When you mention a film being made into a game it conjures up images of poorly designed levels and boring game play, but can this latest Star Wars game surpass the hype and in fact be a decent adaptation of a much loved universe where Jedi’s uphold the peace against the evil Dark Sith. Now, throw into the mix, one of the most successful toys in the world and what do you get – Lego Star Wars.

Gameplay:

This best way to describe Lego Star Wars is that it is a puzzle / action / platform game aimed at kids but can easily be enjoyed by adults, where you will get to interact in most of the memorable scenes from ‘The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones’ and the much anticipated ‘Episode III Revenge of the Sith’.

The main objective of the game is to finish all 17 chapters (levels) using the default characters that have been assigned to you at the beginning. In each chapter there are numerous puzzles to solve which are fairly simple and to put it mildly will not cause you any kind of headache. As well as trying to solve your way from one end of the chapter to the other end, you are also trying to build up your ‘True Jedi Status Meter’. This meter fluctuates on how many ‘studs’ you have collected. There are three types of studs – Blue, Gold and Silver with monetary value of 1000, 100 and 10 and the only way to build up enough studs is to smash, grab and destroy the environment and enemies around you using either your weapons or the Force. If you manage to finish the chapter with 100% True Jedi, than you are rewarded with a piece for the ‘Super-Kit’.

There is also a third objective in the form of white canisters. There are 10 such canisters littered through out each chapter and when all have been collected will result with you being presented with a full ‘Mini-Kit Vehicle’. Unfortunately you will not be able to collect all ten on your first attempt through a chapter as some of these canisters are hidden in such a way that the characters you are controlling will not be able to access them. This brings us nicely to the ‘Free Play’ mode. This mode allows you to play previous finished chapters with any character you have opened by beating them or buying them. There are over 30 playable characters ranging from Yoda, Anakin, R2-D2 to the new dark enemies such as General Grievous and his body-guards. Each character has their own unique powers which you must utilize to solve the puzzles in order to retrieve the missing canisters. The Jedi & Sith can manipulate the environment using the Force whilst the likes of Jar-Jar can jump higher than the normal characters. Once all the mini-kits and super-kit have been completed, a very important hidden feature will be revealed (so they say). The last feature is the ability for a second player to just drop in and drop out of the story.

Graphics:

The animation and quirkiness of the characters is superb and brings a whole new dimension seeing them in Lego form. You really feel like you are controlling a Lego character and the way the environment interacts is amazing especially when you blow things up and Lego bricks fly everywhere. Of course, not every game is perfect and the only downside is the camera angles. On some occasions these can be really frustrating as you can’t see where you are walking and the ability to view around the character would have been an added bonus.

Sound:

You can not fault the sound as just like all the other Star Wars games, the music and sound effects are all authentic provided by Skywalker Sudios. Apart from the music and sound effects, there are no voices except the occasional grunt or sigh. This works well as most of the humour is displayed through their actions.

Longevity:

As a single player trying to just finish the game one way or another without completing all the hidden extras, the longevity will be next to nothing and could be completed in less than 4hrs, BUT….the replay value is there as you will need to go back in Free Play mode to open up areas that are inaccessible the first time round. With this in mind, you could easily double the time take to fully complete the game.

Round Up:

As far as Star Wars games go, this is a rent first, buy later because the game can be completed very easily by any hardcore gamer, but considering the market for this game is aimed at kids, it will keep them quiet for some time.

Pros:

• Two player ‘drop in, drop out’ mode
  
• Over 30 playable characters.
  

  Cons:
  

  • Occasional bad camera angles.