19 out of 19 people found this review helpful.
More fun than the first one
Date of Review: Jun 18, 2007
The Bottom Line: I didn't recommend the first Lego Star Wars game, but this one is much funner!
INTRODUCTION
The first installment of the Lego Star Wars games was all right. It took some getting used to, but it was kinda fun. The first one spans Episodes 1, 2 and 3. This second game covers Episodes 4, 5 and 6. Much of the same elements of the first one get carried over to the second game, but with some noticeable changes.
THE FUN FACTOR
I will admit part of the increased fun factor in Lego Star Wars 2 is the fact that I am much more familiar with the older Star Wars movies. While I've seen the newer movies once or twice, I have seen the first three released movies more than five times.
Another thing that makes this game funner than the first is a wider variety of missions. In addition to controlling two characters and running around various scenes and solving puzzles, you will also get to control more vehicles. You fly an X-wing over the Death Star, shooting out defenses and finding the weakness. You get to experience the high-speed chase through the Endor forest. You get to control the Milennium falcon on different space battles. You can knock enemies out their AT-ST machines and climb in yourself, squashing enemies beneath your metal feet. You buzz around in speeders, towing bombs to strategic locations. So many games mire themselves in repetetiveness, this game definitely does not.
The cut-scenes are also noticeably funnier. I loved them. They are not only cute, but humorous as well. They make finishing a level well worth it.
GAMEPLAY
As with the first game, you control various characters from the movies, depending on which scene you are playing. During free-play mode you can choose from multiple characters. Each character type has a specific funtion, for example Jedis have force powers, blaster users can shoot and use grapple hooks, droids open doors. There are a couple extra character types - bounty hunters and storm troopers - for entering certain areas that only allow those types of characters. Nearly all the levels have areas that are inaccessible the first time you play them. You have to go back later with the right character to unlock those secrets.
I've noticed that it's now a lot harder to kill enemies with Jedi characters. I'm not sure what happened, but swinging your light saber around doesn't immediately kill them like they used to. Are they blocking somehow? It's very annoying, I have to to use jump attacks to kill anyone with Jedis. I found it was much easier to use blaster characters to quickly dispatch enemies. Why is it easier to knock an enemy in the head with your blaster than with a light saber?
They now allow you to pan a tiny bit to the left and right, but not much. It's an improvement over the first game, where you couldn't change your point of view at all. But it's still not all that helpful. You just can't control the camera angle and I stepped off ledges I couldn't see more often than I liked.
The levels are definitely harder than the first. The puzzles are trickier to solve (I once had to resort to an online walkthrough to figure one out). However overall I enjoyed the increased use of puzzles in the game. It's nice to have to use your thinking cap in a video game.
In addition to being more challenging, the levels are also much longer. And you still can't save at all during a mission. You have to finish the level and go back to the cantina to save. I like that they now have an indicator of when your game is being saved. In the first game it was always unclear to me at what point during the game I could turn off my game without losing my progress. Now they have a little floating Darth Vader helmet to indicate a game's progress is being saved. It was sorely needed.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
There isn't much change in graphics from the first one. It's cartoony and everything is rendered as you might imagine they would look if they were to make it out of Legos. The characters are slightly more animated. Princess Leia sticks her hip out with attitude when standing still. Chracters flail a bit more when jumping. Overall they are funner to watch.
There is a bit of improvement in the sound. In the first one there were occasional lapses in sound during a few cut-scenes. This doesn't happen in the second one. There are also more character noises to make them more personable. As before there is never any talking. After all, Legos don't speak. In places where there would be possible dialog, there are general mumbled speech noises, much like in The Sims. If you've seen the movies, then the scenes all make perfect sense without the need for speech.
Every mission starts with the same intro music as the movies, with very good sound quality. Each mission also always has the scene description, which is mostly unreadable. The edges are off the sides of the screen, and by the time they scroll up to where you can read the entire line, it is much too tiny to read at all, even on my 30" TV. It's annoying, but not essential to accomplishing your mission.
REPLAYABILITY
This game was designed to be played more than once. Even though the story remains the same each time you play it, there are numerous secret areas that can only be accessible later after you unlock certain characters or features. The goal is to collect all the little mini-kits, super-kits, super-bricks, and what-have-you. I finished all the episodes, but according to the game, was only 36% complete. (I'm not very good at finding things.)
CONCLUSION
The added variety of mission types and increased use of puzzles make this game much funner than the orginal. Although there is more noticeable difficulty and many of the annoyances from the first game are still present, I would still recommend this game to any Star Wars fan.
