Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
Released: March 22, 2011
Game Length: 30 Hours
Grade: B
Background
Source Material: Before we go diving into the contents of the game, we need to go over what the game covers. Star Wars: Clone Wars first aired in theaters on August 15, 2008. It was a good foundation that shows what happens after the second movie, but the substance didn't warrant a ticket price to go and see. For most of us, we saw it first-hand on Cartoon Network two months later. The series ran for 7 seasons and branched off into another spin-off called Star Wars: Rebels (for 4 seasons) in 2014 that builds towards to the third movie in the timeline. Since the game came out in 2011, it only covers the film and certain episodes from Seasons 1 & 2. The prologue (tutorial level) pulls directly from the Geonosis Arena in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Although you have the option to split into any three factions, the tool-tips from the first few levels following Asajj Ventress will help you learn several mechanics utilized throughout the rest of the game.
Modes
Central Hub: Although there are many things that carry over from Star Wars: The Complete Saga, including the game timer, the one thing that it does slightly different is restricting the power bricks to the outside world. You will need to unlock a dozen gold bricks before gaining access to several sections of the ship. You can gradually unlock power bricks, characters, and vehicles as you explore the central hub. Know that the heroes and villains are separated in two different ships, the Star Destroyer known as Resolute and the Providence-class cruiser Invisible Hand. They will open fire to characters of the opposing faction. You can "rescue" villains trapped in prison or "access" areas of the other ship with clone troopers. Unlockable characters will suddenly appear across both ships as you complete levels. However, you must visit one of the main stations to switch-out characters. A new feature is the ability to generate a whole row (A - R) of custom characters, and use custom codes that can be found online to manually set them up a specific way.
Story: There are a total of 22 levels. There is the prologue, 6 for each of the 3 factions, epilogue, and 2 villain missions. Each one of these plays cutscenes and set you up with pre-selected characters. I'll dive more into the mechanics down below, but I will mention that you are able to switch between your standard puzzle-solving characters (or custom characters) in Free Play. There no longer seems to be a limit to the "two characters" you normally would have. There's one level where you recruit 5 golden droids to fight for you. The levels play much longer than any of the previous games, ranging between 15 and 60 minutes. Some puzzles will require you to destroy a total of ten things scattered all throughout the level in order to obtain a mini-kit. Because of this, I had a hard time finding all 10 mini-kits that unlock a new character. After playing through both modes, I realized that I only fully completed one single level.
Space: On top of the little space missions you can do in the central hub to destroy stuff, there is one space mission for each faction story. The idea is to fly around in one of your ships and land in highlighted areas to activate torpedoes or access the next area. You cannot fly up or down. There are only two layers you can transition between using a hyperdrive docking ring. There will be a button prompt and a short transition when you want to land. Showing off how small you are in comparison to the grand scope of these large ships is pretty enthralling. I only wish they would have had more space "battles" like they did in Star Wars: The Complete Saga. The good news is that destroying random enemy ships, like in the "Storm of Ryloth" level, can be a good source of income when you are short on studs.
Ground Assault: There are a total of 5 story missions, 16 Republic missions, and 16 Separatist missions. Some of these will only become available after you complete certain restrictions. I barely scratched the surface on these missions. For starters, I crashed multiple times. I thought that maybe a Windows Update or alt tabbing might have interfered with the game at first, but I legitimately crashed only during this mode: three times during Gungan General, twice on Weapon Factory, and twice in general missions. This can be tough during Story Mode since you cannot skip the cutscenes. I adore the fact that they scrounged up the resources to establish a control point tug-of-war mini-game for the first time in the Lego series. The rock-paper-scissors approach where silver structures can only be destroyed with heavy fire, gold structures must be destroyed with either laser fire or consistent blaster fire, and energy cores can be destroyed with torpedoes is rather brilliant. I very much like how you can strafe whenever a red bar appears with a B-Button prompt. Sadly, the AI is horrible. Allies and enemies alike sort of roam around unless you are pulling down a shield or hitting something. Also, you are severely limited on what you can build. What you can build and how many is dependent on the number of control points in your possession and which planet you are on. At least there is some variety in objectives for each mission.
