Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy review

Even better than a night on the town with Yoda strapped to your back. Seriously...

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There's more character to the animation, too - Han Solo swaggers around winking at everyone, while Leia puts her hands on her hips whenever she's standing idle. And flushed with the success of the last game, Traveller's Tales has included much more Lucas-baiting humour, redoing bits from the film to take advantage of the little Lego chaps' foibles.

There are still tragic moments (Luke getting his hand cut off) but they're immediately lightened up by comedy moments (Luke's new robot hand going haywire and bouncing around the room) and bits that've been added in purely to make you giggle (C3P0 explaining the galactic war to the Ewoks by means of primitive puppetry).

Above: The original 'Yub nub' celebration song is in. Er, great?

Another area that's been expanded is the puzzles. Making things is no longer a Jedi-only ability - every character can now build things out of the piles of Lego that're left lying around every level, in a flurry of activity that's always entertaining.

This means that puzzles might mean smashing things, then using the wreckage to build other things, then 'Forcing' them on top of other things, then pushing the whole thing into a switch that lets you turn something on... and so on. It's much more complicated than the last game, but very rarely confusing - if you're stuck, chances are it's because there's something you've forgotten to smash.

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionA blocky empire strikes back in this sequel to the surprisingly enjoyable lite actioner Lego Star Wars.
Franchise nameStar Wars
UK franchise nameStar Wars
Platform"Xbox 360","PSP","GameCube","DS","GBA","PC","Xbox","PS2"
US censor rating"Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone"
UK censor rating"","","","","","","",""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Joel Snape
Joel Snape enjoys Street Fighter V, any sandbox game that contains a satisfyingly clacky shotgun and worrying about the rise of accidentally-malevolent super-AI. He's also the founder-editor of livehard.co.uk, where he talks a lot about working out.