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IGN Review of LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
Last year, Amaze surprised the heck out of us -- or rather, me -- with its Game Boy Advance rendition of the wonderfully clever, original Lego Star Wars console game design. Sure it had to be developed with restrictions, and sure the game wasn't quite as variety filled as the bigger console productions. But darn it, those guys did a great job capturing all the elements that made LEGO Star Wars so darn cool on the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. What a shame those games had to be based on the -- shudder -- prequel trilogy instead of the Original Series.
It's time to rejoice, folks. The LEGO Star Wars series was a success across the board, so much so that the original development team worked its design magic to recreate the fun action of the original game, but in the cooler and much more familiar Episode IV, V, and VI environments -- and judging from our console reviewers, the design is, once again, a success. What's more, the same team that brought us the Game Boy Advance conversion last year developed LEGO Star Wars II for the handheld, working in more of the console design elements onto the more limited 2D platform. It's a beefier product with much more ambition, but with more ambition comes problems. It's still a really good, fun, and creative Star Wars action title, but it's hard to ignore some of the quirky residue.
At its core, LEGO Star Wars utilizes the plastic, jointed, inch-tall LEGO beings and connecting blocks to tell the story of the immensely popular three movie science fiction epic. Everyone's seen the movies, so everyone knows the plots. If you don't, well, it'll be hard to follow along in the Game Boy Advance version since the characters don't even pantomime dialog with wildly animated movements -- they simply "talk" with visual voice bubbles that are a little difficult to translate. If you know the movies front, back, inside and out, you'll definitely appreciate the visual jokes since the game really doesn't take itself seriously at all.
The game's all action, segmenting its levels into key points in the Star Wars episodes. Most missions require simply running through environments shooting or slashing enemies with blasters or light sabers in a top-down, three-quarter isometric view of the level to "emulate" a 3D environment. Scattered throughout these levels are puzzle elements that require a little more thought -- building a bridge out of LEGO bricks using the force, or activating a door panel by switching to a specific character or donning a stormtrooper helmet. But the challenge isn't to figure out how to complete a level -- it's more staying alive and completing it with as many LEGO bits as possible. You don't lose a life when you die -- you lose collected LEGO bits, and when a lot of the game's reward is in its unlockable extras, like characters, cheats, and tricks, you want to hold onto as many of those little tokens as you can. And though it's not hard to blast through these levels, to do so unscathed enough to open up the long list of goodies is one heck of a challenge.
LEGO Star Wars II tries to one-up everything that the team did in the first game, and for the most part Amaze succeeded -- LEGO Star Wars II is a better, more fulfilling game than the original was on the Game Boy Advance. There are far more playable characters, and in many levels, multiple characters to swap between during the action. There are also vehicular challenges, like the trench battle in Episode IV, that are different enough to add a bit more variety to the run-and-gun gameplay.
The problem is, the team tried to employ a bit too much, and the restrictions and limitations of the Game Boy Advance, as well as the team's engine running on it, rear their heads much more frequently in this game. Enter a room and return, and everything you've accomplished gets forgotten -- previously unlocked doors once again lock themselves, all enemies that have been destroyed are magically reborn, switches flipped become reset. Familiar perspective glitches are very apparent in LEGO Star Wars II: items that should be within reach are untouchable due to wonky isometric collision, and computer controlled characters wander through doorways that you haven't yet unlocked. Slowdown is still here, though it's been cleaned up significantly since the original LEGO Star Wars last year.
And with too much comes not enough. The Game Boy Advance doesn't have the power nor the cartridge space to provide the full-on cinematics of the console games, so it's acceptable to be lacking in the storytelling. But there are huge gaps from level to level that really shouldn't be there, and even though we know the story like the back of our hand, it's still a bit jarring to go from the rescue of Leia straight into the attack on the Death Star without any sort of transitional cutscene. And the Death Star simply blows up without any fanfare, making this the Star Wars game with the weakest trench run ever.
