If you want to watch the final "Star Wars" prequel movie spoiler-free, under no circumstances should you pop the "Revenge of the Sith" game into your console first.
The game, released last week, follows the plot of the film, unspooling movie clips that give away pivotal plot points. These are quite fun to watch. The problem is that, to see them, you have to play a very by-the-numbers action game.
"Sith" slips a light saber in your hands and shows you the movie from the perspective of Obi-Wan and Anakin, even allowing you to play Skywalker as he slips over to the dark side of the Force.
You have a multitude of light-saber moves and Force powers (such as Force pushes and stuns) to string together into impressively acrobatic combos, but after a few levels, the action starts to blur together.
Another droid to slice in half? Yawn. Even the most elaborate action sequences are dulled by basic game mechanics.
Funny thing is, the voice actors (who do not include the cast principals) seem to share the frustration. Their lines are delivered with absolute indifference -- the actor for Anakin sounds as if he'd rather be auditioning for "The O.C." When the Ob-Wannabe chirps, "I'll never get tired of this" after pushing his hundredth droid off a ledge, you may disagree.
But the rest of the production values are top-notch. The score and sound effects have been ripped straight from the source, and even if the plots of the "Star Wars" prequels hardly have been inspiring, they always are audio achievements.
The "Star Wars" games released in the last year or so have been stellar -- "Battlefront," "Knights of the Old Republic" and "Republic Commando" have been engaging to play. Per-haps it's because they only are based in the "Star Wars" universe. By being in lockstep with the "Sith" movie, Lucasarts gave the game developers little chance to experiment. To paraphrase Obi-Wan, this is not the "Star Wars" you have been looking for.