Lego Star Wars 2 review for PSP

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a games designer looked in their toy box, found a box of Lego, and a battered Palitoy/Kenner Millenium Falcon. And they tohought, well I’ve always wanted to work on a Star Wars game, but I’ve got this Lego franchise to use up first. I wonder if I could get away with this mad idea.

And thus “Lego Star Wars” was born. Proof that sometimes the sum of the parts is better than you’d expect given the constituents. Lego Star Wars 2 takes the first three films (from 1976, 1979 and 1983) and allows you to be any of the major ‘hero’ characters as you play through the scenarios in the film. Yes it;s a highly linear movie franchise game. Not sure what to do next? Just try and remember what happened in the film!

The spin here, as you are all no doubt aware, is that rather than highly accurate 3d models of the actors, the scenery, propos and characters are all made of Lego. And because of the ‘toy’ nature of Lego (and I suspect the licence), you can’t actually die. By that I mean when you run out of life you do fall apart, but you are put back together again a few seconds later while the action continues. And this is the big flaw. You’ll finish every level first time through, even if you are disassembled nine million times in the level, and put together again. It robs the game of any challenge it may have. It’s jsut walk around, keep mashing fire and you’ll finsih.

And even that’s not going to fool an eight year old looking for a challenge. It looks gorgeous, and conceivably you could play it for the challenge of finding every lego stud, hiddne area, and the ten bonus pieces on each level, but that’s mighty tedious. Lego Star Wars 2 is a fun romp through a familair world, that looks funny,but rapidly looses it’s charm. If you need a diversion for a few hours, this is good enough, but don’t ask it for any more.