>> iPhone 7 review The 10 best Star Wars games of all time The Star Wars Expanded Universe: the good, the bad and... The 30 most anticipated games of 2017In Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens, each level opens with that iconic opening crawl; a scrolling wall of text against a backdrop of space. From the font to the aspect ratio, it’s entirely authentic, we’re told. This attention to detail is present throughout what we’re shown in a gameplay presentation and a three-level hands-on for the upcoming Lego game from Traveller’s Tales. The first level casts you as Rey, sliding down sand dunes in Jakku on a makeshift board. It’s a short minigame followed by more traditional Lego shenanigans: smashing enemies and scenery to bits; and building strange contraptions from the debris. While familiar, it’s easily the best-looking Lego game we’ve seen, and it’s more polished than the series has ever been. It’s in the small details, like how BB-8 - the little spherical droid from the blockbuster movie - skits along the floor and leaves a trail behind it as it goes, allowing you to trace your name in the sand.
Traveller’s Tales says it wants this to be the best Lego game the studio has made, and it’s no surprise why. After all, LucasArts is showing a lot of trust by allowing them to bridge the gaps between Star Wars Episode VI-VII in its blocky alternate universe. Players will be able to see how Han Solo and Chewie captured the exotic aliens they have stashed in their cargo hold in Episode VII, for example. It’s not just this, either. Voice talent from the film has also been pulled into the videogame production. While Traveller’s Tales wouldn’t reveal exactly who was returning, we do know Daisy Ridley will be reprising her role of Rey, and has recorded fresh lines especially for the game. This is why Traveller’s Tales is so determined to put out its best work. It has been 11 years since the last Lego Star Wars game, and the studio hopes this is as blistering a return to form as the movie itself. It isn’t just polish: there are also improvements to the core gameplay. Obviously, it will still feel very familiar to anyone who has ever played a Lego game - this has to be accessible to all ages, after all - but there are a few new features that add a little to this tested formula.
One of the main additions is Multi-Build. Rather than just holding a button to build something random - once you’ve sufficiently smashed the scenery and the resulting debris has gathered up, hopping around enticingly - now you often have multiple options, and they even have uses outside of simply progressing in the level. At one point during our demo we were set upon by First Order troopers and we had the option to build an item to help. To the left, we could create a bubble shield. To the right, we could conjure up a floating personal defense drone. And if you change your mind, you can just smash your first creation up and build the other. Then there are the vehicles, of which there will be 40 - from alien creature mounts to Kylo Ren’s shuttle to the Millennium Falcon. We got to try out the latter in one of the new dog-fighting arenas. Replaying the Jakku chase scene from the movie, with the enemy ship count considerably bumped up. It starts off as a linear section as the game guides you through the wreckage of downed freighter ships and other space scrap, mindlessly shooting down enemy ships and avoiding the reticles of pursuing craft, to a dogfighting arena where you have full control over the iconic smuggling ship, doing barrel rolls, looping, accelerating and decelerating with 360 degrees of freedom.
We’re told the game also introduces on-foot, cover-based blaster battles, but we didn’t get to see those in action. This is all delivered through the signature Lego humour, each character a plastic caricature of themselves - and there will be over 200 of them from across the entire Star Wars series. You’ll be able to control these over 18 levels - 11 of which are from The Force Awakens and five of which are completely new - and in five hub areas: Jakku, Takodana, Starkiller Base, D'Qar, and the Millennium Falcon. There are still some niggling issues present in the demo. Like how the combat seems to lock on to whatever it wants, sometimes making you smash up the scenery when you really want to be smashing up the guy stood right next to you shooting you - but since there’s hardly a penalty for dying, it never feels too irritating. The large, rideable animals also handle like.. well, large animals if you tried to ride them in real life. Occasionally they do what you want them to.
Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens is clearly being built with a lot of love for the source material; that much is apparent in every detail, right down to each brick. A couple of refinements to the formula help make it feel fresh and, depending on the rest of the package, it could well cement itself as the best Lego game so far when it releases on June 28 this year.The 10 Best Star Wars GamesHappy Star Wars day! Want a trove of games—released a long time ago, but in a galaxy just down the way—to help you while away the nearly 5,500 hours that stand between today and the ballyhooed debut of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on December 18?Here you go then, a compendium of gaming's brightest vamps on George Lucas's Campbellian space opera, now living in what Disney calls its "Star Wars Legends" line (formerly the "Expanded Universe"). That, if you hadn't heard, is Disney's controversial wave-of-the-hand relegation of everything not the films, TV shows or recent books to "maybe it did/didn't happen" status.
