The Phantom Menace is an adventure game with bits of action inserted here and there. The plot of the game closly follows that of the movie but with sub plots for you to go off and investigate. During the game you play as one of four different characters, you start as the young Obi-Wan but also get to play as Qui-Gon, Queen Amidalla and Captain Panaka (the Queen's guard).

Each level takes place in a location from the movie, such as the swamps of Naboo or Tatooine. As the game concentrates on a specific section from the movie and expands it you can find yourself confused as to what is going on as several sections from the movie are missing, for example Darth Sideous is nowhere to be found in the game.

The levels are divided into three different types, find-the-exit, help-queen-to-exit, find-an-object. The levels where your main objective is to find the exit tend to be straight forward action levels, where staying alive is practically your only concern, there is virtually no puzzle solving in these levels, but you need to develop the ability to make precise jumps as you will find yourself needing to chain together several jumps to get from one location to another.

The levels in which you have to protect the queen as you make your way to the end of the level are very iritating, you can command the queen to remain where she is or to follow you, unfortunately she is not very good at keeping up and often gets stuck behind corners and then you have to go back and get her. Also if you have left her at one point you cannot go too far ahead as you will get a 'The Queen has died' message and you will have to resume from a save game. This is very annoying when you have taken the time to ensure that the Queen is safe from attack and have just gone ahead to clear the way.

In the levels where you have to find object you are required to speak to several of the characters, some of these are from the movie such as Watto and some are unique to the game. The level of interaction is simmilar to old style graphical adventures, i.e. ask all the possible questions until there are no more questions to ask. This can be a little dull and you never really feal that you are interacting with the characters. You will often find yourself having to make barters with the charactes to exchange goods before you can get the item that you want. This system works fairly well, however the barters that you can make are fixed, it would be better if you could use your own imagination.

The game features a very irritating top-down view (see the screenshots), this view makes it impossible to see very far ahead of your character which can be very annoying when you cannot see who is shooting you. Also the top-down view exposed the problems with the graphics engine, while none of the problems is serious the can make the game look a little unprofessional. It is possible to change the view using a cheat, but it would have been better if you could move the view up and down as needed.

The soundtrack in the game is very good with all the music taken from the new movie, it is used quite effectivly to create atmosphere within the game. All the sound affects are also taken from the movie and are presented in high-quality.

There are a variety of weapons in the game inclusing your lightsabre. Unfortunately the lightsabre never seems to be as effective as it should be, presumably this is to create some ballance between the different weapons. In the levels where you play as a Jedi you also get to use 'force-push', this knocks down any enemies and gives you a chance to kill them before they can get to their feet. It's a shame that more force powers are not available as in Jedi Knight.

While this game is okay, it never quite takes hold and you will probably find yourself tiring of it before you get to the end. There are several things that just prevent you from enjoying the experience, such as the top-down view and also the story is too disjointed. Don't buy this game if you haven't seen the movie as it probably won't make much sense, if you have seen the movie download the demo and give it a try before buying otherwise you might find yourself disappoined.