| Product: |
Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (GC) |
| Date: |
06.12.07 (114 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: It's a whole lot of fun
Disadvantages: Cut scenes get annoying after a while
I've resisted getting any new console games for the last few years as they take up far too much time and I very obviously have more important things to do, like, say, working for a living, or watching horror films. This was virtually forced on me by a friend, and I inevitably ended up playing it rather more than I should. It's a lot of fun, though, and has the advantage of not really taking all that long to complete.
Basically, you play through the original Star Wars trilogy, but everything and everybody is made out of Lego. And it misses out the talkie bits. Each film is divided into six 'story mode' chunks and you play through them in turn. You're either playing as a variety of characters running around on foot, or you're a spaceship. In the character missions you'll have at least two people (for instance, Han Solo and Princess Leia in the Escape from Hoth mission), although you may pick up other characters later (C-3P0 and Chewbacca in this case). You can switch between characters if you need to: there are doors that can only be opened by droids, but droids can't build things or shoot Stormtroopers, so a certain amount of swapping around is inevitable. This can get a bit annoying on occasion, especially if you have too many characters with you at a time as they get in the way when you're trying to kill baddies. You have no control over how many people there are - if someone was in that bit of the film, they'll be in that story mission; this leads to faintly absurd situations such as Jabba's Sail Barge, where you have to somehow contend with Luke, Han, Chewie, Lando, Leia, C-3P0 and R2D2 all being on screen at once.
These missions are great fun, though. The gameplay itself is quick enough to never get boring and varied enough to keep you interested. It's also very easy to pick up, the controls being intuitive and simple. There's a fair bit of shooting evildoers, but there are also things to build, creatures to ride and simple puzzles to solve. It never gets too difficult (there seems to be only one difficulty setting) and, while you may take a while to work out exactly how to progress, you'll get there without *too* much swearing. The episodes massively expand on the plot of the films. When arriving at Mos Eisley in the film, I'm pretty sure Luke and Ben Kenobi just did some Jedi mind thing to a Stormtrooper and then went to the Cantina. In the game, they have to fight their way through dozens of Stormtroopers, build a Scout Walker, shoot some dustbins and get droids to open doors for them. This happens in all the missions - they're a lot more substantial than in the films. The game even makes Dagobah fun, something the films sure don't.
The animation and design are completely charming. The way the little Lego chaps run around is funny, and they've managed to convincingly replicate the look and feel of Star Wars, but in Lego. It has a real sense of humour, as well. Lando's interactions with Princess Leia are an obvious example (he'll kiss her hand instead of attacking her), but there's lots of endearing little details. It's fairly gentle humour of the mild slapstick kind, but it's nice that it's there. Star Wars has become far too pompous in recent years - this goes some way to redress that. It uses the orchestral incidental music from the films, which makes a nice counterpoint to the rather silly visuals and is just damn good music anyway. Although the music must be looping at some point, I've never noticed it doing so.
There are several spaceship levels too (destroying the Death Star, asteroid field etc). These are nowhere near as satisfying as the other levels. They don't play to the game's visual strengths, looking like any generic Star Wars space game. They lack the Lego-y charm of the other levels. They tend to be pretty short, though, and I guess they couldn't have been left out.
In story mode there are also cut-scenes which fill in the gaps in the plot. These are genuinely funny at times, and aren't annoying in the way that a lot of Star Wars humour is (the recent Family Guy Star Wars episode, for instance, was the most self-indulgent, unfunny piece of television I've ever seen). It does rely on knowledge of the films in order to get the jokes (I can't decide whether this is aimed at children, who are less likely to know the films but will probably appreciate the gameplay, or adults, who are more likely to see the gameplay as a bit twee but will probably know the films better). In some cases I'd even argue that it requires you to have played with the action figures as a child to fully appreciate it. Again, it's mainly mild slapstick, but the characterisations are funny (especially Luke, entertainingly reinvented as a clumsy buffoon). The annoying thing about these cut scenes is that you can't skip past them. They're funny once. If replaying a level on story mode, you have to sit through them again. This tries the patience.
You collect little Lego studs, which form the game's currency. In the area where you select what to do (rather charmingly, it's the Cantina) you can trade these studs in for new characters, cheats etc. After you've completed a level on story mode, you can play it again in 'free play'. This allows you to play as any character you wish (or at least, any characters you've unlocked), and lets you gain access to studs and bonuses you couldn't reach as the story mode characters (for instance, Boba Fett can fly, so can get to places that Yoda can't). This gives you an incentive to play through levels a few times each. You can also create your own characters to play as, hideous amalgams - a Gamorrean Guard head on Darth Vader's body, for instance.
Ultimately you can unlock mini-games where you have to collect a million studs in five minutes, either as a person or as a spaceship. These didn't do much for me. Super-story mode is more fun - you have an hour to play through an entire six-episode film, having to collect 100,000 studs along the way. Nicely nerve-racking, although only Return of the Jedi was a real challenge. Eventually you even unlock a nice little Lego town that you can send characters into to destroy stuff.
There's a two-player collaborative mode, which is trying in the extreme as you have to stay on the screen with each other (split screen might have been a bit more worthwhile). But this is a largely solitary pleasure, like reading, or sex. The game is prone to occasionally crashing. This can be annoying if you're, say, three quarters of an hour into a super-story mode game.
Being for the Gamecube, this is now out of print. It's not too difficult to get second hand, though. I don't know if it's different to other platforms' versions; I suspect not. There's also a 'prequels trilogy' version available, but I don't think I'd want to own that. This is a great little game. It's made Star Wars endearing, it's fun to play, it has replayability, but it won't suck up as much of your life as other games.
Summary: One of the better Star Wars games
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