LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (2006)

Lego Star Wars II: the original trilogy was released as a sequel to the first lego star wars game however this time focusing on episodes four, five and six. This game has releases for the xbox, xbox 360, gamecube, PlayStation 2, pc and mac.

This game follows the original star wars trilogy but does it in a fun and enjoyable way with the lego theming. This was a follow up to the first lego star wars game and has improved on many aspects that were present in the original however it still follows the level by level structure where you fight, build and solve puzzles whilst making your way through the story.

In terms of the collectibles there are a couple which make a return. Minikits are back and function in the same way where ten are scattered across each level and can either be found in the open or after solving a puzzle. The stud counter also returns where by collecting enough studs in the level it will reward you with being a 'true jedi' however this time around there's two counters one for playing the story level and one more for freeplay. The studs you can collect are also the same, still being silver, gold and blue of which are 10,100 and 1000 in value respectively.

As for new collectables, red bricks have been introduced which for each one you collect are unique extras that can be applied to the gameplay whether it is purely cosmetical or gives more power to weapons and characters. To unlock all the red bricks you can find one per level or buy some that are already available in the shop. The biggest addition are the gold bricks which can be unlocked by beating certain levels, getting true jedi, collecting all ten minikits or simply buying them from the shop. Your reward for collecting gold bricks includes getting additional bonus levels to play through which in turn gives you more gold bricks too.

With the studs you have collected you can then unlock stuff from the counter in the cantina. One such unlockable are the hints that give insight on how the mechanics of the game work or extra bits of information about locations and people. In addition you are also able to re-watch any of the cutscenes you've seen during the story mode of the levels but not just that there's also a section which lets you input “cheat codes” in case you want to collect unlockables early like extras or characters.

As for the unlockable characters the same premise applies in the last game where some of their unique abilities can be used within the free play version of a level to allow you to grab more collectibles like the minikits. All the mechanics from the first game make a comeback but there are some new additions including exclusive panels which only imperials can use or panels that only bounty hunters can use. Not only this, most bounty hunters can use bombs which allow you to blow up silver objects. This game also lets you buy vehicles for all the stages that allows you to use them with some unique abilities like being able to use grapples, hold torpedoes or go through imperial doors.

Also within the cantina Jabba the Hutt has some bounty hunter missions where you go back through the levels and try to find a hidden character within the time limit. Not only this there are also the "super story" missions where you play through all 6 story levels back to back within an hour whilst collecting 100,000 studs. There are also two extra bonus missions unlocked by collecting all 60 minikits in each episode and another for collecting a certain amount of gold bricks. Outside of the cantina is where you can also find the rewards for collecting all ten minikits in a stage which once again is a scale model built version of a ship found within the story.

In terms of the levels there are 18 total with six in each film. All the levels are still short and sweet, taking around 10 minutes each and can be replayed in freeplay to grab the collectibles.

Overall this game was longer than the first only taking me around 20 hours to complete to 100% and was a very good follow up to the first game and was a good example of how the lego games formula would work in future entries and evolve into what it is like today.