LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game was one of those things that sounded silly when you first heard about it, but turned out to be one of the best things you ever experienced. Traveller's Tales blend of platform action, humour, fire fights and spaceships made for a compelling game. Set against the background of the Star Wars universe and with the flexibility offered by LEGO bricks, the combination was a joy to behold and to play. The fact that the game was so much better than the official Revenge of the Sith game was just the icing on the cake for fans of the original trilogy.
If you have read our
preview of LEGO Star Wars II: The original Trilogy you will know that we thought that the sequel was shaping up quite nicely and could be another hit. Given the times of year that the two games have been released, it's obvious that Activision have taken a road less travelled, late April for the first game and now early September for the second. These are commonly considered slower periods in the games market, after Easter and before the Christmas stampede begins, and perhaps that is one component of LSW's success, there are not many competing products to get in the way.
Marketing decisions aside, you have to realise that LEGO Star Wars more or less sells its self. The game is squarely aimed at the younger player, but can be appreciated by anyone, especially the younger player's dad who grew up on the original trilogy of Star Wars films and has never lost that sense of wonder at seeing two suns rise over the desert of Tatooine.
Let's be honest here, how many of you out there in reader-land still get a chill down your spine when the opening chords of the Star Wars theme play? You lot will all love this game.
The play mechanics are not vastly changed from the first game. After all, why change something that works? You can still drop out of and rejoin play at any point, you can still move bricks with the Force, you still battle against evil, though slightly incompetent, foes and you still get to join in with the set pieces of the films you are playing through. Sure, the stories are changed slightly to make for a better game, I can't remember the Jawas stealing the droids back in any of the revised versions of A New Hope, but this does mean you have to rescue them and that makes for a level objective. Similar tweaks are made to the stories of all of the films and it's all in the name of gameplay, which is a good and noble cause.
What makes this game different from its predecessor are a few additions to the game play mechanics that really do add enjoyment.
Non-Jedi characters can still manipulate LEGO by building objects from bricks left lying around or ones freed by demolishing other objects. This is a natural addition forced by the fact that there are only five Force-wielding characters in the original films and much of the stories revolve around the other characters, certainly from the point of view of interesting scenes to make into a computer game.
There is even a large slice of replay built in to the game. Various items that are available to collect are not obtainable while playing through the levels in story mode because they require the presence of characters that are not available to you at that point in the game. You must go back in free play mode with the appropriate character in tow if you wish to complete the mini-kit you are trying to build. When we first finished the story mode we were cheerfully told that we had only completed around 33% of the game.
