Ah, the LEGO games. I don't talk about them much on here, but I love this series. I think they really influenced my love for exploration in games, nothing feels as satisfying as combing a level in a LEGO game for every single stud I can scrounge. However, out of the many LEGO games that have been made by Traveler's Tales, my favorite will always be the very first, LEGO Star Wars.
Disclaimer: It's very hard to find good screenshots of this game so I think I'll have to go without them this time, sorry.
LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a game I have a lot of personal connection to. It wasn't just my first LEGO game, it was one of my first video games period. The only games I had prior to it were Wii Sports, Wii Play, and Mario Party 8, all of which were minigame collections. Even more, this game was my first exposure to Star Wars! I heard about LEGO Star Wars through my friends from school who all owned it, and it was through playing LEGO Star Wars that I got into the franchise as a whole.
LEGO Star Wars pretty much nailed the LEGO formula right from the get-go. Each level plops you and a potential second player into a memorable setpiece from one of the six Star Wars films of the time, and you basically just get to run around in these memorable movie moments, experiencing them through this tongue-in-cheek LEGO lens. The actual moment-to-moment gameplay in LEGO Star Wars is fairly basic and forgiving, it's basically a light 3D platformer with very simple button-mashy combat, but there is just a bit of extra depth to make it fun. There's a surprising amount of hidden combos that the game never really tells you about, like how you can perfectly deflect or dodge bullets by pressing the attack button just as it hits you, or how blaster users get a context-sensitive melee attack, or how Jedis gets a bunch of super lightsaber combos by pressing attack right at the peak of a lightsaber swing. It's nothing ground-breaking, but it adds a bit of extra flair to the combat.
But even with those extra moves, LEGO Star Wars is pretty easy as you can't die. There are no lives, and losing all your hearts just makes you lose the game's main collectible, studs. Instead, like in Kirby's Epic Yarn, the actual difficulty comes in finding and holding onto as many studs in a level as possible to fill up a meter called the True Jedi meter. This is where LEGO Star Wars (and LEGO games as a whole) really shines. Every level in LEGO Star Wars is filled to the brim with opportunities to get studs, from secret areas, to branching paths, to a ridiculous amount of breakable and interactable objects, making for some of the most satisfying exploration in any linear adventure game. On top of that, each level also boasts 10 hidden Minikits and a Red Brick, many of which can only be obtained by returning to a level with another character, encouraging even more exploration and unveiling even more facets to every level on your second go-around. The impeccable sound design (which I'll delve into more later) makes searching for collectibles in LEGO Star Wars feel even more satisfying, from the clacking coin noise of picking up a stud to the powerful whoosh you hear when you get a Minikit.
But most of this stuff applies to every LEGO game, why is it that The Complete Saga still remains my favorite? Well, I feel like the more the LEGO series goes on, the more automated and restrictive it begins to feel. Bonus areas become increasingly infrequent, the game frequently takes control away from the player to show them something, and combat becomes increasingly reliant on context-sensitive actions and quick time events, but LEGO Star Wars is completely hands off. Aside from some tips that occasionally display at the bottom of the screen, you are never forcedly shown how to do anything. The first level of the game, Negotations, silently teaches you everything you need to know through just the level design. It shows you how to use the force and destroy objects in a safe area, only letting you move onto actual enemies once you've proved you understood how to use it. And beyond that, you are always left to your own devices to explore at your own pace, and the levels are designed with exploration in mind, as many of the optional areas are creative, unique, playful, and filled with fun easter eggs (my favorite examples include the movie theater in Mos Eisley Spaceport, the exterior area in Escape From Hoth Base, and the laser maze in Droid Factory). Even the main hub of the Cantina has a ton of stuff to interact with in every single room, from starting a bar fight to racing along a small track to playing bowling.
I think what helps with The Complete Saga's level design and variety is the fact that it's a compilation of two different LEGO Star Wars games, each with unique level design philosophies. The prequel stages are based on the first LEGO Star Wars game and while shorter and more simple, are also a lot more action-focused. From the incredibly fun Pod Race level, to the dynamic platforming in the Droid Factory, to the pure combat of the Jedi Arena, to the lengthy gravity-shifting gauntlet in Chancellor In Peril, to the bonkers on-rails shooting in Battle Over Coruscant, to the brutal timed platforming in Darth Vader. The prequel stages boast a ton of memorable setpieces and even ramp up the difficulty quite a bit, with the Revenge Of The Sith in particular having some genuinely tough sequences for those trying to get True Jedi.
The original trilogy levels, taken from LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, are more lengthy, open, and exploration-focused. Most of its levels can clock in at around half an hour, and are filled to the brim with secret areas, easter eggs, and even alternate paths in the case of many of the A New Hope stages. They also introduce a few more interesting mechanics like vehicles, hats you can wear that augment your abilities, and secret Double Score Zone areas that let you really rack up some studs. There really isn't a single bad Original Trilogy level, they're all consistently stellar, from exploring the Jawa's sandcrawler, to frenetically running around the beautifully rendered Cloud City, to hopping around Jabba's palace and sciff, to participating in a lengthy speeder chase across Endor.
And being a compilation of two games, I also have to note that LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga is a behemoth of a game, genuinely massive. There's a total of 36 main levels across the six movies (most LEGO games tend to have around 15-18), each with 10 Minikits to find, a Red Brick that gives you an extra perk, and the aforementioned True Jedi requirement. Each level also has a Challenge variant that shuffles the Minikits and tasks you to find all of them in a short amount of time. There's also a whopping 160 characters you can buy at a shop and swap between at any time outside of the Story, custom characters, 20 bounty hunter missions where you revisit levels to search for specific characters, a multiplayer-exclusive Arcade Mode, two bonus levels for each movie, a Super Story which tasks you to quickly beat an entire movie in a short amount of time, and even an entire bonus area with six unlockable stages ranging from cut levels to the original versions of some of the vehicles levels to some very fun bonus stages which plop you onto a LEGO set and task you to demolish all of it.
As far as the presentation goes, I wouldn't say LEGO Star Wars looks particularly amazing graphically, but art direction wise, it perfectly nails the set design and overall aesthetic of the Lucas Star Wars films, from the futurism of the prequels to the more dusty analog look of the original movies. With 160 playable characters alone, there is a lot of fanservice and attention to detail, and I've already raved about the abundance of easter eggs within the levels themselves. The cutscenes are short especially compared to the later LEGO games, but they have a lot of silly charm without drawing attention to themselves. Later LEGO games would try to force in more jokes, but TCS's cutscenes are mostly funny because of the sheer comedy of seeing these serious movie moments acted out by LEGO characters. They're comedic in how understated they are. Of course, the music is all taken from John Williams' incredible movie scores and they really make you appreciate how consistently stellar his work on the Star Wars series has been, even giving some of the deeper cuts on the scores more of a spotlight. And as I mentioned before, the sound design in LEGO Star Wars is the stuff of legends. The collectible sounds are so pleasing to the ears, the character death sounds are hilariously chosen, and they're all so instantly memorable and recognizable.
Look, I obviously have a lot of nostalgia for LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, but I think it says a lot that out of the 20-something LEGO games we've gotten since, this is still the game I go back to the most. Despite its simplicity, its heavy focus on exploration, hands off approach, abundance of content, and consistently strong level design make for a game that's really easy to revisit. It's a game where I feel like discover something new about it every time I play, and I think it influenced my love for exploration in video games.
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