So much for Luke Skywalker rubbing elbows with Kyle Katarn, or you usurping a 4,000-year-old Sith Lord to become one yourself.But never mind that, because games are innately anti-canonical—subversion's in their DNA. And while some on this list were more genre acolytes than pioneers when they first appeared a decade or more ago, a few managed to be exemplars of the medium for their time.My only guideline in culling these 10 from the record books, was that they had to be playable on currently available platforms. So think of these as less a "best Star Wars games ever" lineup (though they're nearly that) than the best you can sample without having to track down the original hardware or software.Star Wars: Knights of the Old RepublicArguably the apotheosis of all the Star Wars games, Bioware's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic transported players thousands of years into the galaxy's past, folding iconic lore like Jedis, Sith Lords, lightsabers and droids into a baroque reinterpretation of Lucas's science fantasy verse.
You'll find some who'll swear Bioware's take on Star Wars bests even the original trilogy (including The Empire Strikes Back), and given the caliber of games Bioware was releasing at the time (both Baldur's Gate installments), it's easy to see why., Mac, SteamStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith LordsStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords was a bug-riddled and unfinished mess when it first arrived in late 2004. Time and sufficient patching have thankfully rectified most of its shortcomings, allowing players to experience one of the most insightful and reflective Star Wars stories on the books. Credit design lead Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment, Pillars of Eternity), whose exhilarating vamp on the Star Wars universe simultaneously deconstructed it., Steam,Star Wars: The Old RepublicWhat if the esteemed studio that gave us Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic crafted a modern MMO that revisited the era's storied 4,000-year-old playground? EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic, released in 2011 and still going strong, capitulates to MMO tropes (like fetch-and-deliver quests ad infinitum), but dressed in better-than-average, more personalized storylines.
Star Wars: TIE FighterSure, 1993's Star Wars: X-Wing was terrific, but it took 1994's TIE Fighter to catapult developer Totally Games' series to legendary status. For the first time in gaming history, players could campaign for the other side, exploring the Empire's strangely compelling machinations--peace by the sword--through ingenious white-knuckled sorties, piloting vulnerable Imperial star fighters without combat backstops like deflector shields. TIE Fighter remains one of the best flight simulations ever made, a tour de force of mission design, plausibly brutal Newtonian deep space dogfighting and subversive storytelling.Lego Star Wars: The Complete SagaMy favorite moment in the friendly, rollicking, collection-angled Lego Star Wars games happens early on, in Lego Star Wars itself when you're poking around Mos Eisley, playing co-op with a friend. At one point you come across a pile of unassembled Lego bits and bobs. You don't have to do anything. You can just walk on by. But tap a button to whip the mess together, and you'll find yourself staring down an Imperial AT-ST.
At which point my companion yelled: "We just built our own boss monster!"How to play: Android, iOS, Mac, SteamSuper Star WarsI'm skirting my platform stricture here, but if you're still rocking a Wii, you can pull this platforming run-and-gun down via Nintendo's Virtual Console for 800 points ($8). Take note of the game's first-person, pseudo-3D levels, where you can zip around flattened Tatooine landscapes in Luke's land speeder, lobbing energy balls at enemies. Nintendo called this "Mode 7" back in the day, and while it looks dated today, seeing it in games like F-Zero and Super Star Wars in the early 1990s was a revelation.How to play: Virtual Console (Wii)Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces IIStar Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II stands as the first Star Wars game that let you experience, however crudely, the combat life of a Jedi Knight. Other games had let you swing the franchise's iconic lightsaber or pull off Force tricks from sidewise perspectives, but Dark Forces II put that lightsaber (and those force powers) in your hands, then leveled the camera where your eyes would be, propelling you through puzzle-filled levels flush with enemies you could optionally choke or throw or envelop with tendrils of bluish lightning.
, SteamStar Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi OutcastStar Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast may harbor lower lows (uneven level design) than its predecessor, but it's also packing higher highs (lightsaber play, force powers). And it remains an essential play if the whole "be a Jedi Knight" thing ranks high on your list of Star Wars-ian fantasies., Mac, SteamStar Wars: Empire at WarNo one's yet produced a Star Wars strategy game to rival the genre's best, but Star Wars: Empire at War comes the closest. Developer Petroglyph, harboring designers who'd worked on pioneering the real-time strategy games Dune II and Command & Conquer, folded competent terrestrial and space-based real-time strategy battles into a galaxy-spanning meta campaign that gave players control of heroic figures like Leia, Han Solo, Darth Vader and the Emperor himself., Mac, SteamStar Wars: Galactic BattlegroundsYes, developer Ensemble slapped a coat of Star Wars paint on Age of Empires II, but worse things have happened in gaming.