Games Xtreme heads to a Galaxy, Far Far Away, but not all that Long Ago for our latest review!
Use the Awakened Force, Luke
I love Star Wars, I adore Star Wars, I grew up with Star Wars and I happily devour any/and all media associated with it. So when I heard that there was going to be a Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens I was really interested to see what they could do with it, after all, they did a bang-up job on the previous Lego Star Wars games - the only worry I had was the Lego games getting long in the tooth. You could almost see it with the last Avengers one, which had some pretty questionable choices in terms of repeated low-quality sound-byte dialogue.
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens doesn't suffer from that, nope, it's probably one of the best Lego games I've played since the superb Marvel Superheroes.
Why?
Read on!
The Band's Back Together
With a big franchise like this, and such a polarising film, you need to make sure you assemble a great game voice cast. Some characters are voiced by long-standing voice actors, since the original actors are no longer able to provide the voice. Many of the cast of TFA returned to do their voice work for the game, Max Von Sydow, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, and more returned so they could add their voice talents to the new dialogue, cut-scenes, and gameplay sound-bytes.
The result of this is pretty fantastic as you get all-new dialogue and voice work, crisp sound delivery, and a feeling of cohesion from having familiar characters back with their correct voice.
It's The Force Awakens, and then some
What you get for your money is the story of the Force Awakens, told with Lego's trademark humour, and flair for just the right amount of drama along with the silliness. It's packed with hub worlds, with various planets freely explorable once you unlock them, and a ton of things to do/collect as you scrape up the studs to get the various bonuses. Progression in this one is great, because you actually want to get all the unlocks, grabbing every character, ship, and so forth.
There are side missions galore in this one, and they range from bounty hunts, to scavenger hunts, and even space battles against hordes of enemies.
Yep, space battles, that's right.
Taking a leaf from things like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter, only wrapping it in a simple Lego game shell, the space battles in TFA are really quite neat. They're presented in 3d rather than the 2d side on Defender style we're used to seeing from the Lego games, and they have quite a bit of meat on their bones. Whilst not a fully fledged 3d space sim, they're fun, and that's what really counts.
You have full control in the various arenas, and you can even unleash dodge moves, flipping the ship around - and yeah, you can fly the classic Millennium Falcon, or the updated TFA version - as well as other ships in free mode.
You also get side content like Rathtar Hunting, with Han Solo and Chewbacca - the story of how they got those creatures in the first place. Or how did Lor San Tekka get to the village to meet with Poe after all... and so on.
There's a lot of hours here.
Chewie, we're home!
With a huge roster of classic and new Star Wars characters to unlock, and all this content, this isn't the only new feature that's packed into TFA. There's multi builds which change the way you can solve the puzzles, building not one thing, but more than one from a series of bricks - then breaking it down to use it again to solve another part of the puzzle.
How about blaster battles? 3d shooter sections with cover based shooting, simple stuff, but it adds a layer of extra fun and content over the game which isn't present in the others.
I actually really enjoyed the blaster battles, and whilst the mechanics aren't all that involved, they're a nice distraction from the usual Lego game scenarios.
Plus, Han Solo blasting Stormtroopers with a Blastech DL-44, what's not to love?
The Force is Strong with This One...
Visually it's gorgeous and it has the correct Star Wars aesthetic, the characters are fun, they're well animated, and the engine isn't showing any real kind of age. Charming is what I'd call it, and it runs extremely well with no frame issues, or texture hiccups. The sound design is perfect, with everything sounding like it does from film and TV, along with some great voice work from the kick-ass cast. A smoothed out control system, better character switching, and a bunch of tweaks in vehicle control rounds out the whole package.
You can't really ask for more than that.
I put a lot of time into this game, clocked 100% and managed to accrue billions of studs. I've not been bored once, and I really did enjoy the various mini-games, side content, and the whole story unfolding through the Lego game style. I think Traveller's Tales have really knocked this one right out of the park, and it's an extremely engaging game - there's a wealth of Star Wars fun to be had and I think it might just be the best Lego game yet.