LEGO: Building blocks of a new Star Wars universe...
Written: Jun 08 '06 (Updated Jun 24 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fun, fun, fun! :-D
Cons: Not many...
The Bottom Line: Grab that light-saber and go do some good!! (After whacking Jar Jar Binks a few times...)
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| captaind's Full Review: LEGO STAR WARS PC |
LEGO Star Wars is a term that will mean nothing to you if you don’t know what LEGO is, or what Star Wars is. (If not, what planet have you been on for the past few decades?) Ah well I suppose there must be some people about who don’t know, so here’s the explanation:
LEGO is a set of children’s building toys, ranging from simple click-together blocks to bits that make up complex models, and characters complete with accessories.
Star Wars is a series of films (and books, and toys, and animated series, and other things comprising one of the largest merchandising operations in the world). Basically Star Wars is a retelling of the classic “good versus evil” story we’ve seen a million times before in a futuristic galactic setting. It features Jedi Knights, who use a power called “The Force” to do all sorts of neat tricks and help attain order in the galaxy, etc etc, evil baddies, and annoying characters.
Put the two together and you get miniaturised and satirised versions of the films where the actors are replaced by LEGO characters. Put that into a computer game and you have… a lot of fun!
LEGO Star Wars features the basic plot of the first three films chronologically speaking (“The Phantom Menace”, “Attack of the Clones”, and “Revenge of the Sith”). Each part is split into 6 chapters, featuring a major sequence relating to that in the film (though not in every detail). As you progress through the game, you take control of different characters. All in all there are 30 different characters within the game that you can control, though it has to be admitted that some of them are very similar to others, while a few (like the Gonk droid) don’t actually seem to be able to do anything much!
Anyway, you control your Jedi Knight with flashy light saber and ability to use force powers, Queen Padme with grappling hook (I’m serious), or even Yoda (little green wrinkly thing who walks very slowly until you press jump, at which point he zooms around almost uncontrollably!) Various enemies and obstacles need to be overcome of course, using your movement commands, weapons, jump, or special ability. (This various from character to character – the Jedi can use the Force on some objects, droids can override security panels, characters with blasters can use grapples to access different areas, child characters can crawl through small gaps). Or, of course, any combination of the above. Some things require co-operative action by the two players. (You can play one player, with the computer controlling your buddy, but 2-player is much more interesting!) The gameplay is a 3D action, run, jump, shoot, collect, and try not to die game. (Though you never actually die as such, you get resurrected almost straight away, though you lose all the “studs” you’ve collected. Studs are like currency, once you’re out of a level and back in “Dexter’s Diner” – presumably a between-world portal! – you can spend those studs on hints, characters you haven’t already unlocked in the game, or extras – including moustaches!)
Overall the game is pretty easy, there were only one or two points might have you pulling your hair out, and you will probably have completed all 3 episodes in about 4-5 hours. One or two of the mini-games are quite challenging too. However, the game doesn’t end when you complete it. In fact, the end is just the beginning…
… because when you’ve completed one of the 18 levels, you can play it again in “Free” mode. This means that you can play as any character, and swap characters with a key press. While this might not sound much good it is in fact the whole point of the game. You see, completing the levels in story mode is one thing, but actually accessing the whole level is quite another. There are several parts in each level that require a certain character (or at least, character type) to be used in order for you to access them. For instance, a particular type of droid might be required to open a door, or an area might only be accessible by a child character. The levels are in fact much bigger than you first realise when going through them with the story mode characters.
But why would you want to go through levels you’ve already completed anyway, even if you can get to new places? Well in each level there is a mini-kit to collect – once you’ve managed to get all 10 parts, the vehicle (or whatever) will be available to view at Dexter’s Diner, and if you can collect all the parts of a “super-kit”, you’ll be able to access a secret level.
The graphics are pretty good, though to be honest I can’t give a complete idea of them. The game requires a GeForce 3 equivalent or higher with support for PixelShader 1.1. Unfortunately, my GeForce 4MX is the only GeForce 4 card that is not supported! However using a neat little freeware programme called 3Danalyzer (http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d_analyze/) we got it to work with the pixel shader element being done via software emulation. This understandably causes a bit of slowdown though so the highest I was able to run the game at was 800 x 600 with plastic reflections and floor reflections on, with bump mapping and bloom filtering off. The extra video options available will depend on your card. The highest resolution available is 1280 x 1024. The graphics still looked pretty good though even in the mode we were able to play it, and the movie cut scenes were amusing. The music is naturally enough pure Star Wars music throughout, though the music didn’t seem to fit with the episode you were playing. This wasn’t a problem for me though and I doubt that it would be for anyone else.
The game manual strongly recommends a gamepad, but the keyboard works fine most of the time. If you play with two players both on the keyboard though, re-map player one#s fire / jump / special commands to the keypad, you’ll find it much easier. (Otherwise there can be a terrible colliding of fingers mid-game!)
There are a few other secrets and collectibles in the game but it would be pointless trying to tell them all to you, besides which half the fun is in the discovery! Players can drop in / out of the game at any time in 2-player mode, which is a nice option.
LEGO Star Wars is a very fun game for people of any age, which doesn’t take itself seriously and has a high replayability factor. Not a breathtaking game but still highly recommended. I’m definitely going to get LEGO Star Wars 2 (which covers the original trilogy) at some stage…
This game brings you the opportunity you've been looking for since seeing "The Phantom Menace...
Because bashing Jar-Jar Binks NEVER gets old!!
Other System Specs
Memory: 256Mb RAM (played with 768Mb)
CPU: 1GHz+ P4 or equivalent (played with 2.3GHz P4)
Sound: DirectX 9 compatible sound card
HDD space: 2Gb
Age rating: 3+
Other Star wars Games
Jedi Academy
Knights of the Old Republic
More Star Wars Reviews
Films
Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
Return of the Jedi
Animated
The Clone Wars Volume 1
The Clone Wars Volume 2
See also: Top 100 Games of All Time (part 3)
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CaptainD’s Seal of Windows Vista Compliance
I tested on Windows Vista with no problems. The system used was Packard Bell imedia J2489 Desktop PC with a WME scores of
Processor (calculations per second) - 4.8 for Processing Power, 4.1 for Memory Operations, 3.3 for Graphics, 2.6 for Gaming Graphics (on an nVidia GeForce 7500LE), and 5.7 for the Primary Hard Disk.
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UPDATE - even better than the LEGO Star Wars games, LEGO Indiana Jones is a must for your gaming collection.
Recommended:
Yes
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