LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for PlayStation 2
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- Online: No Online Gaming Support
- ESRB Descriptor: Cartoon Violence Crude Humor
- ESRB Rating: E10 - (Everyone 10+)
- Publisher: LucasArts Entertainment Company
- Genre: Action
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Addictive and amusing
Pros
Lots to do, Great storyline and adaptation to LEGOs, hilarious cut scenes
Cons
Can't bypass cut scenes, get extras too late, replay value
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Despite its flaws, it's a very well done game that's worth playing.
I was a big fan of the first Lego Star Wars, so I had to pick this one up and see what they did with it.
If you've played the original LSW, pretty much everything will be familiar. New is the hidden Red Bricks to find and Gold Bricks to earn. Red Bricks allow you to purchase "Extras" (2x studs, invincibility, the ability to have creatures poop. Yes, poop.). Gold Bricks allow you to build doorways to new places.
As in the first LSW, the game starts out in the Cantina. From here you can purchase new characters, extras, cheats, hints and gold bricks. You also access all of the levels.
There's a way to create custom characters for your amusement. You have 2 character slots in which you can mix-n-match pieces from all of the other characters you have available to create your own fun models to use in the game. For example, you can mate Chewbacca's head on Leia's body with Han's legs. Kind of fun, but didn't amuse me for long.
Goals
It's important to have goals, and this game has them. Each level has 4 main "goals", for which you'll get a Gold Brick:
1. Earn "True Jedi" mode in Story Mode by getting enough "studs". The levels are full of fun things to blow up and get studs.
2. Earn "True Jedi" mode in Free Play mode.
3. Find all 10 Minikits hidden on the board.
4. Find the Red Brick.
Fun stuff
The puzzles in the game are fairly creative and amusing. You use the Force to move things around and you can "assemble" things from piles of LEGO blocks. It's very fun to watch the little LEGO guy building a Harley. You can then use the Force to put the Harley in a washing machine you just built. And so on. Keeps the game interesting.
Blowing stuff up never stops being fun. In Dagobah you can blow up grass. The grass actually explodes when you hit it. Excellent! Once you get the Bounty Hunter characters you can start throwing bombs to blow up even more stuff.
Sprinkled throughout the levels are vehicles you can build, from bicycles to John Deere tractors. You can ride almost all of them, sometimes to solve a puzzle, sometimes for no good reason. You even get to build and pilot AT-STs! Muahahha.
The levels are also full of secret places to find, and for me this is the best way to keep me coming back and playing. It's rewarding to find that little nook full of studs, the screen displaying this is a 2x zone where all of your scores are doubled! Make sure to blow up everything you can, and Force anything that glows.
The vehicle levels are fun, if a bit difficult to keep your studs (when you die you fall apart and lose a bunch of studs). You get to fly everything from the Snow Speeder to the Millenium Falcon. They also put in the winch on the Snow Speeder, which is a nice touch.
I know this may sound deranged, but the thing that probably amused me most was the ability to punch other characters. If you're close enough to a character and you press the "fire" button, instead of Light Sabering or blasting them, you'll do some character-specific punch. I won't ruin them all for you, but Leia does a slap that's hilarious. Usually I did it to my partner on screen by accident when trying to shoot something else and it never stopped being funny. Slapping R2 around is great because he makes that R2-WOOOAAAAAAA sound.
Speaking of which, the way the characters interact with the world is unique to each character. Very, very nicely done. Leia stands there with her hipshot "I'm a princess" look, Han Solo swaggers around, C3PO wobbles clumsily. This is a superb little touch that adds a surprising amount of enjoyment to the game.
Game modes
Story Mode
You first play the levels in "Story Mode." You get the intro scene with the text scrolling just like in the movie. You're then treated to a very creative and funny cut scene. They stick to the basic script of the movie but make it funnier. And somehow using the LEGO characters makes it hilarious.
Which leads me to my biggest pet peeve of the game: there's no way to bypass the cut scenes in Story Mode, even if you've seen them before. You can't even bypass the scrolling text at the beginning. It drives me absoultely mad. This will show up again in my review...
Free Play mode
In this mode you replay the same level (minus the cutscene, thank God, but you still have to wait past the scrolling text every single time) with any characters you have found in the game and purchased at the Cantina (including vehicles like the Tie Interceptor and Y-Wing). One nice Extra you can buy is "Use Old Save." This allows you to use any characters you may have found in LSW 1. Very helpful in the beginning when you haven't met the Dark Jedi characters and need their Force power.
Gold Brick challenges
After finishing all of the chapters in an Episode (6 per episode), you can use the gold bricks (if you have enough!) to build a doorway to 3 bonus levels which earn you a gold brick each. Each fell into a category:
1. Replay ALL of the chapters in an episode in one long session to get it done in a certain time (1 hour for the first episode). Doesn't sound too bad, right? You have to watch ALL of the scrolling text and cutscenes AGAIN and you cannot bypass them. What were the programmers thinking here?