Still, the Amaze team did a great job keeping up with the Joneses on the weak GBA. A ton of animation frames for a ton of playable characters, smooth animation sequences for the "build an object" tasks in the levels, and a nice assortment of music and sound samples from the Star Wars audio library compliment the production value nicely. It's a little disappointing that the GBA game has cooperative levels this time, yet didn't offer link support for the ten or so Game Boy Advance owners still lugging around cables and a second system.
©2006-09-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
It's time to rejoice, folks. The LEGO Star Wars series was a success across the board, so much so that the original development team worked its design magic to recreate the fun action of the original game, but in the cooler and much more familiar Episode IV, V, and VI environments -- and judging from our console reviewers, the design is, once again, a success. What's more, the same team that brought us the Game Boy Advance conversion last year developed LEGO Star Wars II for the handheld, working in more of the console design elements onto the more limited 2D platform. It's a beefier product with much more ambition, but with more ambition comes problems. It's still a really good, fun, and creative Star Wars action title, but it's hard to ignore some of the quirky residue.
At its core, LEGO Star Wars utilizes the plastic, jointed, inch-tall LEGO beings and connecting blocks to tell the story of the immensely popular three movie science fiction epic. Everyone's seen the movies, so everyone knows the plots. If you don't, well, it'll be hard to follow along in the Game Boy Advance version since the characters don't even pantomime dialog with wildly animated movements -- they simply "talk" with visual voice bubbles that are a little difficult to translate. If you know the movies front, back, inside and out, you'll definitely appreciate the visual jokes since the game really doesn't take itself seriously at all.
The game's all action, segmenting its levels into key points in the Star Wars episodes. Most missions require simply running through environments shooting or slashing enemies with blasters or light sabers in a top-down, three-quarter isometric view of the level to "emulate" a 3D environment. Scattered throughout these levels are puzzle elements that require a little more thought -- building a bridge out of LEGO bricks using the force, or activating a door panel by switching to a specific character or donning a stormtrooper helmet. But the challenge isn't to figure out how to complete a level -- it's more staying alive and completing it with as many LEGO bits as possible. You don't lose a life when you die -- you lose collected LEGO bits, and when a lot of the game's reward is in its unlockable extras, like characters, cheats, and tricks, you want to hold onto as many of those little tokens as you can. And though it's not hard to blast through these levels, to do so unscathed enough to open up the long list of goodies is one heck of a challenge.
LEGO Star Wars II tries to one-up everything that the team did in the first game, and for the most part Amaze succeeded -- LEGO Star Wars II is a better, more fulfilling game than the original was on the Game Boy Advance. There are far more playable characters, and in many levels, multiple characters to swap between during the action. There are also vehicular challenges, like the trench battle in Episode IV, that are different enough to add a bit more variety to the run-and-gun gameplay.
The problem is, the team tried to employ a bit too much, and the restrictions and limitations of the Game Boy Advance, as well as the team's engine running on it, rear their heads much more frequently in this game. Enter a room and return, and everything you've accomplished gets forgotten -- previously unlocked doors once again lock themselves, all enemies that have been destroyed are magically reborn, switches flipped become reset. Familiar perspective glitches are very apparent in LEGO Star Wars II: items that should be within reach are untouchable due to wonky isometric collision, and computer controlled characters wander through doorways that you haven't yet unlocked. Slowdown is still here, though it's been cleaned up significantly since the original LEGO Star Wars last year.
And with too much comes not enough. The Game Boy Advance doesn't have the power nor the cartridge space to provide the full-on cinematics of the console games, so it's acceptable to be lacking in the storytelling. But there are huge gaps from level to level that really shouldn't be there, and even though we know the story like the back of our hand, it's still a bit jarring to go from the rescue of Leia straight into the attack on the Death Star without any sort of transitional cutscene. And the Death Star simply blows up without any fanfare, making this the Star Wars game with the weakest trench run ever.
Still, the Amaze team did a great job keeping up with the Joneses on the weak GBA. A ton of animation frames for a ton of playable characters, smooth animation sequences for the "build an object" tasks in the levels, and a nice assortment of music and sound samples from the Star Wars audio library compliment the production value nicely. It's a little disappointing that the GBA game has cooperative levels this time, yet didn't offer link support for the ten or so Game Boy Advance owners still lugging around cables and a second system.
©2006-09-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved