Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars review

The Clone Wars animated series were quite popular among the Star Wars faithful so much so that Traveller’s Tales developed Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. For those of you who don’t know, Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is a 2011 Lego game based on The Clone Wars animated series. This game has come out for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Windows and Nintendo 3DS. Yeah, it just came out on every possible gaming platform.

When the first Lego Star Wars game was released in 2005, it was entertaining and adorable at the same time. What they lacked in good uniform and fun gameplay, they made up with adorable aesthetics and great use of the license they were offered. The Clone Wars are no different from its predecessors.

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars covers seasons one and two of the popular animated series. Now like its predecessors, you’ll get to play a wide variety of characters ranging from powerful Jedi to the lowliest droids. Here you will have to use each character’s unique abilities to solve puzzles as well as overcome your enemies. The puzzle solving isn’t that tricky or as exciting as you’d expect. The same goes for gameplay. Most of the game you will be using a single pressing of a single button thanks to its one-button do-it-all system. In addition to that, most of the time you have directionless objectives which will force you to frequently stop you from having some fun with your lightsaber, and get down to figuring out what the heck you have to do next!

Now if you are an impatient person, frustration will start to get the better of you, and you would probably be fighting the game instead of the empire. These tiny issues overshadow the other improvements and other good features of this game. One more thing about this game is that it will take you a lot more than the claimed 20 hours to finish this game. There are 18 distinct missions across 13 planets in The Clone Wars, and it will take you a lot of time before you can see the credits rolling. To keep things fresh, Traveller’s Tales introduced a lot more gameplay features. This would include fighting huge space battles with a starship, or command a landing force in an effort to take a planet. While taking over planets, you basically have to take over certain points on the map which are strategic so you can call in reinforcements to win the battle. You do this with another player as well in the Galactic Conquest mode. This mode also supports co-op, and it would be fun to play this once you found yourself bored or frustrated playing the game for long.

Now when you are not on a mission, you usually return to the hub world. Now in previous Lego games, you would find that the hub for you to explore, but this time around the Hub world is basically a pair of battleships engaged in a space battle.  Here you will get to unlock enough parts which will then help you explore both ships, as well as fly around in the space. In the hub world, there are many things you can do from purchase vehicles for wandering around in just for fun, unlocking additional characters and complete side quests.

Overall, despite the occasional hiccups, the game is still addictive and deep as you’d expect from Lego Star Wars. So be prepared to spend hours clutching onto your PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 controller as this game grows on you.