Enter the characters you see below Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies. Type the characters you see in this image:In recent years, it has become fashionable to adopt an air of cynicism about the Lego games. They have continued to come thick and fast and, consequently, have attracted accusations of saminess. Such cynicism generally evaporates once stuck into their gameplay, though.Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens suggests that developer TT Games hasn't ignored that criticism, since it takes a back-to-basics approach which, while it doesn't quite constitute a full-on reboot, certainly freshens up the formula. All while continuing to inject its typically British sense of humour throughout.Is it the best Lego game to date?The Force Awakens is one of the most familiar films of recent times and TT Games, wisely, has opted to turn that fact into a virtue. Generally, Lego games based closely on specific films revolve around a story which consists of those films' most iconic scenes concertinaed together, so that you get to replay the moments which stuck most firmly in mind, yet narrative consistency goes out of the window.
However, in Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, pretty much every scene from the film is present.What you get is an unprecedentedly faithful rendering of the film, seen via TT Games' unique Lego-prism. Which means countless little humorous touches in which, say, stormtroopers clown around at rallies which originally had fascistic overtones, or you find yourself on a mission to stock up on wookiee-cookies for Chewbacca before he will even contemplate getting into the Millennium Falcon. If you ever wondered what The Force Awakens would have been like if JJ Abrams had ramped up the silliness-level, here's your answer.The decision to drill deep down into the film, rather than skimming off its highlights, has another welcome by-product: it has freed up TT Games to expand the gameplay beyond what you normally find in a Lego game.Sure, it still involves plenty of smashing of objects and rebuilding them in order to solve puzzles, plus swapping between characters, and the familiar meleeing and shooting.
But this time around, you even find instances of cover-shooting (albeit ones with loads of snap, making it really easy to target enemies more or less instantly).And on top of that, the game features many set-pieces in which you get to engage in proper Star Wars-style battles, putting you at the controls of, among other things, AT-STs, X-Wings, Tie Fighters, the Millennium Falcon and countless turrets.Naturally, you get to wield a light-sabre and, when you've finished the story and want to mine the levels for all their collectables, you even find puzzles that require use of the Dark Side's force.A small but significant alteration has been made to one of the franchise's key gameplay mechanics, too. This time around, you are given the ability to build different objects from each pile of bricks, by moving the right-stick around and highighting different construction-points. Which adds a bit of complexity to the puzzling, since you often have to build something, use it, smash it up and rebuild it as something else.
Lego Star Wars: the Force Awakens feels, in gameplay terms, like the most diverse and varied game TT Games has ever made, neatly sidestepping those recent suspicions of saminess. It's also the best-looking Lego game yet, doing magnificent justice to the general spectacle that the film offers.Like all Lego games, The Force Awakens can be played in two-player co-operative mode, so it's the ideal source of game-related bonding for parents and offspring, in time-honoured fashion. Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the best game TT Games has made for years.Naturally, it isn't one of those Lego games that features an open-world city, but it still has plenty of replay value thanks to the usual vast numbers of collectables, hidden characters and puzzles that can only be solved when you return to areas with specialist characters that you don't have in the story mode. And because it's so faithful to the film, that somehow leaves you keener to revisit every one of its nooks and crannies.One thing that JJ Abrams' film nailed in an incredibly impressive manner was bringing back the universality that George Lucas's early efforts possessed, so no matter what your age, if you fail to derive enjoyment from this Lego-fied opportunity to relive The Force Awakens in all its glory, you must be very glum indeed.
More slick Lego gameplay New puzzle and combat mechanics Some filler in the lengthy chapters Available on Xbox One (reviewed), PS4, PC, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii UA whole Lego Star Wars game devoted to just the one film? I’ll admit that my first response to TT Games’ latest was fairly cynical. While we know the Lego series works well for trilogies or even looser themed collections (see Lego Marvel’s The Avengers), could one movie really stretch out over many hours of gameplay without cramming in too much filler? Well, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens has not merely dispelled my snark but made it feel unwarranted. It’s yet another great example of how the series can hold onto its core while managing to quietly innovate, and might also be the funniest Lego Star Wars game to date.Perhaps the biggest surprise is the scope of the game, opening with a prologue that reworks the climax of Return of the Jedi – and in more style than in The Original Trilogy game – before taking us through the events of Episode VII.
That much you might have predicted, but TT Games has somehow got permission to take things even further, with a series of unlockable side missions that explore the characters and events of The Force Awakens in more depth. It might be strange to find the exploits of Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren and Han and Chewie chronicled for the first time in Lego form, but this helps make Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens almost unmissable for Star Wars fans. They’ve even managed to get the major cast members to do new dialogue, and that includes Harrison Ford. This, by any standards, is a coup.Of course the gameplay doesn’t veer far from the old Lego template, though I think we’ve reached the point where complaining about that is like complaining that Call of Duty involves a lot of shooting people in the face through a holographic sight. You’ll still spend most of your time tackling stormtroopers and space-gangsters with your fists, light sabre or blaster, while smashing the scenery into handy Lego bricks.
