LEGO Star Wars Review

After many years when JECO was my best friend, the occult powers of the FSN have invented a new game, called by some Revolution. LEGO was for a long while, at least for me, that vineyard surrounded by a hedge build up entirely of salesmen who were extremely polite but categorical in their refusal to give me some moments of intimacy with the little boxes containing, in my vision, the American dream. As the young fellows of my age couldn't take their eyes from the lingerie collections, my Neckermann was always opened at the chapter about LEGO. Perhaps this is the only way to explain my four or five summer holidays spent with a friend (from the category “very nice bourgeois”) and his sack full of little colored bricks.

You can imagine how I felt when I saw the last attempt of some producers: to get together LEGO and the PC, the two things that have marked my childhood and my adolescence… Accidentally between these two things has appeared also the second trilogy Star Wars, a trilogy I had been waiting for many years and when it finally appeared it didn't raise my interest at all.

If you would have expected to have in your hands the plastic model filled with Force of the young Luke, you would be very disappointed. Lego Star Wars concentrates exclusively on the metamorphoses of the little Anakin from the little, white and not smoking guy into the big, black, hard breathing guy. Thus, at the beginning you grab the two Scottish men (Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon) and you run through Phantom Menace using a wonderful laser stick. You will not be alone, because, an entire army of picturesque characters will jump to give you a hand of help (and of plastic too). After you had helped Qui-Gon and the young Obi to disassemble the entire evil army made of plastic that was sent against you and to dismember piece by piece the evil Darth Maul, you will be trapped in the Clones War.

After escaping the Fantom Menace and the Clones War you are heading towards the artificial cherry on the top of the cake with icing Force: The Third Episode or “The Revenge of the Sith”. In fact you will experience a “sneak peak” (also interactive) that is more interesting than the trailer that circulates on the internet for some time. However, although there are no dialogues (through out the game a suggestive and extremely fun pantomime has replaced the dialogues) The Third Episode contains some “disclosers” that some of you could consider as bad things.

Returning to the hands of help, I was telling you about in the lines above, they are indispensable in solving the little puzzles that abound in each level. If you remember Demon Stone you can observe some “small” resemblances. In fact both games use the same system of party. You control one tucumber, and the rest of them follow you as a flock of sheep waiting patiently for you to use them. Certain doors open only if the right “piece” rings the bell, and some places are available only to certain characters. The major difference between Demon Stone and LEGO Star Wars (at the game play level of course) is the aggressiveness of the characters. If in Demon Stone you didn't know how to stop the lunatics from jumping into battle in LEGO Star Wars the guys are just waiting, like sheep do, to be driven to the slather, and, with the exception of the mini Jedi with their gyp swords that reject the laser, all are lacking their conservation spirit. Their only virtue is that they realize their ineptitude and usually they don't stay in your way. Instead, when you need these characters to do some little job you can easily take over the control by pushing a single button, a button made up of… surprise..surprise…plastic!

When you play in the multiplayer mode the things get more and more exciting. It’s a big difference when the AI is replaced by your little child's brain or the neighbor's one. Like on the real play field, a LEGO game is more fun when you are not alone. Besides the itsy-bitsy problems raised by the position of the camera and the control (I strongly recommend at least one joy pad) a multiplayer game can be a “dream”. The producers worked enough at the graphics capture but made no abuse of special effects. The reflections don't overpass in quality the reflected object, the explosions don’t blind you and the lasers don’t enslave the whole population of pixels that dwells in the poor monitor. The purpose was not to hypnotize the gamer with a post-modern choreography of lights and sounding effects, but to create exactly the sensation you would have if you would wake up in the middle of the night and see the LEGO collection alive.

I don’t usually play “Star Wars” action games. I save myself for a RPG and occasionally for a FPS. But for LEGO Star Wars I have made an exception and this happened not because I had discovered the perfect game, but cause I had to! On one hand I have played once more with the little plastic bricks called LEGO and on the other hand I have had a lot of fun. LEGO Star Wars is an amusing and relaxing game and you rarely get to play such a game in our days when you can play a serious game for weeks without smiling.