Essentially Star Wars Chess is exactly what it sounds like: Your typical chess game with a Star Wars theme. The sides are as follows, the Light side is represented by the good guys. Artoo-Detoo's for pawns, Yodas for rooks, Wookies are your knights, See-Threepio's play the role of bishops, Leia is the queen and Luke is the king. Representing the Dark Side you've got Storm Troopers for pawns, All Terrain Scout Transport walkers for rooks, Tusken Raiders for knights, Boba Fetts for bishops, Vader is the queen, and the Emperor is the king.
Good Points: The game is fun for several reasons, even if you're a lousy chess player, you can have a little fun watching the brief kill sequences every time a piece is killed. For instance: if R2-D2 kills a Storm trooper, you are presented with a cute little scene of R2 and the trooper fighting. The clips are extremely brief and can be disabled if you get tired of them. (Having seen all of them, after a while they lose their appeal.) The sound quality is extremely good for a game of its era. Also the game has standard "save" and "load" features so if you get interrupted, you won't lose your game. If you want to rearrange the pieces around to your
liking, there is a feature to place the pieces where ever you desire. Lastly, the two game-play environments you get to select from are not bad: a star field and the death star's throne room. The graphics quality is good.
Bad Points: I really don't have many major complaints, my only major gripe is that the All Terrain Scout Transport walker rooks are drastically out of proportion with the rest of the characters. Chewbacca has got to be the slowest moving piece on the board in terms of animation and since he move up two spaces and over one, his entire transition scene takes roughly fifteen to twenty seconds of staring at the computer screen. Helpful hint: Press the escape key a couple of times after you've told your piece where to move, it cancels the animation and moves the piece instantaneously. I believe there's even an option to shut the walk animations off.
All in all I find this to be an enjoyable game, and definitely worth downloading if you like playing chess and happen to be a Star Wars buff.
