Will you feel the true force of 3D with LEGO Star Wars III or should this Nintendo 3DS title have been rebuilt brick by brick instead?
By Leo Stiles
Video games based on Star Wars have always been hit-and-miss affairs (mostly miss) and for every Knights of the Old Republic there have been a slew of mediocre and just plain rotten titles. One of the better stabs at the Lucasverse has been the LEGO Star Wars games from Traveller’s Tales, which despite recasting the universe in blocks, have always managed to capture the films perfectly while boasting a mildly addictive gaming concept at its core.
Enter LEGO Star Wars 3; a title primed to cash in on the rather excellent Clone Wars animated TV show. However, dspite the inherent joy of blasting your way through familiar locations, the old LEGO formula appears to have gone stale.
If you have ever played a LEGO title before you’ll know the drill; play through the story mode using a variety of characters to solve the environmental puzzles and beat the bad guys.
Characters are divided up into five classes and each of them has a different set of abilities with additional skills granted to a select few. So Jedi can use the Force to reshape the environment as well as possessing some nifty lightsaber skills and Clonetroopers have access to explosives and hook-shots.
Anything looks cute when in LEGO form
All the familiar characters from the show are all charmingly rendered as stubby LEGO men and the environments are solidly realised but it’s all done so with such blurriness that at first we thought was a problem with our 3DS. Turning off the 3D effect did nothing to solve this and left us scratching our heads as to why the game wasn’t sharper – after all, the 3DS is a machine with a fair amount of power.
A quick look at the DSi version of the games uncovers pure laziness at the heart of the problem, with both versions being identical to each other, with the only difference being a mild graphical bump on the 3DS game.
DS versions of LEGO games have always been stripped down because of the machine’s meagre graphical grunt but there is no excuse here as the 3DS has the enough power to render a decent approximation of the Wii title.
Gameplay is very familiar with no real attempts to break from the formula and this leaves you with a game that is overfamiliar. The home console version of the game have broken with tradition and included strategy based levels which bring to life the big battles form the TV show and mixes up proceedings immensely. 
The 3DS version has none of this and the levels are only broken up by the odd vehicular mission, which doesn’t really do anything other than act as a shooting gallery distraction. This version does have some unlockable mini-games but they really don’t make up for the lack of variety.
To be fair to the game, there is a lot to do as you clamber about the levels with an almost silly amount of collectables to hoover up and characters to unlock but when you boil it down, they are nothing more than a solid grind for the completists out there and will not hold the attention of the average gamer.
Less demanding gamers and kids will no doubt get a kick out of this but anyone looking for a decent LEGO title would be best served by sticking with the home versions.
Format: Nintendo 3DS; Developer: Nintendo
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