Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars review

This review is for the Microsoft Windows version of Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars.

It’s a cruel irony that the only bad games under Traveller’s Tales Lego brand of film adaptations tend to be the ones that try to do something different. It’s almost like the concept of meshing children’s toys with popular film franchises is a flimsy structure set at exactly the right angle to be a fun but fluffy brawler with rudimentary puzzle elements, and trying to do anything different sends the whole thing crashing down into the mess that it should, by all reason, already be.

Lego Star Wars 3: The Clone Wars does not do this. It adheres very firmly to the formula set by previous Lego Star Wars entries, and therefore carries with it all of the problems those games have ever had. The lack of variety is apparent about two levels in and the controls handle in exactly the same way they have since 2005, with the persistent problem of nearly every action being assigned to the context-sensitive B button.

For example, I played the whole game and never quite learned who this orange character was, despite her appearing more than almost any other character.

Basically, if you’ve played a Lego Star Wars game before, you know exactly what to expect. There are some neat gimmicks like large-scale ground battles between thousands of characters, but these play exactly the same as regular levels with the only difference being you have to walk further. My favourite addition is the split-screen levels in which the two players are in totally different parts of the map, doing different things simultaneously in ways that affect the other player.

The one major issue I had with The Clone Wars is the storytelling. I get that the whole ‘grunts and facial expressions’ technique isn’t especially high culture, but this is the only Lego game where I’ve had no clue whatsoever what’s happening. I’ve seen very little of the TV series it adapts, and for me the signature Star Wars crawl at the beginning of each level was nowhere near enough for me to have a clue who most of the zany villains were and what the actual threat was.

That said, if you’re not coming for the storytelling (which, hopefully, you’re not) then you’ll be treated to the same pretty good game that the series has produced for its entire lifespan. You know the drill – if you want something more than what previous games provided then look elsewhere, but if all you want is more of the same basic brawler that changes pace just enough to stay engaging then it’d be another good pick for you.