LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (2005)

Lego star wars: the video game was released as a movie tie-in game for the launch of episode 3 revenge of the sith in 2005 and has releases for the xbox, gamecube, PlayStation 2 pc and mac.

This game follows the prequel star wars trilogy but does it in a fun and enjoyable way with the lego theming. This was the start of the Lego games format we would see for many years to come where you go through a stage punching, building, fighting and solving puzzles as you go through the story levels and later replay them again going for all the bonus collectibles.

In terms of collectibles there are two. The minikits are the main attraction where ten are scattered throughout each level and can be found out in the open or after solving a puzzle. Whilst you can grab many of them in the story mode version of the levels you'll usually have to grab the rest in freeplay utilising the characters special abilities. In addition there's also the stud counter where if you collect enough of the coloured studs by breaking ,building or interacting with objects in the environment you will then get an additional bonus reward. There are 3 colours of studs silver, gold and blue being 10,100 and 1000 in value respectively.

With the studs you have collected you can then unlock stuff from the counter at Dexter's diner. One such unlockable are the hints that give insight on how the mechanics of the game work and extra bits of information about locations or 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.

characters can also be brought which each have unique abilities and can be played during the free play for each level to help get all the minikits and the stud rewards. The characters abilities can vary from using the force to lift objects, using the dark side of the force for red objects, having a double jump ability to reach higher ledges, a blaster to shoot targets from afar, a grapple hook to reach higher ledges, short characters can use small door panels and for droids they can use two types of panels to open doors.

Lastly, there are the extras which give some different effects towards gameplay and visuals. The majority of the extras are just cosmetical like changing all the lightsabers into brooms or changing the sizes or shape of the blasters. For the non cosmetical extras it includes invincibility where you no longer take damage from enemies as well as preventing you from losing studs when you fall off an edge and the minikit finder where during a level it will have an arrow pointing to where it can be found.

Outside the diner you gain access to all the other rewards found within the game. After collecting all the mini kits in a level you are treated to a scale model build of one of the ships or droids found within the game and they can all be viewed once collected. In addition, once you have collected all the stud counter rewards you unlock a bonus secret level to play through teasing at the next game as a nice addition.

The levels found in the game are short and sweet, only taking around 10 minutes each and roughly the same amount of time going back for the collectibles. There are 18 levels total and they all follow the story pretty accurately and as mentioned earlier are broken up with cutscenes based on actual scenes from the film with a lego twist. After grabbing every single true stud counter the level "a new hope" is also unlcoked which teases to the next lego star wars game.

Overall this game is quite short but very faithful to the source material of the films.and in terms of play time it only took me around 10 hours to complete to 100% but it was a good start for what's to come in future entries of the lego style games.

This game is old. Really old. It's so old that it is the first Lego game that was based on a existing franchise. So it's surprising that a Lego game so old is, in my opinion, better than most Lego games nowadays and certainly one of the best. The gameplay is normal Lego gameplay. You have a button to build things. You have another to use your character's weapons. And then you have one to jump. So how can a game with gameplay mechanics so simple be a lot of fun? I think it is because of this cycle. First you start a level and you are received by a cutscene. But that's normal right? Well before Lego games had talking characters they were mute. So they had to make humor of the movie scenes with no words. And somehow, they did and they were all a lot of fun.

So, if you are still following me in the cycle, first you have really funny cutscenes. Then you have the levels. All of them are cleverly designed, and are full of collectibles, which I will get on later. Me, as a child, had to play the level because I had to get to the cutscene. So I play the level and I reach the cutscene. But after that I got the collectibles missing. And I want to have them all so I replay the level. But I can't reach most of them because I need a character I don't have yet. So I have to play the rest of the game. This cycle worked for me as a child and it still works now. It adds a lot of replayability to a game that already has a lengthy campaign. And there's also Co-op, and it's great. Not that much to say about it other then that it is a lot of fun. This game was my, and I imagine many other people, first Lego game, and it certainly succeed at making me a huge fan of the franchise. The gameplay might be simple for more serious gamers but even they can enjoy this game for what it is: pure fun. I give this game a 4/5 stars.