Lego Star Wars (1 comment)
Among other things, I got Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy for Christmas. I saw the first game being played in two-player cooperative mode by KC's brothers at one of her parties and was inspired to add the series to my Christmas wishlist.
It's been a week, and I'm up to 100% completion on both games. That shouldn't be a surprise, given that I didn't have to work last week. I can say that the games are more fun that I'd expected. All of the storytelling is animated very nicely to (mostly) match up scene-for-scene with the movies. There's no dialog, so they've added sight gags to add some humor. For instance, in Return of the Jedi, when Darth Vader visits the second Death Star and warns that the Emperor is displeased with the status of the construction effort, the camera now pans to some workers wandering around aimlessly in a cordoned-off work zone. One of them sits on a Lego chair and spins around.
I always like it when games allow a dedicated player to break them by unlocking super-powerful items or abilities. Lego Star Wars provides the latter. The second game allows players to load up characters from their saved game for the first game and play as them. It's not a big advantage, but sending General Grievous (and his four lightsabers) to a Death Star to fight storm troopers is always a good time. Upon the completion of Return of the Jedi, the ghost versions of Anakin, Yoda, and Obi-Wan are unlocked. Playing as any of them provides complete stealth and invulnerability from one's enemies, which I love.
But beyond the puzzles and fun gameplay, these are revolutionary games in my household because they allow me to unlock invincibility. With that turned on, the game becomes fun for Mel to play alongside me (even if she has a tendency to accidentally force-confuse me when she's a Jedi). She's a bit disappointed that we've played through all the Star Wars movies, so here's to hoping for Lego Dune or Lego Lord of the Rings.
One tip for anyone who's playing: Lego Star Wars II doesn't give you a character with Sith powers until you've completed all three episodes, so it's best to create a custom character and give them a red lightsaber, at least until you can afford to pull Darth Maul in from an old save. That will give you an appropriate character for tackling the dark-force-only puzzles.