force field
Draw your Jedi lightsabre and unleash The Force against the evil Sith in Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, developed by British software house Traveller's Tales and published by United States-based LucasArts.
The Complete Saga is a compilation of the highly successful 2005 release Lego Star Wars: The Video Game, based on the blockbuster film series' pre-quel trilogy and last year's Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, which covered the events of the first three movies. All three video games feature a unique Star Wars universe, where everything is built from virtual Lego blocks.
Designed for the Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, The Complete Saga enables players to enjoy all the engaging puzzles, lightsabre combat and platform levels (in which characters jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles) from the anthology with slick, high-definition graphics.
The inclusion of a multiplayer online mode, thanks to the internet capabilities of those three game consoles, is probably the most important enhancement. An entirely new version for the Nintendo DS handheld game system is also available.
Some content from the two previous game releases has been modified and certain sequences have been added. For example, there is a new high-speed pursuit of bounty hunter Zam Wesell on the galactic capital of Coruscant. Players can control two to six characters and switch between characters to use their unique abilities.
Each Star Wars episode is broken down into several levels, each based on the movies' most famous moments. In The Phantom Menace, for instance, a player starts off as Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn and Jedi apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi, fighting battle droids and escaping from the Trade Federation battleship en route to the planet Naboo.
On each level, a player picks up single Lego studs, which are the game's currency, used to buy new characters or mini-games. Collecting numerous hidden items will enable a player to unlock new features. Each character can take five hits before being killed. Penalties are paid with the studs.
Besides being easy to play, the game allows more than 160 characters from all the episodes to be mixed and matched like Lego mini-figures to create entirely new characters. There are, literally, millions of possibilities.
If you haven't tried the two previous releases, then The Complete Saga is a must-have for Christmas.
Pros: You can play any Star Wars character or create ones.
Cons: Most of the repertoire has been recycled from the two previous releases.
