LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

Story 4/10

To be perfectly honest, I had no idea what the basis was for this game which, in terms of the Star Wars timeline, takes place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, so I had to look it up and found that there is currently an animated TV series. As I had never watched the series, I found it hard to relate to any storyline that was taking place in the background in between the LEGO related fun which caused me to switch off. I thought the cut scenes were a lot less engaging and humorous at the ones in the game’s predecessor.

That said, I did enjoy the clone/droid battle that takes place on the opening screen. It is quite amusing.

Picture 8/10

This one has to go up from Pirates of the Caribbean because the graphics have been given an overhaul. The look of the game is a lot smoother and they’ve made a lot more out of the destructible objects element. When you destroy objects, instead of the LEGO bricks disappearing almost instantly, they hang around for a bit and very often get in your way which is much more realistic, although I’m not sure fans of the series play the games for the realism aspect... but more on that later.

Sound 8/10

Not really a lot to say here, it sticks to the Star Wars tradition with a little up-tempo version of the all-familiar soundtrack and it is very fitting to the game.

Gameplay 4/10

Things can get a little samey in the LEGO world, especially when you are on number three in a series relating to the same franchise. I’ve got a lot of respect for the fact that LEGO Star Wars III tries to mix things up.

There are now two elements to the main game. You have the standard normal levels where you battle through various LEGO environments to fight bosses and save people. However, now you also have these ground battle environments where you have to fight across a load of enemy bases and have to destroy certain buildings or targets.

In short these new additions are really... boring. These levels add an unnecessary exploration element to the game which slows it down. On top of this, if you strive for the 100% completion, you have to do these types of battles twice for both the good and evil sides which I found to be a royal pain in the ass, unnecessarily repetitive and soul destroying.

There are also space missions on each planet which are another repetitive ball-ache where you have to fly around in space destroying various bits and pieces.

Picking up from where I left off earlier, the new destructive blocks that constantly get in your way may be an improvement in some areas but they also hinder the player’s ability to sensibly navigate through levels.

Also, they seemed to have changed the functionality of how the force is used. When using the force you can now move things around freely... in a constricted kind of way. Getting these objects to where you want them to go can be frustrating but it is also quite forgiving in places. However, there is one level where you have to build a stairway out of four LEGO blocks and the user-friendliness of the force was so bad that I could not select the blocks I wanted to move despite trying to stand in about four-hundred different positions. This produced a lot more than the usual expletives to come pouring out of my mouth.

Achievements – 1,000 points – 48 achievements

The biggest problem I have with LEGO Star Wars III is that it is similar to Soul Calibur in that I was done with new stuff about 5 hours before I got to 100%. The last bits were grinding out the stupid space missions and ground battles which was a bit boring to say the least.

The achievements themselves, bar the last two, are quite varied and force you to try most aspects of the game in order to get them all.

I want to take a moment to talk about codes, those useful little things which can aid gamers to get to full completion without having to work too hard.

In LEGO games, you can collect Red Bricks which give you special abilities such as invincibility or stud mulltipliers. I don’t consider using these bricks as cheating if they are unlocked through gameplay, especially as they remove a lot of the monotonous aspects, such as having to replay ground assaults because you constantly die and run out of time. However, I do consider it cheating to use codes to unlock the bricks and I was quite surprised to see that using the codes does not disable the achievements like they do in lots of other Xbox360 games.

The amount of studs you need to unlock all the red bricks is really high and it takes a while to do even using the stud multipliers as they become available. So I don’t really like that my hard work and effort can be mimicked by someone typing a few codes off the internet. Oh yeah, and there is an achievement for unlocking all the red bricks which is incidentally called ‘Cheat!’

Downloadable Content – N/A

Summary

It’s not as good as LEGO Star Wars II but it is another alright game to pass the time, especially if you don’t want to think too much about what you’re doing. This will probably be it for me on the LEGO front for at least another year and unless the next LEGO game I play is remarkably different, I doubt I will post a... a long review about it.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Story – 8/10

First off, like any typical Star Wars game, there are two endings, one for the light side and one for the dark side. What I really liked was that a specific ending is designed to fit in with the franchise storyline. I’m sure there are some errors with this, as would always be the case with a prequel in the middle of the series, however, it really worked for me, especially as a fan of the franchise.

Picture – 5/10

The graphics are not that great, even though the game was released in 2008. There are a lot of background stuff that kind of gets in the way a lot of the time and it’s not very neat and often takes away from the gameplay.

Sound – 9/10

Like any endorsed Star Wars game, it uses the familiar soundtrack which never fails to be epic. Darth Vader and the emperor are almost carbon copies of the movies despite being voiced by different people. Having checked this on IMDb, I also found it very strange that Starkiller's appearance is modelled on the actor that voices him!

Gameplay – 2/10

This is where the game can suck my dick. Getting the above right should always come secondary to making a decent game. However, at some points the game is unplayable. The best example of this is the fight with Kazdan Paratus at the end of level two. There is no pattern or consistency to his attacks. If you use one ability, it will work, if you use it again, it won’t. There is no rhyme or reason for this – it just seems to depend on how the game is feeling that day.

Also the camera controls leave a lot to be desired. Walking close to a wall will upset the camera and often cause it to point directly at wall. This would normally happen when I was fighting purge troopers which means you only have 2 seconds to live on Sith Master and I really resent dying because the camera didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to look at the guy that’s attacking me.

Which links nicely with my next point – the lock on system is a pile of garbage. It is automatic apparently but there is no way for it to differentiate between say... an angry Felucian Warrior and... a rock. So when I’m fighting three bad guys at once and try to do force lightening on them and end up shocking the nearest rock you can imagine the difficulty in not launching the controller at the wall.

Achievements – 1,345 points – 59 Achievements

So in order for a game to be reviewable, I have to obtain all the achievements, which I managed over the course of a month. The main difficulty with this is the Sith Master achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficultly level. This would have been easier if the controls were good, however, this difficulty leaves it more down to luck than skill.

Downloadable Content – Value for money?

The short answer is no. There are two DLCs that feature achievements and they are both overpriced, especially considering the game was released in 2008 and has a sequel. They are also painfully short for what they are.

Summary

Was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed worth playing the whole way through? Probably not. The story drives it and the game play elements feel like interference; something a game should be ashamed of.