LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a half a year and some change later from the actual movie release, which is unusual for any game based on a film. Typically, you would get the game launching with or before the actual film, but Tt Games either contractually were obligated to release the game at a specific time or they took their time developing the game they wanted to make. I would like to think it was the latter, but you never know how contracts work nowadays.
Anyway, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens sets a new standard for not only LEGO games, but also for LEGO games based on movies. Heck, maybe even any game based on a movie. It not only gives you a step-by-step re-telling of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but it also provides you with the actual actors voicing their characters from the movie, as well as newly recorded material specifically for the game. While you pick up your jaws from the floor, please note that actors who you would assume would be against the idea of voicing over games, such as Harrison Ford, were some of the best parts of the LEGO game. For example, Ford’s Han Solo is cracking jokes during the sixth chapter of the title, Battle of Takodana, and he seems incredibly into the role. My wife walked into the room while I was playing this and she said, “Wow, that sounds really close to Harrison Ford’s voice”, in which I responded, “That’s because it is him.” She was surprised that he actually did a video game and seemed to really enjoy himself. Getting the actors to voice over their characters adds just another valuable layer to the experience. It makes it neat to see in motion and acts as a bridge between movie and game. Transmedia teachers would be thrilled with such things.
Adding that layer of authenticity into the game and reinforcing that character onscreen is a good reason why this game is great. I can’t remember the last ‘fun’ game that did that, nor can I remember if Harrison Ford ever voiced over any of the LucasArts titles, even the Indiana Jones point and clicks (old school, right?). Regardless, this additional element in the game is a welcomed one and made the adventure that much sweeter as a Star Wars fan.
Speaking of sweet, the visuals in this game set a new bar for graphics in a LEGO title. I’m incredibly impressed that Tt Games visually brought together a world that balances the humor of a LEGO title and the worlds that J.J. Abrams put together for SW fans in The Force Awakens. The developers put together a great mixture of gorgeous graphics with beautiful textures, shading and shadows, such as the dirt landscape at the Battle of Takodana, which looks like how it did in the movie (dirt flying everywhere during the battle, creating really solid atmosphere and tension, while the sun reflecting off the LEGO bodies, etc). You’ll find a lot of great representations of the movie environments, but with a sprinkle of LEGO pizazz to remind you what you’re playing (LEGO statues everywhere with fun LEGO humor — see sun basking Storm Troopers in the desert for details). Everything is visually perfect for this game.
Shifting gears, the gameplay design is equally as impressive as its presentation. For the most part, you’re still going to get the same type of LEGO gaming experience that you’re used to seeing. You’re going to have specific characters that can perform specific tasks to get through obstacles. For example, when Finn picks up a lightsaber at Maz’s place/bar, he is the only one ,during that time, that can use it to melt locks off doors (neat stuff, by the way). You’ll run into specific situations that can only be rectified through certain characters, which is something you have seen before in previous LEGO titles.
Having said this, you will run into easy-to-complex puzzles that require a bit more effort to get through. For example, staying with Maz’s palace, there is a puzzle where Rey has to figure out a way to open up the main door that leads to Luke’s lightsaber. The door can only be opened by acquiring and placing two cogs into a big open bodied machine that controls the door. Rey is required to traverse ledges and figure out how to mechanically balance certain obstacles in order to obtain said cogs. It’s a lot more complicated and complex puzzle, more than you might expect from a typical LEGO title, but it’s a great example of additional complexity the game offers that extends beyond just simply breaking things, finding a part and putting it in place to move on.
Now, my only real complaint about the game is related to the puzzles. The difficulty of some of the puzzles occasionally will cross the line of young gamer capabilities. Sometimes the game helps you out a bit with solving puzzles, sometimes you’ll be stuck with no help whatsoever. Sometimes the puzzles are simply pushing past a certain battle point in the game to get to another portion of a level. For example, and I’m not ashamed to admit this because I’m an old gamer and don’t care much about opinions of my gaming capabilities, I was stuck for the better part of a day at the Battle of Takodana. There is a portion of the battle where Han, Maz, Chewy and Finn are trying to get through a narrow passage that is guarded by multiple First Order Stormtroopers, as well as one that is protected by a shield. I spent hours trying to figure out how to dispose of the shielded stormtrooper, as there was no clear answer. Prior to this point, the stormtroopers protected by shields had to be blown up externally through generator explosions on the outside of the shield, which would drop the shield and allow for quick disposal. This particular time, there was no generator and nothing on the outside of the stormtrooper that gave any indication of what to do. Using Finn, I managed to get on a ledge over the shield stormtrooper and had the capabilities of firing down on the trooper, but the shield protected him. After a lot of frustration, I quit the game, left it for a day and came back only to find out, via this video, that you had to blow up the trooper’s gun to move on. That makes no logical sense to me and I could picture a kid really getting frustrated because they couldn’t figure this out. Once in a while, you’ll have LEGO SWTFA throw this sort of curveball at you, essentially upping the ante when it comes to figuring out how to progress. It’s good and bad for the game. It’s good because it makes the LEGO game a bit deeper in its gameplay, pushing past the ‘kiddie’ moniker given to it in the past. It’s bad because it doesn’t give you an out and while adults might have the patience to come back to the game later to figure it out, smaller kids might simply boot up Minecraft and forget this game exists.
Of course, I could be an idiot and be the only reviewer who had an issue with this point in the game. That’s a real possibility.
Regardless of how the game makes you feel at certain times, you have to give Tt Games props for making this more than just ‘another’ LEGO title. They really are trying to improve the gameplay experience and simply not trying to profit off a movie license with a minimal amount of effort. For example, how they treated the vehicle gameplay in the game, including controlling a Tie Fighter, which was a major hoot, and the scene with the Millennium Falcon, was breathtaking. They actually give the player full control over both vehicles, which is a surprise considering in the past vehicle control was basically on tracks and the gamers only controlled the turrets (see Batman for details). I think once the developers saw how much fun Batman 2 was when players controlled the Batmobile (a much better control experience than Arkham Knight’s batmobile), there was no way they couldn’t allow players to control the Tie Fighter and Millennium Falcon. That would have been cruel. Those kind of details make the gameplay special and so much fun. Major kudos to Tt Games for including those things.
As for other aspects of gameplay design, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens still brings a good amount of value added to the package with free play, individual adventures to be had once the main story is done and a lot of replay value when it comes to unlocking characters, vehicles and other things of interest. Tt Games does a fantastic job of bringing some solid variety and depth to the overall package.
Overall, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t simply another movie licensed turned into a LEGO game. It’s a beautiful opus for the LEGO series that shows that Tt Games isn’t resting on its laurels enjoying the money rolling in. The developers have put a lot of love into the presentation, gameplay depth and overall experience to bring a top-tier game that should entertain both adults and kids. Kudos to them for keeping the series fresh.