You’ll turn some of these bricks into new objects which can be used to solve simple puzzles, while collecting characters with special abilities you can harness to get past all the obstacles in your way. This is as true of Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens as it was true of, well, just about every other Lego game.Related: Forza Horizon 3 previewYet there’s always something distinct about every Lego game, whether that comes down to Lego Batman’s costume-based puzzles and open-world adventures or Lego Pirates of the Caribbean’s focus on platforming and melee combat. Lego Star Wars continues its predecessors’ love of vehicle sections with a stream of Starfox-esque flying sequences and dogfights, many of which are good enough to put Star Wars: Battlefront’s meagre efforts in the shade. In fact, I can’t remember having such a good time blasting cannons from capital ships and tackling Tie Fighters since the glory days of Rogue Squadron.Meanwhile, the new characters bring new abilities into play.
BB-8, while weak in combat, becomes a veritable swiss-army-knife of charging, unlocking, traversal and activating capabilities, while Rey is arguably the Lego games’ most agile hero ever, with a range of jumping, wall-running and pole-spinning moves that put her ahead of even Lego Batman’s Robin. Finn, Poe, Han, Chewie and even Kylo Ren also get their chance to shine, and in a way the game manages the same amazing trick as the movie: making you almost as invested in the new faces as you are in the ones you grew up with.Related: Xbox One S vs Xbox OneYet the most impressive thing is that the series can still find new tricks lurking up its sleeves. The first is a simplified cover-shooting mechanic, where racing behind specific walls or doorways allows you to shift with a squeeze of the left trigger into an over-the-shoulder, Gears of War-style view. From here you can move the reticule around to take pot-shots at hiding stormtroopers, though the game might make this a little too easy with an over-zealous auto-aim.
Headshots are understandably a no-no and it’s impossible to snipe some enemies, but it makes you feel part of the action in a way that no previous Lego Star Wars game has managed. Add a new range of character-specific special attacks, and you get Lego combat at its best.Secondly, many of the old bash-and-build puzzles now give you a choice of where and what to build. One spot might give you a launcher for BB-8, another a rotary switch for Rey to push, another a gun turret or water-cannon, and you decide which to go for first. In some cases you’re just choosing between two or three solutions to defeat one enemy, but in others you’ll need to find the right order to build in, knocking down each build to get the bricks to do the next. This adds a new layer of sophistication to puzzles that might otherwise be stupidly simple. While I’d be the first to say that we don’t look for Witness-level puzzles in a kiddie-friendly Lego game, some of BB-8’s combination lock puzzles are so pitifully easy that they might not actually need to be there.
Related: All the latest news plus a preview of Watch Dogs 2There are, admittedly, moments where you’ll wonder whether this section or that really deserves to be here, as Rey spends fifteen minutes exploring Maz Kanata’s castle or Finn goes on the hunt for a mug of coffee. Yet for most of the time, Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens gives you too much fun stuff to do to leave you thinking about it too much. The gameplay holds up brilliantly when playing solo then only gets better when you add another player into the mix.And beyond just getting through the chapters, there’s the real challenge to keep you busy: the constant demand to find and collect everything you can. The lure of more characters, vehicles and those True Jedi ratings will keep you coming back to missions you’ve completed, but with the new story missions requiring a good supply of gold bricks to unlock, you finally have a really good reason to make sure you get every one.In the end, though, it’s not the gameplay that will make Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one of my most cherished games of the year.
Nor is it the graphics, though I think there’s the most lustrous and weirdly realistic the series has delivered (when it comes to rendering plastics, no-one else comes close). Nope, it’s with the laugh-out-loud humour that TT Games has really nailed it. It’s always respectful, always affectionate, but always happy to rip the wotsits out of the scripts, settings, characters and cast. One minute there’s a fantastic sight gag on Han Solo, the next an exceptional skit on Kylo Ren’s teenage angst. Sunbathing stormtroopers, fiendish villains and cuppa-crazy rebels are all butts for great jokes, and the juxtaposition of earnest dialogue with on-screen slapstick is hilarious. If you love Star Wars and loved The Force Awakens, you’ll have an easier job resisting Kylo Ren’s force powers than resisting this.What could have been a cash-in is another classic Lego game. The gameplay is strong, with its new, more sophisticated puzzles, stronger combat and brilliant flying sequences, while the visuals are absolutely brilliant, with the old camera issues on the decline.