2. Run through one level to try to get 1,000,000 studs in a certain amount of time (5 minutes for the first episode). This one is kind of fun because there are studs just exploding everywhere. All of the explodables and characters emit a shower of studs when blown up. It gets frustrating because it's difficult not to get constantly killed (new bad guys are constantly popping in) and you can't use any of your cheats. When I finally found a character who wouldn't get killed, I still found it impossible to acquire 1,000,000 studs in the alloted time in Episodes 2 and 3.
3. Fly a ship level and try to get 1,000,000 studs in a certain amount of time. I couldn't even get close with this one. I either got blown up so often I never made 1,000,000, or was trying so hard not to get blown up that I went over time. Drove me nuts so I stopped.
Jabba
After finding and buying all of the Bounty Hunters, you can go see Jabba at the Cantina for 10 Gold Brick challenges. You have to use all of the bounty hunter characters on a level to find a "kidnapped" character who is hiding in the level. If you find him/her/it in time, you get a Gold Brick.
LEGO Land
A secret area that you open up with Gold Bricks. You have to get 1,000,000 studs by blowing up and Forcing everything on the board. There are some fun puzzles inside to find all of the studs. Amusing, but no replay value for me. I played it twice and it was the same both times.
Extras
The extras are a lot of fun, and make many parts of the game much easier. The 2x/4x/6x/8x stud multipliers are cool, but cost so many studs (2,000,000 for the first one and up from there) that you don't get them until it's almost too late for them to be useful. The Minikit detector is super helpful. Other things like Disguises are just plain fun. You get Groucho disguises on all of the characters, including the ships! I laughed my head off the first time I saw an X-Wing with a Groucho mask on.
Annoyances
The fact that I can't bypass the cutscenes after seeing them really hurts the game for me. I literally can't play the last few Gold Brick challenges because it drives me crazy to sit through them all again. I can't really give 3 stars because the rest of the game is so strong, but it really bugs me. Who are the coders to tell me what I can't skip past?
Light Saber Characters drive me insane when trying to fight with them. They seem to slash in random directions, few of those directions being towards the enemy. The only viable way to kill anything is to double jump and do the special Jedi smash. Blaster characters are far easier to use.
After getting all of the Minikits on a level, you get to see a LEGO version of one of the ships from the movie. Yay. I remember in LSW1 spending a while trying to figure out what the heck the ships are for. Apparently you just look at them. Yay? I was hoping LSW2 would do something more fun with them, but I was wrong.
Synopsis
Overall the game is tons of fun, extremely creative and clever, and addictive until you finish all of the challenges. It lacks some replay value for me, since I wasn't excited about re-doing the same levels over and over just to get enough studs to buy the extras that I could have used much earlier in the game.
If you've played the original LSW, pretty much everything will be familiar. New is the hidden Red Bricks to find and Gold Bricks to earn. Red Bricks allow you to purchase "Extras" (2x studs, invincibility, the ability to have creatures poop. Yes, poop.). Gold Bricks allow you to build doorways to new places.
As in the first LSW, the game starts out in the Cantina. From here you can purchase new characters, extras, cheats, hints and gold bricks. You also access all of the levels.
There's a way to create custom characters for your amusement. You have 2 character slots in which you can mix-n-match pieces from all of the other characters you have available to create your own fun models to use in the game. For example, you can mate Chewbacca's head on Leia's body with Han's legs. Kind of fun, but didn't amuse me for long.
Goals
It's important to have goals, and this game has them. Each level has 4 main "goals", for which you'll get a Gold Brick:
1. Earn "True Jedi" mode in Story Mode by getting enough "studs". The levels are full of fun things to blow up and get studs.
2. Earn "True Jedi" mode in Free Play mode.
3. Find all 10 Minikits hidden on the board.
4. Find the Red Brick.
Fun stuff
The puzzles in the game are fairly creative and amusing. You use the Force to move things around and you can "assemble" things from piles of LEGO blocks. It's very fun to watch the little LEGO guy building a Harley. You can then use the Force to put the Harley in a washing machine you just built. And so on. Keeps the game interesting.
Blowing stuff up never stops being fun. In Dagobah you can blow up grass. The grass actually explodes when you hit it. Excellent! Once you get the Bounty Hunter characters you can start throwing bombs to blow up even more stuff.
Sprinkled throughout the levels are vehicles you can build, from bicycles to John Deere tractors. You can ride almost all of them, sometimes to solve a puzzle, sometimes for no good reason. You even get to build and pilot AT-STs! Muahahha.
The levels are also full of secret places to find, and for me this is the best way to keep me coming back and playing. It's rewarding to find that little nook full of studs, the screen displaying this is a 2x zone where all of your scores are doubled! Make sure to blow up everything you can, and Force anything that glows.
