LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga review

Nov 6, 2007

So you've caused a brick-showering gunfight in the Cantina. You've abused the Force to stack up some empty beer bottles - then rolled a bowling ball through the lot of them. You've built a little LEGO car and pootled happily around one of those flat plastic Lego roads with the bobbly grass on. You've created a new Star Wars hero with C-3PO's head and Princess Leia's legs. And all this in the first five minutes.

Basically, you're not going to need us to tell you how brilliant LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is. This game's designed for kids, but it's well-designed for kids, which means it's still fun for people like us whose heads have started to grow through the top of their hair. With a short, sweet level for every decent scene from the six flicks, The Complete Saga is like a mouth-moistening box of mini donuts, with a seemingly endless array of secret rooms, bonus bits and unlockable characters as the equivalent of dabbing up all the escaped sugar. From Imperial corridors satisfyingly stuffed with stormtroopers to neat switch-flipping puzzles on the appealing plasticky green-brown Endor, this trek through Lucas's head feels as complete as anything from The Miyamoto Factory.

Which is odd, because the bulk of The Complete Saga's action - mostly just walking forward and smashing anything in your way - has bored us to knuckle-chewing tears in games like Avatar and Crash of the Titans. But then those games didn't have LEGO - looking shinier and meatier in this latest-gen version - or some of history's best (and worst) sci-fi movies to build from. Riding those woolly Banthas, "being" Anakin in the blisteringly fast Pod Race, chasing Boba Fett over Bespin...if you don't come away willing all your favourite movies to be transformed via the medium of plastic bricks, you're either dead or a big fan of Schindler's List.