Star Wars: Trench Run for iPod/PC review

I had the opportunity to try out Star Wars: Trench Run by THQ Wireless, Inc. on my iPod Touch and PC this week. This is an iPod app, and runs $4.99 from the App Store; however it can also be played free on your PC. Why did I pay $4.99 for this? I don’t know. But it was worth paying it in the end. Plus, I had some iTunes gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so it wasn’t my money. (Just a note, it works on the iPod Touch and iPhone, but this is sort of a given.)

In a nutshell, Star Wars: Trench Run is pretty basic. Fly a series of missions (seven total missions) on four different skill levels, flying the X-Wing fighter or taking on one of the turret-guns of the Millennium Falcon. The skill levels started out being very easy. I tried the hardest level, “Jedi,” and it was…well…impossible. I’m no Jedi. I’m sure there are gamers out there that have the patience to play at this level (and manage to not chuck their iPod at the wall,) but I’m not that person. The force was not with me.

There is also an arcade mode, which gives you the chance to fly all of the various craft in the game, both rebel and imperial, in a dog-fight style format. No mission, just wave after wave of opponent craft to see how many you can knock down before yourself being blow into the vacuum of space.

The seven missions took me through the Star Wars scenes leading up to the destruction of the first Death Star. As Luke Skywalker, I flew these missions to destroy Tie Fighters,  and other targets, and ultimately the Death Star itself. Through using my blasters and special Jedi ability (which is basically a command to slow down the game and play in “slow motion”) I achieved my mission objectives and the Death Star was destroyed!

Gameplay was good, but there were minor irritations. The only problem I had with the Touch gameplay is that the control is set quite sensitive and I had to play around with the sensitivity adjustment, as I was overshooting on steering toward my target. The greater issue here was more related to the miniscule field of view, which prevented me from seeing my target until the very last second. This really cut down on my time to respond.

I mentioned I played this on the PC as well. The PC play was good with the mouse. However, the greatest thing about Trench Run came when purchased an extra .99 upgrade which allowed me to use my Touch as a remote control to play on my PC, all done over my WiFi. How cool is that!?

Graphics are on the good to great side, for what is a $5.00 app. On the PC, in full screen mode, the graphics are just as clear and sharp as they are vs windowed PC play, and iPod play. I was impressed by this as I expected a loss of graphics quality by going from a 3” screen to a 22” screen. There was none.

Sound was appropriate. Background Star Wars music, a few choice lines from the movie and blaster sounds was the extent of it. There isn’t much to it, there needn’t be.

I’ve purchased quite a few iPod apps to only be disappointed by them. This is not one of those. My total $5.98 has not gone to waste.  I recommend not just cheesing on this as playing for free online at Starwars.com either. I found myself playing this over and over again when I was out of the house, so it was nice to have it on my iPod. Paying the extra .99 was totally worth having the capability to use my iPod as the remote for the PC version as well. This is just one of the coolest innovations I’ve seen yet to come out of the iPod Touch/Phone. Go to the app store and buy this now!

You can check out the Trench Run online at http://www.starwars.com/games/playnow/trench_run/