LEGO Star Wars II

In a move further into the realms of geekdom I recently decided that I missed playing video games. After some deliberation, I decided to purchase LEGO Star Wars II, since LEGO Indiana Jones would have almost certainly required me to buy a new game controller.

I must say that on the whole I am impressed with the game. It is simple enough for kids of all ages to pick up and enjoy. If your character dies, you immediately "respawn" right in the same spot (unless you fall while jumping). This makes finishing the game possible for players of almost all ability levels. Still, there are some sequences that require a good deal of patience and/or coordination (and I had to make several frustrating attemtps to figure out). In other words, certain parts of the game provided plenty of challenge for me.

Typically, one plays through the game first in "Story Mode". In this version, you play six missions per movie in the original trilogy and follow many major movie sequences (some are modified to be more interesting and allow for two players). I found the levels where you control a vehicle (attacking Death Star, fighting on ice planet, etc.) to be the hardest as there was almost no way to prevent getting shot down from behind (perhaps a trick that I could learn later). Still there were plenty of classic moments and the animated cut scenes added a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor that was quite good at times.

After finishing the Story Mode, there are plenty of extras to "unlock" by spending the LEGO studs collected throughout the game. You can open up new characters for use and extra "cheats" like score multipliers and invincibility. Each level can be played again in either Story Mode or Free Play mode, which allows you to use a host of characters to access all areas of a given level. Only by finding a host of hidden items can one reach 100% completion of the game.

Before going on my trip, I played the game fairly extensively (about 24 hours in one week). I play pretty slowly, but have reached about 65% completion (I am rather certain that 100% is out of the question for my skill level). Anyway, the game is fun, easy to learn, hard to master, and worth the $20 I paid for it. I give it four antelopes since some parts were impossbile for me to figure out without a walkthough, and some were agonizingly difficult compared to most of the game.