Star Wars has a beleaguered history of video games. There's been good, there's been bad... but the general consensus is that, like most movie-based games, any new Star Wars games will be mediocre. Sure, something like KOTOR may surprise everyone once in a while, but these days the default option is "this game better prove its worth before I'll buy it."
LEGO Star Wars is an anomaly. On the surface, it sounds and looks like it should be a kids' title, perhaps positioned somewhere between the hundred LEGO creativity workshop type series and the pre-teen-skewed Bionicle games. The surprise - a surprise for anyone accustomed to what's on the racks over in the kids edutainment section - is that LEGO Star Wars is a fun two-player action game with elegantly simplified controls, plenty of replay value and the whole chibi-cute angle going on. The further surprise is that the two-player mode commits some of the most egregious programming errors ever found in 2P co-op and yet it still remains fun.
LEGO Star Wars covers the prequel trilogy, including threadbare spoilers that would only shock someone who has never seen any of the Star Wars films. Major plot points are included - like Anakin and Obi-Wan going at it at the end of Episode III - but most of the game is a Cliff Notes summary, filtered through the kid-friendly LEGO worldview. I mean, characters die, but that just means they get bisected into their component LEGO parts... so it's still cute.
The entire game has a silly, happy vibe. Many of the cutscenes - the ones that don't cut mini-figures in half, anyway - feature cute visual gags and pantomime comedy bits (there's no voice acting, apart from grunts and cries). Although I'm sure that's a by-product of pitching to the kid audience, it is done well enough that it stays endearing to the adult fan with a basement full of collectibles. I see it this way: It's not "meesa called Jar Jar Binks" funny, it's "let the wookie win" funny.
Now, that's not to say that your laser guns shoot flowers and Qui-Gon hugs enemies to defeat them... this game has a pleasurable ton of combat, blaster and light saber, on ground and in vehicle (mostly ground, though.) Any pre-conceived notions of this being a diluted pseudo-violent church-approved learn-to-read quest will be dispelled within the first minute of the first level, when you Force open the door out of negotiations with the Trade Federation and see a small army of droids marching down the hallway, blasters firing. With only three buttons - jump, attack, Force - you cut through the robots, pulling off the freewheeling acrobatics you'd expect from Jedi. The droids spark and cry out, probably get a hit in on you, and then explode into the LEGO pieces that build them. The game doesn't cheap out by keeping LEGO droids as your only opponents... you'll pit blades and blasters against plenty of human and alien baddies, and they will explode just as the robots do. With the added benefit of watching little LEGO human heads roll across the floor.
What kid hasn't pulled apart his LEGO people to simulate death? LEGO Star Wars is not ashamed nor unaware of these typical imaginative play patterns and thus revels in it. And keeps an E rating!
There's a lot of personality in these bricks. Even though the actual LEGO mini-figures are stocky and rigid, their in-game counterparts are allowed to bend and stretch in ways quite impossible in the real world. The designers did their homework and even gave different characters individual animations and poses. Jango Fett does his signature action hero stance with twin blasters pointing in the same direction. Yoda goes into a tiny whirlwind when he attacks. C-3PO has that jaunty, stiff-legged canter. You can definitely see and feel the Star Wars movie aura inherent in the game, rather than just using bland LEGO pieces with a galactic paint job.
The LEGO metaphor extends to just about everything you see in the game. Most small to mid size props will be obviously created with bricks. Flowers, statues, interior walls. Only the overall surrounding environments will lack the familiar ridges and studs of LEGO pieces, and even then they will be accessorized with LEGO elements. Unfortunately, you can't disassemble everything in the same manner you can cut through people... but plenty of destructible objects will get in your way.
Keeping with the theme, you'll also find plenty of constructible objects. There will be a meaningless pile of bricks and you must use the Force to assemble them into something useful, like a bridge or raft. Occasionally you'll need two Jedi to Force different switches simultaneously or float each other's platforms to higher ground. The combination of Force work and 2P timing leads to many interesting puzzle portions amid all the crazy Star Wars fighting.
In many levels, even two players aren't enough to proceed, and you'll have to carry along R2-D2 or C-3PO to open special locked doors. The triangle button allows you to switch control to another available character, so you can bodyjump to R2 when you need him. When you're not directly controlling him, R2 and any other follower characters will happily march along behind you. Usually the combat-enabled followers will help you in firefights, but you'll have to rely on yourself for the real finesse spots.
When you first play a level, you play in story mode, which pre-chooses your playable characters and plays all the proper cutscenes. Later, you can come back for Free Play mode, where you can be anyone you want, plus you can toggle through a selection of other characters in-game, so you can instantly take advantage of the various abilities (often to grab the game's hidden collectibles, minikits.) In addition to the obvious lock/key paradigm of everyone's favorite droids, the other characters beyond the Jedi have different useful abilities. Naturally, the Jedi all get light sabers and the Force, plus they can a decent jump. Another class of characters comes with guns for the expected distance attack, but they have a crappy jump... so their blasters double as grappling guns. A few characters have much higher jumps, a few more can fly. The "kid" characters - young Anakin, young Boba Fett - can enter special passageways that no one else can.
