Lego Star Wars
Considering how much of our time at Cawthorne HQ we spend playing games? it?s actually probably not that surprising that we haven?t gotten around to writing about any of them until now.
Lego Star Wars is really the ideal game to christen our games review section as it has that ideal blend of tongue in cheek kitsch geekdom which tends to flavour many of our favourite things. On the one hand it?s Star Wars, which is geekiest of the geeky. It?s also Lego, which is kitsch retro joy, and the tongue in cheek (tongue in geek? Eeuw!) aspect is self explanatory.
I noticed this on the forthcoming release list at Play.com sometime earlier this year, and the reviews started appearing around April. Amazingly the reviews were almost all positive ? not only was this a game I wanted, but it was supposedly pretty darn good too.
Once it was available I downloaded the demo, only to find that our PC (which does a pretty good job of playing Half-Life 2) was no good for Lego Star Wars. Seems to me that it wouldn?t have been so hard to make it downwards compatible like, oh, just about every other game that comes out on PC, but it wasn?t to be. Fortunately Sendit.com had a good deal on the X-Box version and ? given that this sort of game is probably best played on a console - we snapped it up.
The premise is very simple. You run through a series of scenarios based on the prequel trilogy (six chapters for each film), playing as whichever characters are appropriate for the given scenario. It?s tempting to suggest that the great Lego recreations which precede each chapter are actually more effective at getting the story across that Lucas?s painfully inept dialogue. For one, these Lego scenes don?t actually have any dialogue. For another, I actually enjoyed watching these animations, whereas enjoyment is something I don?t readily associate with the prequel trilogy. He had his chance with Sith and he blew it!
But I digress?
Part of the appeal of Lego Star Wars is that it?s three games in one. You initially play in Story Mode, which simply involves moving chronologically from chapter to chapter, playing as whichever characters the game selects for you, with the aim simply to get from beginning to end.
Once you?ve done that you can then go back and attempt to collect all of the ten Lego canisters that are hidden away in each chapter. (When you collect all ten you get a Star Wars vehicle made out of Lego ? not a real one sadly, but you do get to park it in the virtual parking lot.) Some of the canisters can only be reached by characters that have special abilities (such as jumping, jetpacks, using dark force powers, ducking into vents) so you need to pick your characters carefully before you re-enter the chapter.
The third option is to achieve Jedi Master Status on each chatper. This is done by collecting the required number of Lego studs on each chapter. Some are easy, some are all but impossible. I sadly had to resort to an invincibility cheat to attain this on the last three chapters. Frankly when it took two of us working co-operatively to fail to achieve Jedi Master Status on one particular chapter (and take over half an hour to do so) I figured cheating or genocide were the only realistic options.
Each time you achieve JMS on a chapter you get one piece of a superkit. It soon becomes obvious that the superkit piece is the Tantive IV (??) blockade runner seen in the opening of A New Hope and the end of Sith. Accordingly you also unlock a bonus chapter which turns out to be the very opening of A New Hope.
At the end of this bonus chapter you see ?To be continued??. I only hope they do the classic trilogy because, while the gameplay in Lego Star Wars is excellent, it is nevertheless tainted by its association with the relatively dismal prequel trilogy.
James "The Jedi" Smith January 29, 2006 - 11:49
There was a reason both of us, together, couldn't beat the game, Justin.
"Your powers are weak, old man."
As for breaking out the cheats, I just want everyone to know that I was set against it and made my position known in the form of a silent protest. Having said that; the invincibility cheat made some of the levels more exciting to play.
One would think that it would have the reverse effect considering that you know you cannot lose. How queer.
It was a very fun game to play. Much more fun than the other recent Star Wars Prequel game which came out on the xbox. This game was riddled with terrible camera angles, poor dialogue, poor acting and poor gameplay. The force, my friends, was most definitely not with that game.
But Star Wars Lego gets my official two thumbs up.