Lego Star Wars: The Video Game

I am not going to try and pretend that this review won't be biased in the slightest. The original Lego Star Wars was one of the first games I had ever played and a game I still hold dearly to this day. Going back to play it with my brother again to me back to all the simple fun the game had to offer. As a little kid I loved slowly going through all the levels and uncovering every little secret the game had to offer. I would be contempt even just running around the main hub and swapping between all the characters I unlocked through cheats or playing tag with the Gonk droid.

Actually going back to play the game was still a blast. Yes it is an extremely simple game tailored to small children but I have yet to find someone who doesn't get a kick out of it. Being the first Travelers Tales Lego game a lot of the essential quality of life improvements are missing. No proper spiltscreen exists unless you play the complete saga version which I would recommend over the original in a heartbeat. What was really interesting to me was how tame the comedy elements were. Late Lego Games go so overboard with their jokes that its interesting to see what constitutes for a joke in this game could be just be someone shrugging in a cutscene or hiding behind cover.

Though it is very simplistic, this game I feel is kind of timeless with its charm. It's a game I could easily see kids enjoying today still. At the very least it is what got me into Star Wars which nowadays could very be a bad thing. Regardless, those old memories of me playing this game will hopefully stick with me for a long time.

Let us celebrate the fourth of May with an essential piece of my childhood. Back in 2005, integrating Lego with Star Wars in the fashion of a video game seemed more than ideal. The aesthetic design of Lego in a video game was so appealing. Besides, what kid wouldn’t want a combination of Star Wars, Legos, and video games? Those three things separately are the holy trinity of youth. Combined together, they made for the ideal concoction for any kid. Since this game came out, the studio that makes these games have milked the concept of making licensed video games with the Lego aesthetic. Batman, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, even Rock Band have all gotten the Lego treatment. I even hear there's word of a Lego Call Me By Your Name in the works. As simple as the Lego games are, none of them are as simple as the first Lego Star Wars. The game didn’t need to be all that complex and multifaceted anyways, all they really needed was the mix of Lego and a blockbuster franchise and kids would eat it up like a birthday cake. I certainly did. The first Lego Star Wars is practically a point of reference for how far the series has come and what has stayed the same. Lego Star Wars was the jumping-off point of the Lego franchise, a beta-test to see what worked with the Lego foreground.

The game begins the way any other piece of Star Wars media begins: the John Williams theme blaring with the big yellow Star Wars text. It certainly feels and sounds like Star Wars. Once you actually start the game, you play as Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi. The hub world is the cantina from Attack of the Clones and the doors are labeled 1, 2, and 3 with roman numerals. This is when you realize that your unique Lego experience will have to be through the dreaded prequel trilogy. This was in tandem with the release of Episode III that same year, so I suppose it made sense to tie the first Lego Star Wars with that. The fact of this does not make for an unpleasant experience, however, so don’t write it off just yet. Being that this game served as a beta-test for the Lego blockbuster franchise, the awkward aspects that come with the first game of a series. Wouldn’t it be better to test these out with the subpar prequel trilogy than the original trilogy? It also turns out that implementing the Lego-style with the prequels makes them far more enjoyable.

Each prequel film is reenacted by Lego characters that resemble those found in each movie. The story is told in six different parts going in chronological order. Attack of the Clones only had five sections for some reason. I don’t remember the movie starting with Obi-Wan going to Kamino. The presentation is comically sparse as there isn’t any dialogue between the characters. Each film sort of plays out like a silent-era comedy with only so many methods to illustrate the events of the movies. One could argue that someone would need to see the movies in order to understand what’s going on, but have you seen these movies? George Lucas couldn’t even tell you the plot of these movies. I much prefer telling these half-assed stories through silly Lego figures than the actual movies.

As you progress through the game, you get a chance to play every fathomable Star Wars character from the prequel trilogy. Every Jedi, guard, Wookie, and even every clunky droid are accounted for. Essentially, the types of characters you’ll play boil down to those four types. The Jedis wield lightsabers and deflect laser shots with them. They also use the force to manipulate objects and defeat enemies. They can also double jump and execute a force jump if performed correctly. With all of this in mind, why would anyone else choose to be anything but a Jedi? Most story missions force you to play as other characters to diversify the gameplay. Characters like Padme and Chewbacca use projectile weapons and they can use a zip line gadget that propels them upward. Some characters like Jar-Jar can jump to greater heights. Droids move slowly and can’t attack, but they open doors to progress through the level. There are a couple of unique characters that play differently from the others. Jango Fett can hover and his gun does more damage. Yoda hovers in a chair until he unsheathes his lightsaber, then he’s as apeshit as he is fighting Count Dooku in the film.