Mechanics
Jedi: There are plenty of new things to try out as presentation seems to be priority in this game. Let's first talk about the lightsabers. Carried over from the first game is the ability to deflect bullets, double-jump, and use the force to move things. There are still elements that can only be moved by someone who uses "dark" force. They have added short animation sequences that slowly slice apart enemies, clashing lightsabers as seen in Lego: Indiana Jones 2 sword-fighting, the ability to chain-throw your lightsaber by aiming at various targets as introduced in Lego Batman, a small smashed area with a little knockback to enemies when you strike your lightsaber into the ground, wall-jump by planting your lightsaber in certain Lego pieces, the option to hold more than one lightsaber (and grab hold of another one that drops on the ground), sparks accompanied by sound effects when your lightsaber touches anything, and slicing open circles into various wall surfaces. Another feature they expanded upon was the ability to pick-up things with the force. They made droidekas more resilient to your force abilities and super battle droids will constantly fire at whatever you point them at. Structures with a large number of pieces will swirl in the air for a moment before being built. Other puzzle elements will require you to "snap" purple pieces into place where they provide subtle hints to their location.
Clone Troopers: As seen from the "Yoda" episode, clone troopers can be quite unique and helpful in clearing a wide-range of obstacles. Standard troopers can throw detonators that stick to silver objects, like how the bounty hunters used them in the first Lego Star Wars game. Of course, you can always use the "bazooka guy" since he no longer dies on a whim as seen in Lego Indiana Jones, fires much more rapidly than before, and his missiles home into the targets automatically. For gold objects, the heavy trooper that carries around a mini-gun will be able to create some heat. Every now and then you will be called upon to summon a trooper to plant a bomb. The best part? Clone Commanders can order his troops to follow and attack targets, even during the Ground Assault missions.
Abilities: Considering that the game includes all the characters from the first two seasons of the television series, and the ability to unlock several from the first couple games, it can be very hard to check-in each and every one of the 114 characters. For example, almost all the clone troopers share the same idle animation of taking off their helmet or sliding onto the ground when double-jumping. However, there are a few exceptions I noticed:
- Jar Jar Binks: Perhaps one character you will see available in every level for his high-jump alone. He also has a unique idle animation of sticking out his tongue.
- Waxer: Each of the troopers have some sort of color distinction on their armor, but this one has numbered markings on the side of his helmet.
- Astromechs: They have a hovering ability that didn't always initiate for me when I wanted it to. They are also the only ones that can "spark" electricity out of their chassis. Note that in "Duel of the Droids," the two droids will engage in a electricity duel that's similar to two Jedis fighting.
- Sniper Rifle: Aurra Sing, HELIOS-3D, and IG-88 are all equipped with sniper rifles that generate a little magnifying glass to simulate your scope. Since one specific level must be completed in order to unlock these bounty hunters, the ability isn't widely-used.
- Electricity Panels: Robonino and Magnaguard are the only two characters that can access electricity panels, similar to how the Joker was the only one to use them in Lego Batman.
- Small Hatches: Robonino, Yoda, and Wag Too (the one that looks like a lemur) are the only ones that can squeeze through tiny spaces.
- Protocol Panels: Although C-3PO's face is shown on these little puzzle games, he isn't the only one that can use them. Both HELIOS-3D and IG-88 have a wide-range of access to bounty hunter, astromech, and protocol panels. Yes, they will bend down like a little kid to access them if they have to. They also like to kick things.
- Cad Bane: One of the bounty hunters that can throw detonators, he can also hover like an astromech with attachments to his boots. He will also remove his hat in order to wear the tactical droid's head.
- Dark Jedi: When using the force, enemies in a distance will be grabbed in a choke-hold. Specific characters will shoot electricity from their fingertips.
