The story of Starfighter is set in the time immediately preceding the trade federation blockade from Star Wars: Episode 1. You don't play any of the characters from the film but you will definitely feel like you are contributing to the overall story - the tight integration of the Star Wars license and clever story is really quite something; other developers that might be reading this? Pay attention - Lucas Arts have had a lot of experience in handling this license and it really shines through - if you ever wanted to participate in the Star Wars universe, never has such a compelling opportunity presented itself.

The level design is varied - very varied. At least, it is graphically varied... While the setting varies from space, to asteroid belts, to planet skimming, to plunging down a crevasse - the objectives remain essentially the same - shoot something, shoot something while stopping other things from shooting something, find something then stop things from shooting it etc. Nothing new there. It doesn't do any of this badly of course, it's just not new - so long as you go into this expecting precisely what it looks like on the box, you won't be dissapointed.

Sound is somewhere this game really blows off the roof - all those familiar sounds from Star Wars are here (save maybe the swoosh of a lightsabre), backed by a superb musical score and actually very good voice acting. If you have a decent speaker setup or some top-shelf headphones, you will appreciate this even more - it really does feel like you are acting out some of the intense space battles you have previously only seen on the big screen.

Configuration options are a nightmare. What initially seems like a good idea (having a windows-based, pre-game configuration module via which all game options like video, controllers etc are set) spirals out of control fast into a setup nightmare: - mouse too sensitive? Quit not only the mission, but the game before you can tweak it. Didn't get it quite right? After you have booted back into the game, loaded your save, started the mission and found that out, you need to quit the level (and the game!) right back to windows and tweak some more. Appalling. The only reason this does not affect the score more is that once you get it right, you don't need to visit it again - so while painful, it's temporary. This, and some rather obvious internal game menu font choices etc, make it very clear that not much happened to this game on it's way from PS2 to PC. It's a console game on a PC, nothing more. No extra options are catered for (aside from resolutions available, natch) and setting up fancy joysticks etc is a chore. Keep it simple, and you will be ok. Just don't try and use fancy throttle controllers or odd keyboard setups.