LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

After making my previous intentions on Lego games well known in previous reviews, I was eager to see what has been known as one of the better Lego games made thus far, Lego Star Wars III. Now I am a Star Wars fan. But I am not a Clone Wars fan. I couldn’t care less about another Lucas smash and grab for money. So with the last outing on a Lucas cash grab bender going so poorly, I did have my reserves. Luckily for me, Traveller’s Tales knew that they had to bring something new to the table this time around in order to score high marks and I can see why they received those well deserved marks. Lego Star Wars III is a really innovative Lego installment and with the incorporation of the different level types and an insane amount of depth, this isn’t the same Lego Star Wars that the franchise started from.

To get the big improvements out of the way early, Lego Star Wars III features 3 different types of unique levels. There is the tried and true Lego platformer that you have come to expect. These are in no means worth glossing over, they are far more intuitive and complex and just better all around then past Star Wars iterations, but in the scope of this game they are far out shadowed by the other two types. First up you have the space battles. These are usually pretty short in length but all the more epic from the surroundings. On top of the chaotic war playing out around you, you actually land your ship and jump out and engage enemies on foot as well. This is incredibly impressive and really gives you a sense of scale. But in talking about a sense of scale, you have to give all the credit to the final type of levels, the RTS levels.

Yes some real-time strategy mixed in with your Lego goodness. Crazy right? Well believe it or not, it actually works quite well. This is really an interesting and delightful break from the same old Lego games and a fantastic proof of concept if they were to make a Lego Lord of the Rings (of which there are currently Lego sets in development so it is possible) I did not know about these going into the game and they were at first a bit peculiar. But once you learn the interactions and how the teching up works you get into it. You start with a character like normal. There are power cores scattered throughout the level that you can take control of. Each core can power 3 different types of buildings. You unlock new buildings by building one of the previous type. Though it also has to do with the number of cores you possess. You must at some point gain possession of around 7 to get the full effect. There are cannons, different types of vehicles, different types of barracks to turn out soldiers, there are shields you can build to protect your core from enemy vehicles and shield generators to protect your buildings. You can even get a proton torpedo generator the most powerful weapon in the tech tree. The whole time you are running around the level building stuff, destroying enemy buildings, collecting currency to build more stuff. You can take possession of any vehicle even enemy vehicles though they get called back after a short time. It really is surprisingly deep and well realized and I look forward to seeing it again.

Aside from those differences the scale of the game is just more then any other game thus far. There are well over 100 characters to unlock, 130 gold bricks to collect, and 24 red cheat bricks to find around the main game hub. There are 18 main story levels and 4 extra levels. There are around 10 systems to play the RTS land battles on. There is a distinct lack of online multiplayer this time around but that has never been the priority for the franchise. These games have always been primarily a sit and play this with your kids kind of games and this one fills that role as well as any others. Oh and that main game hub I mentioned earlier? This is the most well thought out and implemented use of subject matter for a main world hub that I have seen. You start out on a republic star cruiser. And after a few story missions you will have enough gold bricks to explore all the various rooms of the ship. Then you can hop into a star fighter and jump out in to space and fly across to the separatist ship and start exploring that. Even more impressive is that each of the systems has its own unique space instance. So when you fly your cruiser to Quell, it is going to look different then the space surrounding Geonosis. This is by far a great improvement from static worlds of Lego Indy 2.

This brings us to whether or not you should play this. Well I can’t say this game is a great fit for anyone, there are still and most likely will always be people out there who hate on the Lego games for one reason or another. I am not one of them, I see what TT games has done with the franchise and how instead of just churning out the same game over and over again like other developers (cough guitar hero, tony hawk, cough cough) they really try and give you a little something different with each new source they work with. Even though I am not a fan of the animated star wars off shoot, I thoroughly enjoyed my 34 hours with the game. It has become a trend for me to platinum trophy every Lego game I come across and after beating the living crap out of this one, I still feel like it is a solid performance from a genuinely talented group of developers. Fans of the minifig movement should definitely pick this up and anyone who wants to see what these games are all about, this is probably the best to try them out on. Other than that, I look forward to what Traveller’s Tales “builds” next!