N-Philes

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Posted November 5th 2006 by Jared Thomas.

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is exactly what you should expect it would be, regardless of whether you've played the original LEGO Star Wars video game or not. As long as you've seen the Star Wars movies, and have at least a passing familiarity of what a LEGO block is, you know what to expect. This is you, the gamer, playing as a character made of LEGOs, the blocks, through scenes inspired and directly taken from Star Wars, the movies.

And the funny thing is that what I just described sounds like the hokiest, most dorkass experience imaginable, and yet it works. There is not a single title in the history of video games that puts you in the shoes of Luke Skywalker (or Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, etc.) as effectively as LEGO Star Wars II. That is the game's greatest strength. In fact, if you're a Star Wars geek fan, that's all you need to hear. I'd say something sassy now like, "Stop reading this review and BUY THIS GAME!!!!" except as a Star Wars fan you've already bought this game and completed it 100%, and are only reading on to see if this is a good enough review to copy and paste into your blog as if you'd written it. With that in mind, let's move on.

The real beauty is the suspension of belief that's created when you're pantomiming the actions of your favorite characters as caricatures rather than attempting to re-create the experience of the Star Wars saga line-for-line with photorealistic graphics. This means that while each level starts at the beginning of a sequence from the movies and ends at the completion of that sequence, in between it strays wildly and allows for major creativity in platforming, beat-em-up action, and puzzle elements. So go ahead, blast everything in sight in your search for gold, silver, and blue studs (LEGO coins), build an AT-ST out of that pile of blocks and romp through downtown Mos Eisley, do whatever you want. It's all good and well. The classic John Williams score from the films provides enough of a foundation that you'll never feel like you've left the Star Wars universe, even when the missions meander from familiar territory into less canonical grounds.

The open-ended adventure style of the levels is enhanced by the fact that you can't really lose a level unless you give up (which, incidentally, I was forced to do on very few occasions due to getting myself stuck somewhere that I couldn't wrestle my character out of). If you're blasted to bits, the only thing lost is studs, and if you're quick enough upon respawning you can usually collect the ones you lost before they disappear. It encourages you to just keep playing rather than making cowardly searches for heart pieces before big battles, or taking leaps of faith that you're not quite sure you can make. And, on occasion, shooting your friends in the back for a quick laugh.

There are plenty of cooperative games out there, but very few that are as simplistically fun as this. Just like the original (original LEGO Star Wars game, not Original Trilogy, which yes might be confusing) it's incredibly easy to pick up and play, and still fun for gaming veterans. Case in point: I can actually play this game with my girlfriend. I can actually play this game with my girlfriend's son. Can it be a little frustrating when they slow my progress by going the wrong way, or shoot me instead of the enemy? Yes, obviously, but nothing near what it would be to play with them in my squad in Ghost Recon.

The only problem with the cooperative play that isn't present in single player is that while sometimes the camera will widen to accomodate two players who have moved a far distance from each other, more often than not it will prefer to drag one of the characters against their will toward the other, often to their death. Desire unwittingly killed me about four-hundred times this way, and vice versa I'm sure, as there are times in the game where one player will be continuously respawning at the edge of a drop and falling in, and the other player won't quite be able to make it back to a point in the level where it doesn't cause that to happen. You would think the game would take mercy on the falling player after awhile, because sometimes a great enough distance between players will cause the computer to effectively log one of them out of the game, reset their character, and let them jump back in at their leisure, but for some reason it doesn't do this when someone is obviously getting shafted by the camera. Many times I lost tens of thousands of studs (a mighty sum!) to this problem. Of course, it's hard to actually get angry while playing this game, but I can't say I was having fun at those times either.

For the most part, the 2-player game works out very well. It doesn't punish a younger or less adept gamer; it doesn't entirely hold back a veteran gamer. It's not a very competitive game, and in any areas of competition that you could actually engage in (collecting studs? killing each other in spite of the mission?) the players are at such equal levels that there's really no way someone could "master" the game enough to dominate completely. Every time I felt like a Jedi Master, wielding my lightsaber around to deflect blaster fire, the game would put me back in my place with hitbox issues that mean lightsabers don't always connect to enemy helmets in the way you almost certainly were intending them to. It's not a dealbreaker, but it makes you play a little more conservatively than a true fanatic would want.

Flight missions break the monotony of running around shooting Imperials (if you could call that monotony) and fortunately the simplistic, carefree gameplay of the land-based levels carries over perfectly, with a top-down view that hearkens to childhood days of playing with matchbox cars and other more Star Wars-related diecast vehicles. As many times as I've played the Battle of Hoth , it was still a welcome arena to throw down some tow cable tomfoolery, and I daresay it rivals even the most faithful renditions of the icy melee (Rogue Leader?) in terms of flat-out fun. That's this whole game. It focuses on the fun, and lets all the immersion and Star Wars geekery fall right in line behind it.

Steady Beat - More of the same, and that's a good thing.

One of the only Star Wars games that I would actually recommend to someone who's never seen Star Wars, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy is an experience that is nevertheless amplified in direct concordance to your level of Star Wars fandom. If you liked the movies, you'll love the game, and only the most hostile and cantankerous gamer will hold against it the little foibles that prevent it from being a "hardcore" title. It's basically the same ride as we saw in the first LEGO Star Wars, but there's really nothing broken about it that I'd feel warranted revamping the formula to fix.

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