I\'ll be 28 years old this year, which puts my birthday in 1980, meaning that I spent the entirety of my formative years deeply immersed in the Star Wars universe. My brothers owned every Star Wars toy manufactured, every trading card set (with complete sticker sets) and I must have seen the movies thirty times before I was old enough to know that a dude in a bathrobe with a flashlight just looks silly (Worst. Prom. Ever.). Thanks to an unfortunate garage sale on the way out of New Mexico, I never received the Star Wars toys (which wouldn\'t annoy me, were it not for the fact that my brothers had a plastic cape Jawa that could probably buy me some really nice things, provided I didn\'t suffocate on it), so my favorite toy during my childhood was my five gallon tub of Legos, which I basically used to rebuild all the Star Wars toys that were denied from me (I hope you\'re reading this, Mom).
You can understand, then, how this game scratches an itch that I\'ve personally had for a very long time. As most hardcore gamers no doubt know, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a translation of the stories and characters of the Star Wars movie franchise into a platform game with the environments and characters being assembled entirely of digital Lego blocks. This game serves as a compilation of the prior two entries in the series, covering all of the movies in the franchise and adding some bonus content to entice individuals who might own one or both of the prior releases (most notably the ability to play online).
Graphically speaking the game doesn\'t really dazzle, but to its credit, it\'s not supposed to. The thing about Lego blocks is that they\'re, well, blocky. The game environment actually looks like it was assembled using Lego bricks, which would lead some to conclude that it makes inadequate use of the advanced graphical hardware available on modern consoles. That\'s certainly true to an extent - this isn\'t a graphical triumph in the vein of Halo 3 or Gears of War. What\'s here is rendered crisp and clean, however, and I didn\'t have any problems with the graphics during play. The game uses bright colors and tries to make all the environments look interesting, which is pretty much all you need from a game.
Sound in Lego Star Wars is really a mixed bag. The developers (Traveller\'s Tales) worked closely with LucasArts to obtain access to the original music and sound effects from the films, which are rendered faithfully and included in all the right places. To its great detriment, that\'s pretty much ALL the developers procured. There\'s almost no spoken dialogue, and what is included is mostly grunting, snorting and other assorted quasi-verbal events. I understand what the developers were aiming for conceptually (the game, after all, simulates playing with your own personal set of Lego Star Wars toys, and the expense of keeping a staff of voice actors in your closet renders it an impossibility for most folks), but after about an hour of play I was very hungry for another human voice, or at least some words to read.
One interesting aspect of the Lego Star Wars series as a whole and this game in particular is its difficulty, or, rather, its lack thereof. It\'s almost completely impossible to "lose" in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Any time your miniature avatar is killed, he breaks apart and you, the player, are penalized a few of the collectable Lego bricks that stand in for money in the game. That\'s all. You pop back up within a reasonable distance of where you died and continue on your course unperturbed. That makes the game absolutely perfect for younger gamers, who might be frustrated with a more difficult or unforgiving platformer. I have a personal friend who has completed titles in the series with one of his young children - a good way for him to share his hobby with his kids, given that their mother might have some objections to their sitting and observing his conduct in, for example, Rainbow 6: Vegas. "Hardcore" gamers, however, may find the impossibility of defeat a little boring.
My only real gripe with the game has to do with the draw that the designers built in to keep you playing. As you progress through the levels in Story Mode, you\'ll no doubt notice a few things (mini-canisters of Lego bricks that build a special vehicle, extra power bricks that let you enable game-changing special effects, etc.) that you simply can\'t get to in the course of normal play. In order to pick up these items you have to go back through the game in "Free Play" mode, using other characters. That\'s certainly fine, but it seems like a bit of lazy design to me to out-and-out disallow acquisition of these items that I can clearly see strewn about the environment the first time I play through, no matter how hard I might try. As a matter of fact, I actually wasted the better part of half an hour trying to find a way to grab an item I could clearly see, but only found out later, online, that I could only reach if I came back through a second time with Jar Jar Binks in tow.
The game also suffers from a few lingering design complications and annoyances that probably should have been resolved before release. For example, when going into Free Play, both players receive separate selection boxes on the character selection screen, regardless of whether or not two players are actually playing the game. The result is that you end up getting saddled with one character by default whose selection you cannot change without connecting another controller to the console. The top down vehicle levels are decidedly bland as well, with the entertaining ones (Death Star Trench Run) only highlighting the busy backgrounds, difficult to distinguish vehicles and boring, repetitive gameplay in the other vehicle segments.
Ultimately, it\'s hard to make a flat recommendation. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga is perfect for its target audience, but folks outside of that group could easily find the game boring and mundane. Anybody who has both of the prior entries in the series has most of the material present in this release already (albeit, not as well integrated) and probably won\'t find much new stuff of interest to entertain them unless they\'ve REALLY been jonesing to play online with their friends. For parents, young gamers, or anybody who loves Star Wars and Lego, this game should be immensely entertaining and a particularly good way for gaming parents to share their hobby with their children. Hardcore gamers and players looking for something to challenge them to the point that they\'ll want to tear their hair out would best look elsewhere for their entertainment.
"LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (X360)" is on sale November 6, 2007 and is rated E10+. Adventure.
