Lego Star Wars

What do you get if you cross Lego and Star Wars? Princess Brick-Leah...

How the world's favourite toy and favourite movie franchise came together is a bit of a mystery, but come together they did. Featuring a storyline loosely based around the more recent films (that is, the trilogy set before the original Star Wars trio), you take control of young Jedi Anakin (before his transformation into Darth Vader) and attempt to find your master Obi-Wan in order to gang up on the mischievous General Grievous. He's been up to his old tricks, kidnapping chancellors and plunging alien races into the depths of oblivion, like you do.

Lego Star Wars is a roam around, explore here and there, whilst slashing-robot-guards kind of a game. Navigating through each level there are various puzzles to solve, ranging from the very simple to the incredibly hard. Even early on, the brainpower needed far exceeds that of most non-Mensa card-carrying, non-bulbous-headed people. The developers seem to have forgotten that creating a puzzle is a world away from trying to solve it. With perseverance you'll probably stumble across some of the solutions, but that's assuming you haven't lost interest long before then.

Then there's the fighting. On your travels you'll encounter endless droids, firing their lasers from all angles. Armed with your devastating glow-in-the-dark sword, the difficult part is actually getting close enough to use it. The Jedi council don't seem to want lightsabres that can also fire shots, so dodging the lasers to get to the enemy before he zaps you is tricky. When surrounded on all fronts by these droids, the challenge initially seems insurmountable. With practice though, the droids do become less intimidating, enabling progress further into the game as you start parrying their laser blasts with your lightsabre.

There's certainly a good deal of satisfaction to be had from completing these difficult missions. Working out the puzzles is rewarding, and defeating all the enemies within half a million light years of Endor leaves you feeling chuffed. And visually, while Lego Star Wars isn't going to win any awards, its layout and overhead perspective make meandering easy; the on-screen action is clearly represented and has a tidy, uncluttered feel to it. The music is rather good, too, which is something of a rarity. Cheesy, yes, but it suits the mood perfectly, and it carries the game along on its polyphonic pulse engines.