Title: LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Date: 09.18.2006

Genre: Action

Platform: PlayStation 2

Developer: LucasArts

Publisher: LucasArts

“Lego Star Wars? I don't know whether to laugh or cry,” was the reaction when ‘Lego Star Wars' was announced. But in 2005, when the game was released, we saw that it was good. The original game focused on episodes I, II and III. Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy has now arrived though, focusing on episodes IV, V and VI. And we see that it's even better.

As you can undoubtedly tell from the title, this game is to do with Star Wars. And Lego. The game takes you through the three original Star Wars films, simulating the settings and characters with Lego. The actual levels themselves are fairly short. It took me just ten hours of total play time to finish the three episodes. Anybody with half a brain would notice after playing this though that the story isn't the point at all, but rather what can you do around it.

For example, there are a massive seventy characters to play as in the game's ‘Free Play' mode. On top of that, if you have a save file from the original ‘Lego Star Wars', you can import all of the characters that you unlocked on the game over to this, adding another forty-six playable characters. For the less mathematically minded of you, this brings the total up to an amazing one hundred and sixteen playable characters.

Out of the seventy characters you can get from this game, less than half are obtained through getting the story, meaning that you have to purchase the rest. Whilst playing, you find currency called ‘Studs'. These will come from pretty much anything, whether it be smashing things to pieces, or building an object. The characters don't come cheaply. The most expensive is The Emperor, costing 275 000 studs. At most, you'll be lucky to get more than 70 000 studs per level, and that's if you really are lucky. Taking that into consideration, you can see that it'll take you a few play-throughs of levels just to obtain The Emperor. Other characters aren't amazingly cheap either, and I'd estimate it to cost more than one million studs if you want to unlock everybody. This adds a lot of play time.

Also purchasable are ‘Extras.' These can be a variety of things. Some might just be little fun things, while others enhance gameplay. Some extras are amazingly expensive. It costs an incredible thirty million studs to unlock the ‘10x score' extra. You can't even purchase some extras unless you find the ‘red brick' for it within a level. Once again, if you really do demand on unlocking everything, you're in for a long time of playing.

There are also things called ‘Minikits' scattered across levels. There are ten minikits per level, and eighteen levels. Adding in the fact that these aren't at all easy to find, it adds a great deal of length to the game if you plan on finding all one hundred and eighty kits.

The graphics work well. They aren't at all realistic, but that's perfectly alright, of course due to the fact that it's a Lego game. The graphics aren't trying to be realistic. The visuals that are presented coincide with the game wonderfully though. Character models look smooth and nice, while terrain, particularly on Hoth I noticed, is beautiful.

As you would expect, sound is taken directly from the Star Wars films. The effects for lightsabers and blasters are admittedly basic. They don't sound bad, but they do very little to add to the game. The soundtrack is fantastic. Top notch stuff. The controls are amazingly simple. I play it using a pad so I won't list what key does what, but there isn't at all much to remember. During the normal course of the game, only two buttons, along with moving around, need to be used consistently. And this is how it should be. The game's simplicity is one of the key amiabilities of Lego Star Wars II, and the fact that Traveler’s Tales have managed to keep the game simple while adding so much to do is admirable indeed.

The gameplay isn't without its flaws though. The AI is, in places, fairly poor. Enemies make no attempts to protect themselves, and every boss follows a very easy and beatable attack pattern. Likewise, your CPU-controlled team mate(s) do(es) little to aid you. Battling enemies is always far too easy, and the fact that you don't have any lives makes it all the easier. The only penalty you have dying is a reasonably small stud penalty, which you can easily pick back up again to make the death penalty non-existent.

Despite the easiness of battle though, the puzzles are hard. Many a time I found myself walking around for a while wondering what the hell I had to do exactly. And when I figured it out I would think “Oh, well that should have been obvious”, which to be honest is a credit to the developers. Not only have they made hard to figure out puzzles, they make them seem like they weren't at all hard to figure out.

Though the game has some fairly significant flaws here and there, overall Lego Star Wars II is a game that simply has to be played. Traveler’s Tales haven't tried to bind the game with realistic world simulation or complex, life-like battle, but have instead produced a delightful game that can't be called anything but fun.

Game Score

B

Reviewed By: Contributed