Written by: Ian

 

 

 

It’s not been a fast changing series thus far - has the Lego series run out of steam after 8 titles?

 

LEGO Harry Potter, the last game we reviewed from the series, was a real drag, and felt really old hat. Therefore, I definitely felt some real trepidation as I approached the review here; especially as The Clone Wars represents, to me, some of the dullest Star Wars fiction yet.

 

 

Lego Star Wars 3 takes place in the Clone Wars universe, set between around the time of the 2nd and 3rd films in the series.

 

Whilst familiar characters pop up, like General Grievous and Count Dooku, for me, this is a pretty weak part of the series, and one that doesn’t really need any expanding upon. The story follows several parts of the films and accompanying TV series, and it’s all a bit meh.

 

 

The traditional Lego jokes return, but to lesser effect- as the scenes being played out are so much less famous and familiar, it’s much more difficult to get to grips with what is happening, and thus much of the humour is lost in translation. Still, for kids who have watched the TV series and films, there is probably a bit more to enjoy here.

 

 

I’ve berated the recent Lego games for failing to bring pretty much anything new to the table in terms of gameplay. Well, again, TT have delivered on their promises here. Whilst most of the levels are still pretty linear, many are far more open, and you can even go about some of the objectives in a more open manner. On top of that, some levels also have an almost RTS element to them, with you using radios to give commands out to soldiers, and large vehicle sections where you ride in tanks and even spacecraft to blast away at your enemies.

 

Much of the game remains unchanged, but the traditional mix of fairly simple combat, platforming, and puzzle solving is far more pleasurable when split up with the new diversions. Having said that, there were several moments of real frustration as the puzzle outcomes were not obvious. It’s not ideal for kids that you often need to destroy every object in a room in order to progress, before having to rebuild some obscure part of it.

 

 

I also noticed that the difficulty seems far higher than before. Whilst you’re ultimately invincible, you do lose money and time by dying; and in some levels, I must have been exploded 20-30 times; kids would probably end up dying quite a bit more. With 18 levels, and the usual horde of secrets, bonus items and extras to unlock, there’s a good amount of content here too; to get 100% will probably take most player 20-30 hours, making the game pretty decent value.