There are tons of characters you play through the story and tons of other characters unlock. While there are tons of characters to choose from, most of them boil down to these four character types with not much variation. As much as I usually enjoy games with multiple play styles, playing as anything other than the Jedis is kind of lame. You switch between the characters through some incorporeal blue matter which is easy enough, but I still feel like this breaks up the pace of the gameplay. The optimal way to experience this game is with another person in co-op, but everyone starts to draw straws on who is going to switch to the droids when needed. There’s no way anyone is happy switching from a lightsaber wielder to someone else.

The game is pretty simple, and I guess that comes with the Lego foreground, targeting younger audiences. The levels are very linear and the puzzles are very easy. The enemy types are usually battle droids that shoot projectiles which can be easily dealt with by blocking their shots. Once you die, the only consequence is losing a few studs, the currency of this game. There are a few vehicle levels like the pod racing from Episode I and one from Episode II to switch up the gameplay. For some reason, these levels don’t abide by the same rules as the other levels and have checkpoints you go back to if you die, making these the hardest levels in the game and an inconsistency with the difficulty. Boss battles are simple, but very well-paced. There are other Star Wars games that execute the lightsaber duels better, but the ones here are pretty fun.

Lego Star Wars is also a game that you will get the most out of if you complete it 100%. It’s not as if people playing this don’t know the plots of these films (or know them as much as humanly possible), so the story isn’t exactly the selling point here even if depicting the films with the Lego-style is charming. The goal for this game is to fill up the stud total gauge in each level which is always present at the top center of the screen. This will fill up when you get a certain sum of studs in every level which gives some weight to the monetary penalty of dying. There are also ten superkits in each level and collecting all of them will display a vehicle from the Star Wars Universe in the cantina hub world. It’s fairly neat, but you will also earn a ton of money if you do this which is the real reason to do this. You’ll need to collect a lot of studs. It's fairly grind intensive but if the novelty of collecting all of these Star Wars characters hasn’t worn off on you, it’s relatively satisfying to get everything in the game. Once you do this, an extra level unlocks where you get to play as Darth Vader in the first moments of A New Hope. It doesn’t seem like much but considering this was the first and only Lego Star Wars game, my brother and I reveled in playing as Darth Vader after we earned it.

The starting point of the Lego blockbuster franchise was a fairly humbling one. It’s a simple game with plenty of content to offer for any Star Wars fan. However, this game has not aged very well in my eyes. It’s not from a point of the game showing its age, but rather my aging. I liked this game as a kid because it was a charming way to play through three different Star Wars movies, but I also liked it because it was simple and easy. Now that I prefer games that give me a substantial challenge, the novelty this game offers doesn’t appeal to me as much as it did fifteen years ago. It also doesn’t help that the full extent of this novelty warrants grinding to buy every character. It’s a fun game to play through with someone else, especially if you’re at a young age, but the simplicity of it will run thin for any experienced gamer. However, I will give this game the benefit of being the launch point for the Lego blockbuster series and they have improved on this formula in every subsequent Lego game. ...Or did they?

Where it all started. The prequel films are just a plain bad stepping stone for the series, evidenced by Attack of the Clones having one fewer level in this game and forcing a contrived inclusion to meet the standard in the Complete Saga. Otherwise, it kind of holds up. It had the best implementation of jump-in/jump-out co-op back then and featured some inspired use of level transitions and open space to keep the action going, and the puzzle and combat design was just right, good enough to keep you going for all the unlockables.

For better or worse this is the lego game that started it all. After this lego games were popping up every year and selling like crack cocaine. The games were mainly targeted towards kids and the casual gaming audience. I mean this game came out when I was a huge Star Wars fan so I decided to check it out, even if it was a bit kiddish. And well, it was what it was, a really easy action game where you solve really easy puzzles, fight easy enemies, and its essentially impossible to fail or get a game over. I mean don't get me wrong it was mildly amusing to replay the main moments of the prequel trilogy in lego form, there were some really awkward and kind of funny cutscenes, and it was cool having a variety of characters to play as. But this really is the definition of a little kid game, its too easy, it gets really repetitive, and its pretty short. I mean thats pretty much what all the lego games are, they are games to play as kids with a friend and then move on to more complex and mature games, and well these games have decent production and are designed particularly bad, they just aren't that much when once you hit a certain age.