Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga Review
Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy were both successful Traveller’s Tales games that sparked a lot of interest in turning popular film franchises into lego games. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a package game that combines both of the Lego Star Wars games, and it does so in a very smooth and effective way.
Lego Star Wars follows the story of all six Star Wars films and retells them using it’s charming gameplay and even more charming cutscenes. The basic story follows the Star Wars films, but minor details are changed, for comical effect more than anything and it certainly works in creating a fun game, that is definitely not just for children. The story is told through cutscenes which are incredibly charming and easy to love. All of the characters have voices and express their emotions by a series of grunts and actions. You will find yourself laughing and smirking throughout every cutscene.
It is not a bad thing that there is no voice acting; it actually makes for a more enjoyable experience when playing through the story. All of the biggest moments of the saga are featured in the game e.g. the fall of Anakin, the birth of the Empire, the moment when Darth Vader reveals he is Luke’s father, although it’s slightly different in the game as he shows Luke a picture of him and his mother and grunts a few times. Overall, any part you can think of, Lego Star Wars includes it somewhere, and puts a nice twist on it to remind you this is a light-hearted game.
One of the most important things in the Star Wars films, alongside the great story, is the fantastic soundtrack, which is certainly not missing in Lego Star Wars. The most memorable tracks are ever so present throughout the game and the game does well to integrate tracks, for example, when you use the force on some tables and chairs, the infamous bar tune plays or when you build a jukebox in Jabba’s place, his minions come running to rock out to the dark side tune. The sound effects are great too. From the swinging of the light sabres to the firing of the blasters, everything is perfect. The sound does well to enhance the Star Wars experience. Not only does the game sound great, the game looks great too. Running in HD, the game looks very crisp and very clean. It is not a technical achievement by any means, but for this basic game, the graphics are very nice.
Lego Star Wars isn’t just about pretty graphics and a great story though, the game plays great too. It’s a pretty standard platformer, but standard isn’t a bad thing. There are many playable characters, and many character types. There are jedis and siths, druids, stormtroopers, bounty hunters, and more. Each character type can do different things and for most levels, you experience a good mix of characters. Once you have played through the story on a level, you can re-play the level on freeplay and pick your own character as well as change between several other characters in the middle of the level, which is useful for collecting items that would otherwise be out of reach. Throughout all of the levels, there are several items that you can collect. Collecting things can be both fun and irritating as you may go through an entire level just to collect something near the end of it, and not have the right character to be able to collect that item which means you have to play through it again. The story line is quite lengthy due to there being 6 levels in each of the episodes which means 36 levels in total. Most players will find themselves completing the game in around 12 hours.
A big problem with Lego Star Wars is replay value. Once you have finished the story, there are some things that you might want to go back and collect if you are into that sort of thing, but other than that, there are not that many options. There are a few extra side missions you can do, but they are pretty minimal. There are many extras that can be unlocked by finding Red Power Bricks throughout the levels, but they aren’t really worth it and in some places, make the game too easy and boring. You can play online with friends, but only friends, which limits the online experience more than it should. The Xbox 360 achievements are worth a mention due to them helping the game in terms of replay value, and also in terms of the humorous nature of a lot of them e.g. ‘Let the Wookie Win’ involves ripping off a certain number of enemy arms with a wookie
Lego Star Wars: Complete Saga does a great job of combining both Lego Star Wars games and updating them. The games, at their core, are still the same, loveable games that they were before. The story humour is fantastic and well worth seeing. The soundtrack is perfect in terms of the Star Wars franchise. The gameplay is fun enough, but the lack of real replay value is a big let down. It’s fun collecting things, but it gets tedious after a short time. For newcomers into Lego Star Wars, the game is great value for money as you are getting a lengthy and enjoyable game but for anybody who already owns or has played through both games previously, it’s not really worth buying this one again.
