Lego Star Wars (Wii)

I finally got a chance to load up this Christmas gift. It's quite fun, and offers a huge amount of content. It has some draw-backs too, flaws that are inherent in the game concept.

To start with, the central concept: you play through the Star Wars movies as the main characters, alone or with a second player. While doing so, you collect Lego bits (in various denominations) by destroying things and opponents, and rearranging the furniture (literal and otherwise). Action starts in the Cantina, where unlocked characters and various bystanders walk around until a brawl breaks out between opposing sides. From there, you choose walk through a portal corresponding to the movie you want to explore. The first time through, you need to follow the story line, but afterwards a "Free play" mode is unlocked, allowing you to use different characters and/or return to find new treasures.

The actual action is the game is directed with both controller and nunchuck, although few commands are used: primary attack (eg light sabre, laser gun), secondary action (eg use the force, use a grappling hook) and switch characters. This is a very important element to the game; since characters abilities don't change (eg as in some roleplaying games where characters develop new abilities, gear etc), switching to a different character with different abilities is key to bypassing certain obstacles or defeating certain enemies. As a result, you'll end up playing as pretty much everyone at some point, even using droids like R2-D2 to open doors or fly across chasms. On the other hand, while not being used, other characters just follow you around with minimal defensive ability. It gets quite frustrating to have a walking armada of armed troopers but being the only one who's actually attacking!

The other detraction here is the bit collection aspect. While destroying built-up legos is at the heart of the fun of this game, needing to try destroy everything and collect the bits that fly everywhere become tiresome for me. I guess I'm not a big enough fan of the "unlock millions of extra characters and secrets" type of game to start with. I do admit, it makes for a huge universe of possibilities -- I'll soon be able to play through the first movie using Darth Maul for example.

Overall, they've created quite a fun game here. You get to drive pretty much every vehicle, and although their effectiveness varies, it's quite a lot of fun. You even get to do Anakin's pod race, for example. Using the force is also instrumental, and things (including enemies) glow to let you know you can push them around at will. The sense of reconstructing the world and bypassing obstacles this way is quite neat and makes the jedi characters feel very special.

It's a game with a lot of story at the heart of it. This is done through by literally letting you play through these well-known Star Wars narrative arcs. Lego cutscenes intersperse the action in logical places to further the story or provide high-level perspective (eg fleet action or something). As well, by starting you at the Cantina, it makes it seem like your characters have a persistent life in this world. Vehicles you unlock live in the parking lot, just as characters live inside the Cantina, creating a very populated feel.

In short this is one of the better transfers of a movie francise into a video game. The play is quite fun, albeit a little simplistic (I guess it IS a lego game, and aimed for not-quite-so-hardcore gamers, including kids -- you can't even die permanently, you just come back with a bits penalty) and somewhat repetitive.