Lego Star Wars Review

Lego Star Wars has to be one of the most unique games to represent the popular series of George Lucas films. The game itself isn’t actually created by its studios, so that already provides great opportunity for it to be as different as it is. Taking on the stories of Episodes I - III, the game takes the whole world of Star Wars and converts it into, you guessed it, lego form. The game is actually targeted more towards a younger audience, but that hardly means that it doesn’t appeal to the older crowd as well.

At first glance, Lego Star Wars might turn you away from just how different it does look. But if you give it a chance, you will find an experience that is worthy of the market price. You should obviously know the saying “never judge a book by its cover”, and the same easily applies here. Now while Traveller’s Tales, the makers of the game, actually did push the whole lego atmosphere quite a bit, it isn’t done that way with everything. That basically means not everything around you is designed to look like it was built with legos, so that helps retain somewhat of a realistic feel to the visuals. For the most part, all the characters you encounter, allies and enemies alike, along with the various vehicles in the game will be what is represented by legos.

With that said, the aspects of the game that actually are represented by legos are actually really cool, but sometimes downright strange. The actual body, limbs and legs of all the characters are built by regular legos, with their heads being those “special pieces” that help you identify who they really are. Some of the character heads in the game look really weird though, including Darth Sidious and Padme Amidala. But then again, it’s not exactly possible to have elaborate looking lego head pieces, so that is understandable. But the trademark Star Wars vehicles definitely look awesome in lego form. They include the pod racers from Episode I and the various war ships from the last of Episode I as well as the others. Your enemies for the most part won’t be completely built by legos, but that’s because if they all were, they would look unrecognizable. To give the game a little cosmetic look in certain areas, lego plants and trees are actually thrown into the mix.

However, if there is one aspect of the game that looks awesome simply because of the Star Wars universe, it’s your characters’ lightsabers. The actual handles do look like lego pieces, but the actual beams coming out of them obviously aren’t. To make the whole atmosphere in the game even more authentic, viewing the animation of the beams actually coming out of the lightsaber handles is virtually identical to the movies. This is coupled with absolutely perfect sound effects, as all the great ones you hear when characters use their lightsabers in the movies have made it into the game. So the actual activating of the weapon, and all the humming sounds it makes is really immersive and helps you really feel like you’re playing a Star Wars game.

That is indeed the strongest aspect of Lego Star Wars, the sounds and music. Almost all the musical scores and sound effects you will end up hearing throughout your adventure is taken right from the movies. So there’s no excuse if you feel you didn’t play a fun Star Wars game because of the audio, it’s almost perfect. All the dramatic and serene-driven themes have been implemented in the experience, and it really helps drive the sometimes monotonous action of the gameplay. However, one extremely disappointing aspect is there are absolutely no voiceovers. Yes, the droids like R2-D2 make their trademark bloops and bleeps, but that is hardly an actual voice. Aside from the various grunts and other such vocalized emotions, you won’t hear any voiced dialogue. This is rather unfortunate, as people who play this game and have never seen the movies won’t have a clue as to what’s going on. Each chapter of your journey is taken directly from the movies, and rather briefly, so if you haven’t seen them, there’s no chance of understanding the actual plot. That does help in there not being any spoilers for the movies, but sometimes it’s just downright ridiculous with how it’s actually presented.

So obviously with your adventure you have the actual stories of the first three Star Wars episodes. These happen to be The Phantom Menace, The Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. What Traveller’s Tales actually tried to do with each chapter presentation was deliver all the major plot points of each episode so you would feel like you really got the Star Wars universe handed to you. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case either, as many a time the plots in each chapter will feel more rushed than the entire movie of Episode III did. There are roughly five to six chapters in each Episode that you play, and generally you will hit the most crucial points in each movie. Such ones include the rescuing of Jar Jar Binks, the pod racer and the fight with Darth Maul in Episode I. With Episode II, you have all the major exploits of Obi-Wan, including his encounter with the Fett bounty hunters. The capturing of some of the Jedi, along with the fight in the battle arena is also included. Then with Episode III, you obviously have the turning of Anakin to the Dark Side, beginning with his elimination of Count Dooku, and then the final fight at the very end that starts the premise to Episode IV. All these major events are really nice and all to experience first-hand during the game, but it still doesn’t excuse the lack of proper side details that drive the main story. Plus any kind of voices would’ve been appreciated, and it didn’t even need to be the original actors.