The Force is strong with this one.
GRAPHICS: 8
SOUND: 10
VALUE: 10
TILT: 9
ROUGH SCORE: 9.2
FINAL SCORE: 9.0
----------------------------------------
The Good:
- Music from the actual soundtrack composed by John Williams
- All six episodes in one cartridge!
- Non-gimmicky stylus-based minigames
The Bad:
- Minor graphical bugs (moreso in the Classic Trilogy levels)
- Lackluster cutscenes
- When playing solo, secondary character constantly gets in your way of collecting studs or defeating enemies
- Can't see Minikit model progress; just shows final product once all ten are collected
- Does not include all possible character parts for customization
----------------------------------------
Where to begin. I honestly don't know. There's so many things to talk about. So many reasons why this game is amazing.
I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this, you're on the fence about whether or not this game is worth dishing out your hard-earned dinero, whether or not you blew it previously on LSW2. And I'm here writing this to tell you that if you like Star Wars, you will enjoy this game, wholeheartedly.
GAMEPLAY
There is a whole lot of game going on in this cartridge. Thirty levels, about eight of which that are vehicle-based. You will have to go through the Story mode version of each level first before you can go back and play them in Free Play. As is the case in all other LSW games, there are ten minikits to collect in each level. Also hidden in each of the levels is one red brick which unlocks a certain cheat, minigame, or score multiplier, which you must then pay to be able to use/play. Furthermore, by attaining certain achievements in the levels, you earn gold bricks which when all collected, unlocks the ability to watch the game's cutscenes at the cantina's bar. And of course, on top of all this, there are millions and millions of studs, silver, gold, and blue, all over the place to find and collect. The process of stud collection never becomes tedious or mundane because it becomes second nature, an automatic activity. That, and if you ran through the levels not collecting studs, the levels would certainly seem way shorter than they are. If you ever want to take a break from the levels, there are minigames that you can unlock and play. You may think at first that they were just hastily added to show that the game was truly made for the DS, but this is not the case at all. The minigames are fun and challenging. And even though they each employ the kinds of touch screen applications we've seen several times before, they utilize the Star Wars theme very well.
I found myself really getting into the game. The movie events chosen to be represented in the levels are very important ones, and playing through all the levels really captures how epic the saga as a whole is. Though just thirty levels, it feels like you've played through all six movies. It's awesome. Between the astounding variety of characters and the incredible music (more on this later), it's very easy to become immersed in the game's universe, the Star Wars universe.
GRAPHICS
Considering the amount of content present and the fact that the music is of top-notch quality, it is quite impressive that the game still looks the way that it does. Sure, certain objects and the characters are/get a bit pixelated at times, but considering what this game is and what it's trying to achieve, the game looks good.
If only the cutscenes looked as good. It seems so silly to criticize them given that the game is so great overall, but it's just a shame that they're so bad. I guess it's just the price you pay, the sacrifice that had to be made, in order for everything else to be as it is.
SOUND
It's John Williams. High quality John Williams. It sets the moods and evokes the emotions in the films and quite surprisingly (or shouldn't it be?), it does a superb job of doing the same exact thing in this game. It just wouldn't have been the same (and the game wouldn't have been nearly as good) if the actual film score music hadn't been included. So thank God it is. It makes the game.
VALUE
I'll make this short. TONS of content. TONS of UNLOCKABLE content. LOTS of potential replayability. Very, very fun to play, no matter which level or minigame you're playing. Little to no bugs or glitches to be had. There's no way to go wrong here.
TILT
I'll make this even shorter. I love Star Wars. And so a quality Star Wars video game makes me very happy. When I heard the news that Travelers' Tales was going to make this version of the game and rebuild the whole thing from scratch to ensure it didn't bomb, I couldn't have been more excited about it. Basically, if you even remotely like Star Wars, you will like this. (Okay, this turned out longer than the other section. Oh well. :P )
Here's hoping the same kind of thing is done for Batman and Indiana Jones. :)