Usually Lego Games are based on trilogy or a collection of movies but this time it is based on a single movie, does it hold up well? Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens has not merely dispelled my doubts but also made me want more such Lego Games. It’s yet another great example of how the series can hold onto its core while managing to quietly innovate, and might also be the funniest Lego Star Wars game to date.
The scope of the game is quite big even though it based on just one Movie. Opening with a prologue that reworks the climax of Return of the Jedi before taking us through the events of Episode VII. TT Games has somehow got permission to take things even further, with a series of unlockable side missions that explore the characters and events of The Force Awakens in more depth. It might be strange to find the exploits of Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren and Han & Chewie chronicled for the first time in Lego form, but this helps make Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens almost unmissable for Star Wars fans.
Of course the gameplay doesn’t veer far from the old Lego template and works well, so no complaints there. You’ll still spend most of your time tackling stormtroopers and space-gangsters with your fists, light sabre or blaster, while smashing the scenery into handy Lego bricks. You’ll turn some of these bricks into new objects which can be used to solve simple puzzles, while collecting characters with special abilities you can harness to get past all the obstacles in your way.
Lego Star Wars continues its predecessors’ love of vehicle sections with a stream of flying sequences and dogfights.
Meanwhile, the new characters bring new abilities into play. BB-8, while weak in combat, becomes useful for charging, unlocking, traversal and activating capabilities, while Rey is arguably the Lego games’ most agile hero ever, with a range of jumping, wall-running and pole-spinning moves that put her ahead of even Lego Batman’s Robin. Finn, Poe, Han, Chewie and even Kylo Ren also get their chance to shine, and in a way the game manages the same amazing trick as the movie: making you almost as invested in the new faces as you are in the ones you grew up with.
Yet the most impressive thing is that the series can still find new tricks lurking up its sleeves. The first is a simplified cover-shooting mechanic. Headshots are understandably a no-no and it’s impossible to snipe some enemies, but it makes you feel part of the action in a way that no previous Lego Star Wars game has managed. Add a new range of character-specific special attacks, and you get Lego combat at its best.
Secondly, many of the old bash-and-build puzzles now give you a choice of where and what to build. One spot might give you a launcher for BB-8, another a rotary switch for Rey to push, another a gun turret or water-cannon, and you decide which to go for first. In some cases, you’re just choosing between two or three solutions to defeat one enemy, but in others you’ll need to find the right order to build in, knocking down each build to get the bricks to do the next.
There are, admittedly, moments where you’ll wonder whether this section or that really deserves to be here. Yet for most of the time, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens gives you too much fun stuff to do to leave you thinking about it too much. The gameplay holds up brilliantly when playing solo then only gets better when you add another player into the mix.
And beyond just getting through the chapters, there’s the real challenge to keep you busy: the constant demand to find and collect everything you can. The lure of more characters, vehicles and those True Jedi ratings will keep you coming back to missions you’ve completed, but with the new story missions requiring a good supply of gold bricks to unlock, you finally have a really good reason to make sure you get everyone.
In the end, though, it’s not the gameplay that will make Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one of the most enjoyable game this year. Nor is it the graphics, though I think there’s the most lustrous and weirdly realistic the series has delivered. It is the brilliant sense of humor and Timing of jokes which makes it enjoyable. If you love Star Wars and loved The Force Awakens, you’ll have an easier job resisting Kylo Ren’s force powers than resisting this.
