Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy

Judge me by my size do you?

The levels are broken up by brilliantly animated cut scenes. The introduction to each stage is the familiar scrolling words seen at the start of every movie; they let you know what is going on with the story at the time before jumping into a cut scene. These cut scenes are usually an imitation of how the movies played out, with a comedy Lego twist thrown in for good measure.

For instance, when C-3PO first lands on Tatooine you see him working on the farm milking a Bantha (one of the large Mammoth type things they talk about in the movies). Another example is when Han, Luke and the others go to break Leia out of the Deathstar, when Chewbacca won't go down into the sewer Han whips out a bone and chucks it which Chewie duly chases.

It's just brilliant watching Darth Vader step out of a smokey transport coughing and spluttering, and the fact that the game keeps up this high standard of cut scene throughout is a testament to the developers laugh inducing abilities.

The worlds are littered with piles of Lego that can be used to make different objects. It's a simple process of standing near them, without being hit by enemies and holding down a button whilst your character starts building. The objects you create are quite varied; sometimes it is just a rudimentary box that can be smashed to reveal lots of studs.

More importantly, the Lego often serves as a major instrument to complete the puzzles; when you're faced with the task of getting across a gap, it is usually a case of finding some spare Lego bricks to build into a bridge. There's a satisfying feeling attached to making these Lego constructions, probably similar to the feeling gained by Lego building children worldwide, as you're creating something useful.



The combat in the game is novel at first, though is quite constrained and thus does get a little repetitive. You're limited to either laser blasts if you're a non-Jedi or a lightsaber if you’re a Jedi. The coolest feature of the combat is when you get up close to the enemy, most of the characters have their own individual traits; for instance Leia performs a bitch slap and Chewbacca literally pops the arms off the enemies.

I liked Han's neat little spin manoeuvre he does after shooting his pistol, but all in all the combat gets a little bit boring. The use of force manoeuvres on enemies is pretty useless until you get to Luke in the final episode - he gets a rather questionable, and certainly disturbing, ability to lift people into the air and choke them a la Darth Vader. Overall, the combat is not the highlight of the game and can get a little bit frustrating in areas where enemies are constantly respawning.

The game is packed full of cool features and it would take far too long to list them all; instead I've decided to let you know about some of the best ones. Firstly, I need to point your eyes towards Leia's costume when she is slapping the green Gamorrean guard. This got a lot of laughs in the office, seeing Danish-pastry head running round in a skimpy Lego styled bikini. The relationship between Han and Leia is pretty funny too, with Han trying to sneak a kiss at every moment and Leia suitably giving him the back-of-her-claw treatment.

I find your lack of faith disturbing

It's a great moment when Boba Fett gets swallowed by the Lego sarlacc. The multi-headed beast lets off a green burp once you have defeated the bounty hunter, sending him off to 1000 years of digestion. Another cool moment occurs in Jabba's palace when you are confronted by his guards. By constructing a hi-fi that plays the Empire's soundtrack you can make the guards stop and boogy John Travolta style, after you have stopped laughing at the pig like creatures dancing efforts you can easily dispatch them without resistance. The levels revolving around Jabba the Hutt are easily some of the best in the game.

One area that did disappoint was Hoth. The levels felt a little bit samey, and the designers used far too much of the ice-makes-things-slippy affect, that made the puzzles slightly more frustrating than fiendish. Especially annoying in the Hoth area was the snow-speeder level. This tasked you with wrapping up the AT-AT's as in the movie, then dragging a bouncing bomb a la Dambusters from another section of the map into the fallen mechanical beasts. However, due to a limited physics engine I found this quite frustrating, with the ball often going not where I intended. Thankfully this area didn't last too long and some of the other missions involving vehicles were extremely good fun.

A section that many fans were interested in was the character creation, which promised to allow users to mix and match bits of the Lego characters they had collected to create unique characters. I must admit, I too was excited about the potential of this mode, however I found it a little underwhelming. As fun as it seems at first putting Yoda's head on Darth Vader's body, it soon grows a little boring. For one, it is quite obvious that the models don't fit well together, and two, because the Lego characters are only made up of a few pieces anyway there are few options for making your character look truly unique. My advice would be to view this as a side feature you may spend a few minutes with, nothing more.



The only other negative, a truly remarkable feat in such a massive game, are the boss levels. Due to there being no real punishment for getting killed, it makes the whole process of running after someone to kill them a little bit pointless. Admittedly most of the later boss levels do require some kind of puzzle to be solved which makes them a little better – however some of the puzzles leading up to the boss are far more difficult, which makes the game feel slightly off balance.