Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga Review - Wii

7.5

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 7
Audio: 9
Multiplayer: 8
Innovation: 8

Introduction

A long time ago (not really) in a galaxy far, far away, some people at LucasArts thought “Hey, I wonder what would happen if we mixed the products of Lego, a popular building block company with one of the most well known and popular film franchises, Star Wars, and created a video game?”. When the idea was approved, they enlisted Traveller’s Tales to develop the game, and thus Lego Star Wars: The Video Game was born.

The game was a big hit, and popular with both Lego and Star Wars fans alike thanks to its tongue-in-cheek humour and unique approach to the Star Wars universe. Following on from the success of the original, Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy soon followed, meaning that the Lego Star Wars games now covered the entire Star Wars saga from episode 1 through 6. A little over one year later, we now see the release of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, a new edition which brings together the content of the two existing games onto one disc as a complete game, for all three next generation consoles, as well as the DS.

Gameplay

If you’ve played either of the two existing Lego Star Wars games, you can probably skip this section, as barely anything has changed in this edition, except for the controls (which I will explain a little later on). For those who haven’t dabbled in the series, the Lego Star Wars games place you in control of a range of perople, from the series’ most well known and prominent heroes to the most lowly background characters. This edition adds some new ones such as Watto, Boss Nass and Zam Wessel, and the total count of playable characters now comes to over 160. Which characters you control depends on which level you are playing as the story of Star Wars dictates. You unlock more characters as you go, and any new characters that you encounter/play as during the story are automatically unlocked once you complete the current level.

The actual gameplay is fairly simple. The game adopts a two-handed play style, and the controls go like this: You move using the stick on the nunchuk, press A on the remote to jump and press B on the nunchuk to attack with the favoured weapon of whichever character you are controlling (lightsaber or gun). You can also swing the remote like a lightsaber to attack when you are using this weapon, which makes for a more realistic and involving method of attack. It’s a pretty cool touch, and something that Star Wars fans will love despite its limit of just a few swings per attack. You use the Z button on the back of the nunchuk to use the Force (certain characters only), which comes in handy at various times and has varied effects depending on the situation.

Switching between the many characters on offer is an essential part of the gameplay, since every character is a different, even if it’s only in (continued next page)