The main reason for all this variety is for the puzzling aspect. How do I get the door to open? Ah ha, the switch is over on that ledge that Obi-Wan can't reach, so I have to use Anakin to enter the secret passageway. Each level has 10 hidden minikits to find, some you can only get during Free Play mode, where you can be sure you're provided with at least one of every necessary character type, a kid, a shooter, a jumper, a Jedi, etc.
The downside is that this logic often breaks down when it serves the game's purpose to do so. For example, Jango Fett has a jetpack and can fly. He'll hover forever if you want him to... except if you want to use him to hover over a ravine. In some cases, his jetpack will give out mid-way and he'll fall to his death, because the game wants you to use R2's hoverjets to get across.
The levels are visually distinctive, culled from all over the trilogy. Even as such, it's still a short game, with only the 100% completion fanatics left with replay value. You can easily imagine another third again as any levels, just thinking back to movie sequences the game skips... like Episode II's chase scene on Coruscant, or the underwater bit in Episode I. But what portions the game does include, it includes well... with plenty of true-to-film details and flourishes.
A handful of levels break away from the ground warfare and put you inside vehicles... pod racers, assault ships and starfighters. It presents an interesting problem for two-player games, since it doesn't splitscreen in any way. The first two, based on land, have obnoxious bottomless pits that either player could slip into and reset the level to the last checkpoint. And in the pod racing level, there's only one death animation - an exploding podracer - no matter if you actually exploded or just fell into a pit, which creates a visual disconnect. On the whole, the vehicle levels require both players to be on their toes or there will be a lot of starting over. With no splitscreen, both players are necessarily tied together, which effectively forces you to act exactly the same or risk wrecking it.
Destroying items and solving puzzles spills out the game's currency, studs. In the LEGO world, that refers to the male end of the typical interlocking brick... but it still strikes me as an amusing choice of words. We tended to call the studs simply money, or, having come off an extended Ratchet & Clank jag, bolts. Studs are used to buy the game's unlockables, extra playable characters (of which there are a happily absurd number) plus cheats and hints.
The store is back at the hub world, Dexter Jettster's bar. The hub world is a level all by itself, with an infinite supply of free studs to be found in light sconces and salt shakers. What makes it more interesting is that any character you've unlocked is liable to walk into the bar, which gives it sort of a Grand Theft Auto city street quality. You can switch control here as well, and even instigate penalty-free battles between light and dark side characters. Outside the bar is a parking lot area where the game keeps your minikit spaceships docked.
The final collectible item is the superkit, pretty much the biggest minikit on the lot. You only receive superkit pieces when you reach a certain number of studs per level. The game never tells you what this magical number is, aside from giving you a meter that shows how close you are to reaching it. Once you get all 17 superkit pieces, you get a surprise vehicle to gawk at, plus you unlock a secret level. Now, given that the hub world has four doors, the first three labelled for Episodes I, II and III, it's not too difficult to guess what the secret door, the fourth door, may hold.
So what goes wrong? Not much in 1P mode, but I think playing that way is a whole lot less fun. With only one player, the game takes over playing as the secondary character in addition to any followers. No, this is a game intended to be played two player... particularly between kids and parents. The game has a live drop in, drop out feature, so either player can jump in or bow out at any time in any level. I can see that being a huge boon, so a young child (or a gaming-handicapped adult) can take a break during a hard part... or the reverse, a more experience player jumps in for the assist.
Unfortunately, the game will stab you in the eyes without a care. If the two players get too far apart, it's the lagging player who gets screwed... often getting stuck, uncontrollable, in the screen's border. (All the while the game makes a horrible screeching sound as it tries to warp the character back into play.) If the lead player doesn't double back and close the distance, it can become impossible for either player to continue, sometimes creating a situation where one - or even both - players get stuck falling off the level's edge.
The problem is that the characters are extremely floaty, to the point where the game's camera can push them around in its attempts to keep both players together on one screen. Even off platforms! It should be a given that when you stand somewhere, nothing invisible will push you, no matter what the other player does! For a game based on objects that interlock, they spend a lot of time falling off things.
There are areas, particularly the jumping puzzles, where you might as well have one player bow out rather than fight the game's efforts at false cohesion. A simple fix (says the non-programmer) would be to have the camera zoom out farther as the players split up. At some point, yes, you would hit the same problem anyway, but LEGO Star Wars errs too conservatively here, creating much unneeded frustration.
A sequel is inevitable, and since it will cover the cooler part of the Star Wars saga, I'll be first in line to buy it. Hopefully they will fix the pushy camera and increase the number of levels. Maybe even bump it up to 4 players. (Luke, Leia, Han AND Chewie!) And how about online play with voice chat?
As far as two player co-op games go, LEGO Star Wars is a must-get. Yes, the floatiness is a huge problem, but the cuteness and replay depth overcome it. You will scream and swear at this game, or you will learn to stay with your partner. Even with the annoying camera issue, we still had a great time playing it out to 100%. We managed to find every single minikit without resorting to an strategy guide, and some of them are devilishly secreted away. Welcome to the birth of a new sub-franchise.