The vehicle levels are fun, if a bit difficult to keep your studs (when you die you fall apart and lose a bunch of studs). You get to fly everything from the Snow Speeder to the Millenium Falcon. They also put in the winch on the Snow Speeder, which is a nice touch.
I know this may sound deranged, but the thing that probably amused me most was the ability to punch other characters. If you're close enough to a character and you press the "fire" button, instead of Light Sabering or blasting them, you'll do some character-specific punch. I won't ruin them all for you, but Leia does a slap that's hilarious. Usually I did it to my partner on screen by accident when trying to shoot something else and it never stopped being funny. Slapping R2 around is great because he makes that R2-WOOOAAAAAAA sound.
Speaking of which, the way the characters interact with the world is unique to each character. Very, very nicely done. Leia stands there with her hipshot "I'm a princess" look, Han Solo swaggers around, C3PO wobbles clumsily. This is a superb little touch that adds a surprising amount of enjoyment to the game.
Game modes
Story Mode
You first play the levels in "Story Mode." You get the intro scene with the text scrolling just like in the movie. You're then treated to a very creative and funny cut scene. They stick to the basic script of the movie but make it funnier. And somehow using the LEGO characters makes it hilarious.
Which leads me to my biggest pet peeve of the game: there's no way to bypass the cut scenes in Story Mode, even if you've seen them before. You can't even bypass the scrolling text at the beginning. It drives me absoultely mad. This will show up again in my review...
Free Play mode
In this mode you replay the same level (minus the cutscene, thank God, but you still have to wait past the scrolling text every single time) with any characters you have found in the game and purchased at the Cantina (including vehicles like the Tie Interceptor and Y-Wing). One nice Extra you can buy is "Use Old Save." This allows you to use any characters you may have found in LSW 1. Very helpful in the beginning when you haven't met the Dark Jedi characters and need their Force power.
Gold Brick challenges
After finishing all of the chapters in an Episode (6 per episode), you can use the gold bricks (if you have enough!) to build a doorway to 3 bonus levels which earn you a gold brick each. Each fell into a category:
1. Replay ALL of the chapters in an episode in one long session to get it done in a certain time (1 hour for the first episode). Doesn't sound too bad, right? You have to watch ALL of the scrolling text and cutscenes AGAIN and you cannot bypass them. What were the programmers thinking here?
2. Run through one level to try to get 1,000,000 studs in a certain amount of time (5 minutes for the first episode). This one is kind of fun because there are studs just exploding everywhere. All of the explodables and characters emit a shower of studs when blown up. It gets frustrating because it's difficult not to get constantly killed (new bad guys are constantly popping in) and you can't use any of your cheats. When I finally found a character who wouldn't get killed, I still found it impossible to acquire 1,000,000 studs in the alloted time in Episodes 2 and 3.
3. Fly a ship level and try to get 1,000,000 studs in a certain amount of time. I couldn't even get close with this one. I either got blown up so often I never made 1,000,000, or was trying so hard not to get blown up that I went over time. Drove me nuts so I stopped.
Jabba
After finding and buying all of the Bounty Hunters, you can go see Jabba at the Cantina for 10 Gold Brick challenges. You have to use all of the bounty hunter characters on a level to find a "kidnapped" character who is hiding in the level. If you find him/her/it in time, you get a Gold Brick.
LEGO Land
A secret area that you open up with Gold Bricks. You have to get 1,000,000 studs by blowing up and Forcing everything on the board. There are some fun puzzles inside to find all of the studs. Amusing, but no replay value for me. I played it twice and it was the same both times.
Extras
The extras are a lot of fun, and make many parts of the game much easier. The 2x/4x/6x/8x stud multipliers are cool, but cost so many studs (2,000,000 for the first one and up from there) that you don't get them until it's almost too late for them to be useful. The Minikit detector is super helpful. Other things like Disguises are just plain fun. You get Groucho disguises on all of the characters, including the ships! I laughed my head off the first time I saw an X-Wing with a Groucho mask on.
Annoyances
The fact that I can't bypass the cutscenes after seeing them really hurts the game for me. I literally can't play the last few Gold Brick challenges because it drives me crazy to sit through them all again. I can't really give 3 stars because the rest of the game is so strong, but it really bugs me. Who are the coders to tell me what I can't skip past?
Light Saber Characters drive me insane when trying to fight with them. They seem to slash in random directions, few of those directions being towards the enemy. The only viable way to kill anything is to double jump and do the special Jedi smash. Blaster characters are far easier to use.
After getting all of the Minikits on a level, you get to see a LEGO version of one of the ships from the movie. Yay. I remember in LSW1 spending a while trying to figure out what the heck the ships are for. Apparently you just look at them. Yay? I was hoping LSW2 would do something more fun with them, but I was wrong.
Synopsis
Overall the game is tons of fun, extremely creative and clever, and addictive until you finish all of the challenges. It lacks some replay value for me, since I wasn't excited about re-doing the same levels over and over just to get enough studs to buy the extras that I could have used much earlier in the game.