Mentionables
References to the Lego Indiana Jones: I can't believe I have to create a whole separate category for this. At a certain point, it felt like every single level had something from these previous Lego games. There's a level where Henry Jones and Indiana Jones pop out behind a bookcase tied up in a chair. There's a whole secret area hidden inside the "Yoda" level that replicates the chamber where the light shines upon the little city. You'll also find the ark subtly stashed away in one level. The UFO vehicle from the sequel can be built and used in a couple of levels.
Details (Good and Bad): The one thing I applaud for is seeing actual Geonosian mini-figures in the stands of the arena, instead of the awkward paper cut-outs in Complete Saga. There are a lot of new models for the figures, including Yoda, droidekas, and General Grievous. Red Brick Detector will now only show where non-collected power bricks are available. I liked how they included the little kids inside the secret classroom on Ryloth. Since I seem to die a lot in this game, it is nice that the Adaptive Difficulty lessens the number of studs you lose after dying a lot in a short time frame. You will also not get hurt while building. Although the scrawling text isn't seen in the actual episodes, there is a somewhat coherent story added in Star Wars film-fashion at the beginning of each level. The reason why the game has a photo-sensitive warning at the beginning of the game is because any level with heavy electricity will forecast a blaring light shadow in the background. Little pieces on the ground can be nudged ever-so-slightly by running into them. The game now requires a button prompt whenever you step on a menu platform instead of automatically invoking the interface.
Unlocking features: I knew something was wrong when I only unlocked the first two rows of characters after completing all the story levels in 8 hours at a 40.6% completion rate. Well, it appears you need to unlock the space port, hop into a ship, and travel to the opposing faction's main hub. Then you can unlock a section over there to do the villain's story level "Castle of Doom" before unlocking the guy that can shoot electricity into devices. There is another section that can only be unlocked if you buy Cad Bane walking around for 250,000 studs. There is an entire room dedicated to all the bounty hunters with the villain mission "Hostage Crisis" available at the nearby station. This is where you can access 16 Bounty Missions that still turn off all your power bricks and force you to repeat in finding those secret areas inside the current story levels. The one difference here is how you are able to manually switch between the characters instead of swapping between a mob of bounty hunters following you around. Unlocking "trapped" characters can be a pain when you must run all the way to a station, carefully choose the two characters you need, and take the elevators back to a section of the ship. If by chance you do unlock all 130 gold bricks, bought all the red bricks, and 100% the game, you will receive a cloaking ship that shoots torpedoes and missiles as your reward.
Other Notes: There is a lot to be disappointed about. Both Zero Punctuation and GameTrailers really didn't like the game. 32 Missions are dedicated to the same battleground mode that you will probably tire out after doing the ones in the Story 10 times. Targeting can still be fidgety when you are trying to select certain items with enemies all around. It can be difficult to figure out what the game wants you to do to defeat General Grieveous. At a certain point, the only way to bring his health down was to throw something at him, then pick him up, and then toss him against a wall. Using your lightsaber or throwing multiple boxes wouldn't work during that round. But they did do a splendid job with the graphics and lighting overhaul, even so much as adding a "Glow in the Dark" power brick that even works on vehicles! Though, I'm not sure why that trailer for Harry Potter is available in the main menu. I played for 19 hours, 71/130 gold bricks, 80 characters unlocked, and 71.3% completion before I got tired of the game.
Summary
Review: The developers certainly made a flashy entrance with this game. They made lightsabers feel dangerous, the battles feel epic, and the ships in outer space feel awesome. There were a range of new mechanics that both established a foundation for games to come and unique to the Lego series. Unfortunately, the amount of content stretched too thin. The number of times you had to participate in control point battles with weak AI and instability issues made the experience monotonous. This on top of the longer levels made collecting items extremely difficult. Though, I certainly recommend playing it for fans of the Star Wars universe. The events, characters, setting, and level design brilliantly reflect those in the television series.
2-26-2023