They're back, and they're more customisable than ever! Lego Star Wars is thankfully returning in the incarnation we wanted to see from day one: the Original Trilogy!
Episodes 4, 5 and 6 will be represented on the Xbox 360, Xbox and Playstation this September by those hilarious little animated plastic men. This extension of the original Lego Star Wars game keeps the core gameplay including co-op intact while offering a few noticeable and welcome tweaks with its trademark emphasis on humour. All vehicles can now be piloted by either player, customised, and in some cases such as Luke's Landspeeder, washed and sold to scavenging Jawas.
The vehicles play a bigger role this time around and there is nothing quite like soaring through the corridors on the surface of the Death Star in your Lego X-Wing, or taking a brick Millenium Falcon through a meteor field. Some vehicles must be built first via the game's many puzzles, like the AT-ST in Mos Eisley using your Force-building powers. Any character other than droids has the ability to build vehicles and other objects, unlike the first game where only Jedi possessed this skill. LucasArts defines this tactic as “building with purpose” since almost everything built is a necessary component or answer puzzle needed to move forward through a level. Speaking of skills, the Jedi now have a more robust repertoire of Force abilities at their disposal.
Look for Force chokes, Force lightning and a couple other surprises coming from the Emperor, Darth Vader and other lightsaber wielding followers of the ancient religion. Non-Jedi characters have now been given their own unique attacks to spread the wealth such as Chewbacca's arm-out-of-socket move (classic!), Lando's martial arts kick and slave Leia's dance attack…although we're not too sure about this one ourselves.
The meat of new additions comes in the form of either a single or multiplayer character customisation lab where literally millions of character combinations can be created by easily putting together various different Lego Star Wars pieces. Each combination yields one of many freaky CPU generated names that LucasArts is adding to on a daily basis, such as Yodarth, See-Chewpio or Princess Obi-Wan Kejawa.
Revisiting the Lego Star Wars series is perhaps the easiest sequel for LucasArts to nail because it was almost perfect in the first game. All they needed to do was build upon a sound foundation laid by the prequel Lego Star Wars title without tinkering with what works for the sake of unnecessary change.
They did just that with new additions complimenting gameplay instead of impeding it and along with the brilliant subject matter of the original trilogy – makes this a game to be enjoyed by all ages.