LEGO Star Wars – Does it Live Up to the Hype?

LEGO was always a massive part of my childhood. As I write this, while I stay at my parents' house for the weekend, I am literally sitting next to two massive bins full of LEGOs.

They are the culmination of years of buying, building, and the eventual entropy of LEGOs to settle into a colorful pile of bricks. They are some of the best toys my brothers and I ever had. Yes, on par or even better than EasyBet Casino. Imagine that.

LEGO wasn't limited to the physical world, however. Since the early 2000s, LEGO has teamed up with Travelers Tales (now known as TT Games) to produce video game adaptations of famous IPs . . . but LEGO. There are dozens of LEGO games that you probably have never heard of ("LEGO Soccer Mania", anyone?), but easily one of the most famous games is LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game.

TT Games adapted the Star Wars prequel trilogy, and the combination of simple gameplay, slapstick humor, and pantomiming the plot of Star Wars was a massive success. They followed it up with Lego Star Wars 2, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and, now, after five years in development, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

The question is: Does the Studio's biggest game yet live up to the Hype?

Is it Fun?

Well, let's get the obvious part out of the way. I've been playing through the game Co-op with my little brother, and so far, we've sunk around 24 hours into the game together and have almost completed all 9 movies. There is no denying that LEGO Star Wars is a fun experience and a far better one to share with someone else (especially if they happen to be really small).

That being said, this is definitely a kids' game (like all the LEGO games before it), and the lack of challenge makes this sort of game unappealing to adults playing by themselves or the "serious" Monster-Energy-Gamer types (you know who you are, Kyle).

However, if you have someone to play it with, LEGO games are the definitive co-op experience. TT Games have honed the co-op stuff to perfection, and The Skywalker Saga is no exception. It's as easy as grabbing a friend and clicking "play".

Well, in my experience, it's been more like having a little child constantly beg to play with me at every waking moment for a week straight...

The Gameplay

Since LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game from back in 2006, the formula for these games hasn't changed all that much. You play as your favorite characters, running through levels smashing everything made of bricks, building them into new contraptions while collecting studs and minikits. Defeating most enemies was as simple as mashing one button to punch or jumping and punching for a stronger attack.

This formula has been used in almost every LEGO game since, with only tweaks to either streamline the system or make it more appropriate for the IP of the game. For example, LEGO Harry Potter has magic in it, which is similar to how the force in Lego Star Wars works if you squint.

However, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga radically changes up the gameplay in several key ways. The first is the over-the-shoulder 3rd person camera angle instead of the single wide-angle camera. Since the game has opened up into an open world, instead of just linear levels, this change was basically necessary.

Oh yeah, the game is open-world now! I'm of two minds about this. One, I'm generally biased against open-world games. Most of the time, I wish studios would just take all that effort and make some really cool levels instead. Few studios make their worlds as in-depth as Dark Souls or The Witcher 3, and if the world doesn't have much depth, then the point of having the open world is kind of defeated. On the other, it's sort of cool to have these big environments to run around and play in, without any constraints of a current task to do or how to do them.

The third major change is the combat system. Instead of just mashing one button, you can mash . . . two buttons! And sometimes a third! There's now a combo-system, where you deal more damage by varying what buttons you use to attack. There's also a counter-button, for when enemies are about to attack you.

There are a couple of problems here: First, is that the basic attack stun-locks all enemies, which means you never have to counter-attack unless you want to. The second is that the entire system is made obsolete by GUNS. There are no shooting combos as far as I know, so sitting behind a wall blasting away at enemies makes that other system even more pointless. Oh, and lightsabers make melee combat even more trivial, for the most part.

Ship combat is completely redesigned. Flying the ships around is far more fun than in previous games, but the actual ship levels themselves leave much to be desired. They often left me confused, flying in circles until the level sort of . . . moved on to the next part.

The game, unfortunately, seems to have removed a lot of the challenge from the gameplay, even taking into consideration that these are kids' games. Platforming has been removed almost entirely, and the puzzles are . . . well, they probably shouldn't even be called puzzles at this point. LEGO Star Wars isn't Dark Souls- and it shouldn't be, but come on. At least try to make me think a little.

The Humor

In terms of being funny, The Skywalker Saga does get so much right. So many comedy games fail miserably by having characters throw out "quips" during gameplay, which becomes nauseating very quickly.

LEGO Star Wars handles humor perfectly by never repeating a single joke. The writing is a combination of unique dialogue, comedic rewriting of movie lines, or just movie lines ripped straight into the game. If a joke lands, great! If not, the game moves on to the next.

The iconic slapstick humor is back and makes even the worst Star Wars moments fun in a way that you never thought they could be. Every "serious" moment is usually contrasted with characters in the background, causing escalating levels of chaos, and I am here for every moment of it.

References are made. Holdo and Powerpuff girls is a comparison I never thought I needed in my life, and it's so stupid, and I love it. Han Solo daydreaming about Princess Leah lying on top of a large pile of gold is hilarious. The boss fight against Jabba the Hutt is unexpected and slightly underwhelming.