April 25, 2005 - With the release of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith only weeks away, Star Wars merchandise has been flying off the shelves faster than a wookie on speed. With this in mind, the creative minds at UK game studios Giant Entertainment and Traveller’s Tales have teamed up with publisher Eidos to transform the inanimate world of LEGO into a full-blown 3d environment featuring pint-sized versions of all your favourite Star Wars characters. The result – LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game. Thankfully, their efforts do not disappoint.

LEGO Star Wars supports either one or two players via keyboard or game controller. The keyboard can be a bit clumsy at times for handling the diverse angles of the game’s 3D environment, so a simple USB gamepad is highly recommended. Regardless of what device is used, controls are fully customizable from the game’s main menu. A particularly intuitive feature is the instant drop-in and drop-out feature for the second player; this allows parents to pop in to the room, play along with their child for a bit, and then leave to continue cooking dinner with minimal hassle.

Players begin their journey in Dexter’s Diner, the ‘50s-style restaurant featured in Episode II. This unlikely location serves as the hub of activity for the game. From here, one can choose to play individual levels, assemble different teams of characters, and even purchase kid-friendly extra features like silly blasters and moustaches. Each of the three prequel episodes has its own doorway, although initially only Episode I is open for exploration. Once players advance through an episode door, they enter a separate room with numbered doors leading to the different chapters. Players must navigate through each chapter sequentially in order to progress through the game; however, completed chapters can be revisited to achieve additional objectives and earn more points.

LEGO Star Wars only truly opens up once players complete the Trade Negotiations level from Episode I. At this point Episodes II and III are unlocked, and the real lightsaber-swinging fun begins. Each level opens with a little cut-scene that fills in the plot and helps situate the events. When gameplay commences, you typically start out with two or three characters at your disposal. Health is measured by a heart meter in the upper left corner of the screen. If all four hearts disappear, the character explodes into a shower of LEGO pieces and a portion of the total collected studs – the game’s currency – are lost.

The levels are set up in such a way that you really can’t take a wrong turn, so the opportunity for exploration is kind of limited. The basic objectives are pretty straight-forward: gather as many little LEGO studs as possible, vanquish your enemies, and solve any mini-puzzles and challenges you may come across. Some objectives require the special abilities of a particular character – like Queen Amidala’s grappling hook or R2D2’s door opening thingy – to accomplish. The game is very streamlined in this regard since you can switch characters on the fly with a simple keystroke.

One nice feature of LEGO Star Wars is its replay value. This is facilitated by the availability of two game modes: story line and free play. Players must first follow the movie story lines to progress through the game and unlock levels. At the end of each level, all the major characters become available for use in free play mode. This allows players to go back and complete bonus objectives – such as collecting hidden LEGO canisters or collecting enough studs to achieve true Jedi status – with characters that weren’t available in the story. The ten LEGO canisters hidden throughout each level are a particularly clever idea since each one contains a piece of mini-kit vehicle. Collect all ten, and the vehicle appears in the parking lot outside of Dexter’s. And what better way to market LEGO min-kits than to build them right into the game environment.

The graphics are another high point of LEGO Star Wars. The environments are nicely rendered using vibrant colours and high-detail textures with the help of Pixel Shader technology. Lighting effects are minimal, but the lightsabers do give off an authentic glow that’s faithful to the films. The game also sports some great particle effects such as sparks created by blaster fire ricochet and debris from explosions. Perhaps my only complaint about the graphics is the lack of advanced tweaking options. The game offers settings from low to high depending on the capabilities of your graphics card, but it doesn’t allow users to fiddle with individual settings like character detail. Considering that most games today offer at least some graphics tuning, this is a slight drawback. As well, the use of Pixel Shader unfortunately precludes those with anything less than a Radeon 8500 or GeForce3/4 Ti series card (my condolences to those with a GeForce4 MX).

The sound in LEGO Star Wars is satisfactory in that it doesn’t hold the game back in any respect, but it’s also nothing to write home about. John William’s wonderful soundtrack provides the background music for the game, with sound effects mostly drawn from the films as well. Lightsabers emit their trademark electric hum, battle droids let out the occasional “uh oh”, and R2D2 blathers on in his usual monologue of beeps and whistles. Apart from that, voice acting is pretty much non-existent. While one can convincingly argue that LEGO people aren’t blessed with the gift of speech, the lack of voices or subtitles limits the target audience to those already familiar with the movies. In the end, though, this probably makes for a much better gaming experience; a tiny plastic talking Obi-wan would likely rob the game of any and all credibility.

After playing the game for a few minutes, it becomes obvious that character AI is not particularly advanced. Your fellow teammates provide adequate cover, but they rarely go the distance in killing off enemies. On more than one occasion, they could also be observed committing suicide by randomly walking off cliffs. Enemy AI is equally primitive. In the first few levels, the enemies pretty much stand around waiting to be attacked; as the game progresses, they slowly start backing away. Considering this is a game primarily geared toward kids, though, strong AI needn’t be its strong suit.

My one other grievance with this title is that some sequences are disproportionately hard compared to the rest of the game. For the most part, LEGO Star Wars is very easy; it’s actually impossible to die, and there’s a generous margin of error to boot. It would make sense, then, to have the game grow gradually harder or just remain constant. Having sporadically difficult areas, like the Episode I pod race, just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the title. On top of that, the game is often unnecessarily hard due to bad camera angles rather than any sort of genuine challenge. This makes for some frustrating moments in an otherwise enjoyable gameplay experience.

On the whole, LEGO Star Wars is a fun albeit eccentric addition to the 2005 PC game line-up. The title will appeal to both kids and adults alike, and there’s enough replay value to keep the whippersnappers occupied for a good chunk of the summer. Graphically, the game shines through its use of hardware rendering techniques and unique character design. Most importantly, LEGO Star Wars remains faithful to the spirit of the movies. Rather than being a LEGO game with some Star Wars elements, this title comes off as a Star Wars game that happens to feature LEGO. For a Star Wars fan like me, this is likely the single best compliment I could bestow on this game.