In two minds about this one. I thought the Lego game format would be near-impossible to screw up yet here we are. Firstly the player-controlled camera is nice and the combat system is slightly more complex with a simple combo system, it's a decent upgrade. More of the environments are Lego this time around (always bothered me how much of these games AREN'T Lego). That might be where the good stuff ends.
The whole Star Wars universe rendered in semi open-world Lego sounds good, but in practice each level feels terribly unfocused, every new area is just another big open room to run around and collect studs, there's little feeling of progress or momentum. The mini game sections are a nice break in theory but most of them are awful to play, I end up just waiting for them to end.
I may be wrong but there seems to be bizarrely no way to turn off friendly fire in co-op, and so it's nearly impossible to play without regularly killing eachother - not least because the melee auto-target insists on going for the other player rather than an enemy even when the enemy is closer. This is something that could be toggled right in the pause screen of the older version.
Performance-wise this absolutely chugs on a PS5, along with oddly long loading times make me assume the game is particularly poorly optimised.
There's also these utterly annoying little travel segments between levels. Previous iterations would just cut from one scene to another, following the film. In here when you've finished a bit you often need to backtrack to your ship, select the next location, sit through a take off and warp speed section, then fly closer to the target planet and press X to land (then sit through the landing animation / load screen). If the next area is on the same planet you might instead have to get a taxi to a different area and then walk through the streets to a specific location.
I fail to see how any of this resembles an improvement. I would much rather just cut to the next bit than do all of the footwork that the films cut out.
Lastly there's the addition of voice acting, a plainly awful idea. Half the charm of the old Lego games was in the mute characters having to convey the plot non-verbally, setting the stage for most of the humor. Now the characters just use the film lines outright, usually from a VA doing a distractingly poor impression of the screen actor, and so a comedic, playful homage to the films is here downgraded to a shoddy imitation of them. What jokes remain are usually still visual, now often just relegated to the background.
It's enjoyable enough to pass a May 4th afternoon, but I'm surprised at how let down I was by this. Star Wars nerds can't catch a break.
The whole Star Wars universe rendered in semi open-world Lego sounds good, but in practice each level feels terribly unfocused, every new area is just another big open room to run around and collect studs, there's little feeling of progress or momentum. The mini game sections are a nice break in theory but most of them are awful to play, I end up just waiting for them to end.
I may be wrong but there seems to be bizarrely no way to turn off friendly fire in co-op, and so it's nearly impossible to play without regularly killing eachother - not least because the melee auto-target insists on going for the other player rather than an enemy even when the enemy is closer. This is something that could be toggled right in the pause screen of the older version.
Performance-wise this absolutely chugs on a PS5, along with oddly long loading times make me assume the game is particularly poorly optimised.
There's also these utterly annoying little travel segments between levels. Previous iterations would just cut from one scene to another, following the film. In here when you've finished a bit you often need to backtrack to your ship, select the next location, sit through a take off and warp speed section, then fly closer to the target planet and press X to land (then sit through the landing animation / load screen). If the next area is on the same planet you might instead have to get a taxi to a different area and then walk through the streets to a specific location.
I fail to see how any of this resembles an improvement. I would much rather just cut to the next bit than do all of the footwork that the films cut out.
Lastly there's the addition of voice acting, a plainly awful idea. Half the charm of the old Lego games was in the mute characters having to convey the plot non-verbally, setting the stage for most of the humor. Now the characters just use the film lines outright, usually from a VA doing a distractingly poor impression of the screen actor, and so a comedic, playful homage to the films is here downgraded to a shoddy imitation of them. What jokes remain are usually still visual, now often just relegated to the background.
It's enjoyable enough to pass a May 4th afternoon, but I'm surprised at how let down I was by this. Star Wars nerds can't catch a break.