Lego Star Wars II hands-on

We also got to (clumsily) fly a Y-wing around the Death Star, which meant lots of shooting down TIE Fighters and picking up floating torpedoes, which followed us around until we fired them at bunkers and gun emplacements. This was fun, but what we really want to do is tackle the trench run with an AT-AT walker.

Strangely, we'll eventually be able to; any of the vehicles that players unlock (except creatures like dewbacks and tauntauns) can then be used in any of the vehicle missions, no matter how absurd and useless that might be.

But "absurd" seems to be the order of things here, and that's good. Developer Traveller's Tales really wants to ramp up the silliness this time around, and so Leia vamps constantly, Han Solo winks like a jackass whenever he's on camera and all the characters go through overstated, comical movements. You'll also frequently stumble across stormtroopers doing stuff like sitting around half-naked in a jacuzzi.

We saw the game running on both a PS2 and an Xbox 360 - representing the low and high ends of the console spectrum - and apart from the 360 looking a lot sharper, the two versions were identical. There were still a few rough edges to hammer out (like, say, characters without faces), but Lego Star Wars II is already looking smooth for its September release.