N-Philes

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy

Posted November 3rd 2006 by Ben Wood.

Last year, Traveller's Tales stunned everyone with the quirky, but well-received LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game. It turned out to be a fun and fresh approach to the never-ending Star Wars game franchise by taking players through Episodes I, II, and III with Lego-block-shaped characters and surroundings. It came as no surprise when LucasArts announced LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for every platform imaginable, including the Nintendo DS. But somewhere between that announcement and the release of the DS version, something went terribly, terribly wrong.

LEGO Star Wars II for the DS puts you in the shoes of various characters and ships to play through 16 missions based on memorable moments from the original Star Wars trilogy. The game starts innocently enough with Princess Leia trying to escape the clutches of evil. You're introduced to a beautiful 3D environment with destructible elements and reflections on the shiny floors. The characters all exude a unique and polished look. The music and sound effects are beautiful and faithful to the movies, changing appropriately when the situation becomes tense. The aiming system is simple and awkward, but it works for this third-person action game. LEGO Star Wars lulls you into a sense that it is a solid, if linear action platformer.

Slowly however, you get the unfortunate pleasure of watching the game fall apart before your very eyes. As if controlled by the dark side, the camera will fight you to the point where you're aimlessly jumping, hoping to land on something, and the useless camera controls on the touch screen do very little to help out. When the camera isn't at war with you, your party may as well be as they sometimes shoot you well after all the Stormtroopers and bounty hunters have been eliminated. In fact, sometimes these idiots just stand somewhere dangerous and die repeatedly until you save them or enter a new area.

Endor easily wins the "most frustrating experience ever" award due to the heavy slowdown, muddy textures and uncooperative camera that makes the platforming nearly impossible. Mix in enemies reappearing right after you destroy them with the questionable level design and you have a fate worse than being digested in the Sarlacc Pit.

The real problems show themselves in Free Play mode (the "replay" mode) where you get to backtrack into completed levels and switch to any character with the tap of the touch screen. In theory, this is where the meat of the game lies, offering gamers a multitude of options to uniquely play the game, find hidden items and unlock the fun stuff along the way. Unfortunately, the Free Play mode is plagued with developorous out of timeus, better known as Street Date Syndrome. Scripted events aren't always triggered, which actually makes some levels (Jabba's Palace, for example) unplayable. Your character disappears into thin air as if it were an exclusive Jedi mind trick. If it isn't you disappearing, it'll be the background, or even the level itself. Not even Yoda can escape from the bottomless pits in which you can actually become stuck. The only method of escape? Start button - exit level.

To be fair, there is a lot of unlockable content to be found, or bought with little LEGO studs. There's tons to enjoy from a letterbox presentation of the game, to disco mode and Stormtroopers in pink. Pretty much every character from the original trilogy is playable, and if Han Solo isn't interesting enough, there's the option to create a custom character by combining different character parts. Jedi Princess Mos Solo3PO is kinda sexy. On the downside, it's an easy game without much challenge or risk. When a character dies, he or she respawns at or near the place of death to continue on, which is probably a good thing given that the game's technical downfalls lead to countless deaths. Star Wars II is on the short side what with Story Mode beatable in a sitting or two, and the game's depth relies on all this collecting and unlocking to stretch out the experience.

Flatline - Encase in carbonite and sell to your local Hutt.

LEGO Star Wars II DS had a ton of potential. The quirky take on the Star Wars universe could easily have been one of the few games on the DS that is both beautiful and rich in 3D gameplay; dare I say it could have been a "must have" title. The developers simply weren't given enough time to work out all the problems that made it into the final version of the game, and it shows. The result is a short and overly-easy game with too many glitches to be enjoyable. Supposedly later shipments of this game have been tweaked to smooth out some of the wrinkles, but the truth is that it shouldn't have shipped at all until it was ready. For those looking for a Star Wars fix, skip the DS version and check out LEGO Star Wars II on the GameCube or GBA.

Posted in: Reviews

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