| Video Game Review: Lego Star Wars 2 |
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| Written by Nathan Harl | |
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When Lego Star Wars came out for multiple systems last year, it came as a surprised to many people was how fun the game actually ended up being. With the Lego influence many critics thought that the game would end up being geared more towards younger children rather then teenagers/young adults, but fortunately for us they were wrong. In fact, the game ended up being such a hit that recently a sequel to the game was released in the form of Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Aside from being based on what are in my opinion the best three Star Wars movies, this sequel also improves many of the best features from the original. In fact, dare I say that this is possibly the most entertaining Star Wars game I’ve every played. For those of you who haven’t tried either of these games out, as the name suggests there is a very large Lego influence in this game. Namely, all of the characters, many of the environments including trees, and all of the vehicles are made up of those famous Lego pieces many of us played with as we were growing up. One of the cool outcomes of this is not only do enemies spew out Lego pieces whenever you defeat them, but the same goes for many things in the environment that you can destroy. There’s also a few sections in the game where you have to build items, such as a lever to open a door, out of spare Lego pieces lying around. While the previous Lego Star Wars covered the content of the newly created Episodes I-III, this new installment puts you back in the role of characters from the original three movies. The game starts you out in the Mos Eisley Cantina, which serves as a hub where you can enter various levels from the three Episodes, create your own Lego character, there’s also a shop where you can buy new characters, hints, and various other extras. There are six levels for each Episode, and initially you’ll only have access to the first level of Episode IV. Beating each level in turn gives you access to the next level and then the next Episode in succession. Now on to the good stuff: the gameplay. At its heart I would describe this game as a straight up action-adventure. The game splits you between fighting mobs of bad guys and solving various puzzles. Most of the puzzles do unfortunately end up being easy, especially since the game is fairly linear, but the action aspect of the game makes up for it. There are several character classes in the game, all of which are useful in different situations. First you have your jedi and dark jedi, with lightsaber attacks (of course) and force powers that can be used to manipulate the surroundings or enemies. Next, you have your ‘blaster’ characters, which I name as such because they only have blaster attacks. Coincidentally, these are the easiest characters to play with since the blaster attacks auto-aim. Then there are Bounty Hunters, which have the same attack pattern as a blaster character with the added bonus of being able to throw powerful bombs. Finally, you’ve got your droids that are useful for opening locked doors and getting to areas you couldn’t get to otherwise. In most levels you’re given a party with all the assorted character classes, and you can switch to different characters on the fly. There are also a few vehicle missions, such as the attack on the Death Star from Episode 4, that put you in the seat of either an X-wing or the Millenium Falcon. The controls on these missions are touchy and take a while to get used to, but they can be fun once you get the hang of it. Another part of this game that I really love are the various cut-scenes. These cut-scenes are thrown in on several levels of the game, and what’s enjoyable about them is the amount of humor that is thrown in. Take the famous scene where Darth Vader tells Luke Skywalker “I am your father.” Now, the lego people don’t talk (the game designers gave them their own little language that sounds like low-pitched mumbling), so to get the point across the cut-scene has Darth Vader showing Luke a badly drawn family picture of the two of them. Lego Star Wars II is quite frankly one of the most entertaining games I’ve played in quite a while. Even if you’re not a big Star Wars nerd like me, this game is still just down-right fun to play. And if you are a Star Wars, then well, that’s just going to make you enjoy this game that much more. The game is fairly short, so you could get a majority of what the game has to offer from a rent. |
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