PC: Lego Star Wars II - The Original Trilogy

If you've seen the movie "Incredibles", you'll remember right at the end of the movie, that little kid on his tricycle shouting "That was totally wicked!". That's the reaction and look on his face my eight-year-old son had after playing Lego Star Wars II for the very first time. And that was the last time I saw him for about a week. Lego Star Wars II improves on the game engine of the first Lego Star Wars, this time taking you and a willing companion through episodes I, II and III of the movies.

Play it on any PC

The nice thing about the PC version of this game is that you can practically play it on any PC out there at the moment, even if you have old hardware. The engine is not very taxing on your hardware, although the game does look very good on more current hardware. In fact, as with Lego Star Wars I, the PC version on current hardware looks miles better than the PlayStation 2 (PS2) version. Gameplay is the same though. One thing that the PS2 version has an upper-hand over the PC version, is the fact that the game really *must* be played with an analogue game controller of some sort. Playing this game on the keyboard is reserved for those thirty-somethings that used to play 2-player Star Control on the keyboard.

Graphically the game looks excellent. Not in an ultra realistic way, but in a "It's Lego. And it's moving!" way. The game shows you what you always wanted your Lego to do, and more. Facial expressions, real blaster fire and lightsabre shimmering, it's all there. All the characters from the movie appear in the game, as their Lego-lookalikes. Chewbacca doesn't have individual hairs on him, but that's to be expected from a Lego character.

"It's so cool!"

The music in the game comes straight from the movies. The intro song, the cantina song, and all the other music from the different settings, it's all there. The sounds for each of the actions in the game are all also straight from the movies. R2D2's bleep-bloops, blaster fire, lightsabres flying through the air, even explosions, they all sound authentic. The game doesn't feature any voices or speech whatsoever though. All cutscenes that would feature speech are all play-acted by the characters by way of hand and arm movements and facial expressions. This adds to the fun-factor of the game.

When I asked my son what about the game made it so cool, he said, and I quote "It's so cool! You can be lots of different guys like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and Ben Kenobi. You can even be Darth Sidius, but you have to buy him and I don't have enough coins. You can even change their heads!" That sums up a lot about the game.

The game play in the game is quick, fun, and marginally easy. You start in the Mos Eisley Cantina, which serves as a hub for the whole game. The cantina hub level is a free-roaming level, where you can approach the barman to unlock characters, features and bonuses, and also enter each of the main Episode's sections. Each Episode is split into several chapters, each with a door to enter the level. Each chapter has a text-flying-to-infinity intro while the game loads.

Each chapter allows you to be one of a handful of characters for that level, and allows you to switch between these characters at the press of a button when the characters are in close proximity to eachother. This is important as there are certain parts of each level where only certain characters, or types of characters (only droids, or only bounty hunters, etc.) can open.

The game's AI ( Artificial Intelligence) controls the characters that you don't control, but the AI will not automatically open doors for you. You have to change to that character to open the door. This change of character flows very naturally though, so it is not a hinderance at all. One problem that does pop up every now and again is that the AI characters sometimes get a bit lost, and don't always follow you wherever you go, so you could get to a point where you need R2D2, but he's off chatting up some girl R2-units somewhere and you have to go find him.

Shining replayability

Where the game really shines is in its replayability. The first time round you play the game in Story mode, which limits you to be only the characters the game has available for that level. Once a level is finished, it unlocks FreePlay mode for that level, which allows you to choose whichever character is available to you, to play in that level. As you go through the game, each enemy that you kill will drop a number of studs (little round Lego-blocks) of different colour. These studs can be used to buy new characters for use in FreePlay mode. What this does is it allows you to be R2D2 in a level that might not normally have R2D2 available, and will allow you to use R2D2 to open certain doors in that level that only R2-droids can open. The game has many measures to track how much of the game you've completed, one being the number of studs collected per level, the other being 'superkit' pieces scattered all over each level, 10 per level, that builds a certain vehicle as you collect those superkit pieces. The resulting vehicle is not useful at all though, it is only shown in the Cantina Hub level for show.

One fun feature that was added to this sequel, is the ability to mix and match the head, torso and legs of the Lego characters, just like with real Lego. You can create a Darth Vader head on Princess Leia's bikini torso with a Storm Trooper's legs. And use that abomination in Free Play mode. There's not real benefit in this to the game, other than adding yet again to the fun factor of it all.

All in all to play Lego Star Wars II from start to finish in Story mode will not take an awful lot of hours, but this is the kind of game that puts the completion meter in your face all the time, compelling you to go back to each level a second, a third and even a fifteenth time, just to get more studs and find that last superkit piece. The game is fun to play, and even more fun to play with somebody else.