The Daily Bloon

……I have too much stuff to do. You people should be grateful that I’m willing to use my few free hours to write a review for you. In fact, you should be so grateful that I should be getting lots of money in the mail. (If you need the address, email me.)

Title: Lego Star Wars
Systems: PS2, X-box
Genre: Action/Platformer
Description: Possibly the coolest thing since the cheese grater.
Quickrating: 8.5/10

Ok, dismiss all of those stupid notions in your head that this is a silly, poorly put together kids’ game that you should not even consider like “Elmo Can Count To Thwee!” and “Look At Barney Hop”. Instead, think of it as…”Grand Theft Auto: Sesame Street” or “Look At Barney Kill Those Kids On His Show!”. Well, maybe not that graphic, but just as cool as those concepts. Only extremely well put together and not just thought up in 5 seconds. In fact, to get an idea of how awesome it is, check out this movie, “Revenge of the Brick“.

This is a great, fun, hilarious game. You play as characters from Episodes I, II, and III of the Star Wars saga (over 30 characters!), only in Lego form. You play through all of the first three episodes destroying droids, Sith, and other pixelated plastic-building-block enemies that get in your way. The game is full of action, puzzles, and good family fun.

The really innovative thing about this game is the way it uses the Force–by manipulating Lego bricks. Not everything in the enviroment is made of Legos, but the things that are can either be destroyed, moved, or used to build things helpful (and often necessary) in your journey. You will use spare bricks from a chunk of wall that has been destroyed to form platforms for you to jump on, break through doors, and countless other tasks that show the power of the Jedi and the Sith.

But there’s more to this game than lightsaber wielding hooligans. The majority of the people are gunners, but there’s also droids, clones, wookies, General Grievous (because I haven’t figured out what the hell he is yet), and many other people to fill your roster with. With the exception of maybe 4 or 5 people, anyone you see, you can play as in Free Mode. Great fun to make Darth Maul fight Darth Maul. Tee hee.

You always have a companion traveling with you, whether it be the computer or a human player. The AI is good; it knows how to help you complete puzzles in the game and follows you without dying very often. Plus, a human player can enter in and out of the game at any time, which is very convienent for people that are coming or going.

At heart, though, this game WAS made for kids, so there are a few things that would not please a hardcore gamer. You cannot get a Game Over, so to speak, at any time. If you die, whether by falling off a cliff or losing all of your hearts, you simply lose some money and respawn where you perished. Once you get to fight a boss one-on-one, it simply takes some upper level moves repeated a few times to beat him. The puzzles, when you’ve actually found them, take no more than a few minutes to figure out, if that much time at all. But if you have someone who’s not too good at gaming that you want to try and play the game with (*cough*girlfriends*cough*), then these things can only be good.

The bad things are few, but pretty major: the game doesn’t take too long to beat, although there are a good number of things to go back and find after you’ve beaten the game, including a bonus level. Most of the 30 characters have no difference from each other or have no purpose at all. And once you’ve gotten everything there is to get in the game, there’s no big secret reward or anything, which is a big letdown. But it has suprisingly good combat mechanisms for the lightsaber fighting, diverse levels that don’t feel like the same thing over and over, and the awesomeness factor to boot. Until you have played this game and witnessed its wonders, you won’t be able to comprehend how something can be epic and hilarious at the same time–but trust me, it can be. And it takes more games like Lego Star Wars to remind us of that little fact.

“Not if anything to say about it have I.”–Yoda, Episode III