of course the CG muppets that were so annoying you actually wanted to do physical violence to someone.

So, when I installed the game and the splash screen featured a poorly drawn Jar Jar Binks strutting across a white background, my worst fears seemed to be confirmed. Imagine my relief when a big Star Wars logo suddenly fell from the top of the screen and apparently crushed him. I am pleased to say that that was the first and last appearance the floppy-eared git makes in this game.

The Naboo story, such as it is, places you as Lieutenant Gavyn Sykes, an "idealistic and brave" Royal Security Forces soldier.

Naboo has just been been invaded by the evil Trade Federation. While Queen Amidala flies off with Ewen McGregor to marry a six-year-old Darth Vader for some obscure reason which I have conveniently forgotten, you, as Gavyn Sykes, have to tough it out against the Trade Federation's robot army.

This involves taking control of a number of different vehicles, starting with a speeder and working your way up to the top-of-the-range Naboo N1 fighter. A joystick with a throttle is the ideal controller, but if you don't have one there are mouse, gamepad and keyboard options.

Taking control means pointing your craft in the right direction, throttling up and shooting anything that gets in your way. You know which way is the 'right' direction because there is a radar at the top of the screen that shows you.

There are a couple of other controls, like roll and a modifier key to make your ship turn tighter corners. You won't ever have to use these keys. At the end of the day the game is just about pointing the cross-hairs at the enemy, pulling the trigger and hoping for the best.

I say 'hoping for the best', because the targeting and/or hit detection is pretty eratic. You can be firing point blank at a droid speeder and fail to register a single hit. Other times your blaster fire will seem to magically home in on battle droids from miles away. It's just bizarre. In the end you have to compensate by holding the trigger down and just waving the cross-hairs in the general direction of the enemy until you've killed him.

Believe it or not, this style of gameplay actually makes for some fast, furious, and mindless fun. The game is fast-paced, there is plenty of action, plenty of shooting and plenty of explosions.

The sound effects are all authentic Star Wars sounds. Combined with the familiar red and green lasers darting back and forth, the sound of screaming fighter engines and blaster bolts does a great job of evoking the atmosphere of the movies. The constant radio chatter from the other Naboo pilots also adds a lot to the atmosphere.