Lego Star Wars

Except for a few clearly deprived and boring children, who hasn’t
played with Legos? Those brightly colored blocks of varying sized
rectangles have been used to make billions of miniature brick walls.
Over time they’ve evolved and have proven to be the elements of
enormous and intricate works of art. So naturally, video games were
next.

There have been a few other games with the Lego brand, but none that
have used a third party intellectualy property. Lego Star Wars for the
PS2 (soon for the Xbox, PC and GBA sp) recreates the best moments of
the Star Wars prequel films, including the yet to be released Revenge
of the Sith. Each of over 30 playable characters are rendered as the
simplistic Lego figures, indentical to their plastic toy counterparts.
In addition, most of the vehicles you’ve seen in the movies are pieced
together with the familiar building blocks.

Gameplay is easy
to pick up and should prove to be good old fashioned fun for children
of all sizes. Something about a little plastic Obi-Wan Kenobi swinging
his tiny lightsabre to split a cute little droid in half is satisfying
to any age. Story mode places you in the shoes of two predetermined
characters from the film, relevant to the scene you play. Each
character has unique abilities necessary to completing each level. For
example any jedi character, light or dark, can use the force to
manipulate objects to build platforms and bridges from miscellaneous
Lego blocks. Droids can open specific doors and soldiers can repel up
the sides of buildings. Simple puzzle solving is combined with item
collecting. Three different types of Lego studs give you purchase power
for new characters and special extras found at Dexter’s Diner.

Easily the most entertaining part of the game is cooperative mode.
You’ve already got two characters on the screen at once, so grab a
friend or an offspring and have them join in to help with the
lighthearted blasting and slashing. Although it doesn’t change the
game, it does require team work that makes the game seem less automated
and a bit more challenging without a good amount of communication
between the two of you.

Sadly as incredibly fun as LSW can
be, it’s not without its problems, the biggest of which is the camera.
Its position in space cannot be maniupulated in any way. This could be
understandable in the co-op situation with the lack of split screen,
but some complex positioning and jumping puzzles would have taken
considerably less time if we could have swung the camera around or up
to see where we were jumping. Some of the levels, particularly the
vehicle piloting levels proved to be particularly hair pulling. The
camera continues to move, like a rail shooter, requiring multiple
attempts to collect all the items in one level, but thankfully once
you’ve grabbed a kit piece, 10 hidden in each level, you don’t lose it
even after death.

We clocked about 15-20 hours, mostly in
co-op hunting down and collecting everything to unlock a mysterious
door marked only with question marks and then finally beating the game.
I really can’t stress how much fun this title is and how much I’m
looking forward to an inevitable sequel (likely original Star Wars
trilogy). This is a great game, especially for the family whose father
and young son want to play together, or for a young couple of different
gaming skills to have in common. Lego Star Wars is a beautifully 3D
rendered game, with ample amounts of humor, an impressive amount of
faithfulness to the Star Wars movies and greatly entertaining to any
age.