LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Wii) Review

I don’t think I’ve ever actually been physically tired from the thought of playing a video game, but it seems that with yet another iteration of Traveller’s Tales’ LEGO franchise, I’ve got yet another game to play through. It’s not that these games in particular are bad or anything, it’s just that they’re way too formulaic and similar to previous titles in the series. It doesn’t help that I managed to review it earlier on the 3DS too. Still, read on to find out what I liked and didn’t like about LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars for the Nintendo Wii.

Taking place in between Episodes II and III, The Clone Wars follows Anakin and Obi-Wan’s exploits throughout this period, filling in a lot of the story between the episodes as well as following the animated series quite closely. Considering that the developers really had no other time periods to place another game in, this is probably the next best thing. It’s especially nice to see some of the characters from the expanded universe gain a little bit of exposure where they didn’t in the main films too, as well as the tie ins to the original cartoon and ill-fated feature film.

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars features a pretty well put together art style, although you’d expect it after so many iterations in the franchise. Character models are very smooth, and environments are pretty varied as players progress throughout the campaign. The framerate, unfortunately, isn’t as fluid as you would expect for a LEGO game and this understandably leads to a little bit of disappointment. Something I liked about the 3DS version which rings true with the Wii version is the way that the game takes Star Wars flora and fauna and manages to create very faithful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek models of them using just LEGO pieces that most of us would’ve played with as children.

The general structure of LEGO games has not really changed through the years and sequels – players live in a “hub” world, and take their characters out to certain levels while being presented with comical, voiceless cutscenes that retell events in a humorous way that’s safe for children. Players will control hundreds of characters from the franchise, and take them through fairly linear levels both on-ground and in space. Each character in particular has a unique ability that lets them progress through certain parts of the level in very shallow puzzles sequences while also collecting items. Collecting items seems to be the crux of the replayability of the series, where only absolutely obsessive compulsive completionists would find it appealing. There are heaps of things to collect and find in this iteration of the LEGO Star Wars series, including many characters that have powers that are useful in previous levels, adding an element of backtracking too.

There are multiple new features that the developers have brought to the table this time around which mix things up quite a bit. In particular, the aerial dogfighting scenes have been significantly retooled and now have an almost Star Fox-esque feel. These moments play great and really do a great job at capturing the intensity of similar sequences in the film. Characters themselves have new abilities, even some Jedi can scale large areas using their lightsabers. Finally, some of the boss characters are significantly larger, giving the game a little bit of a more epic feel.

Lego Star Wars III is packed with quite a bit of content that players will take a while to complete, although it’s hard to find any challenge in the tasks required to unlock them and the simplistic nature of the game may lead to increased boredom as players trudge through what essentially becomes a collect-a-thon.

The soundtrack utilises several classic pieces that you would expect from the franchise throughout the years, and manages to add another layer of authenticity to the overall package. Still, there’s no voice acting but it doesn’t feel like it’s missing at all.

Graphics 7.0

Nice amounts of detail but a little bit of a disappointing framerate.

Gameplay 6.5

This has been done to death before in previous LEGO games, but whats presented here isnt really all that bad. The campaign is lengthy but too simplistic to keep the players attention.

Sound 8.0

As usual, the development team have utilised all the best tracks from the franchise to create something that feels both authentic and epic.

Tilt 6.5

LEGO Star Wars III offers a huge bredth of things to find and complete, but its hard to recommend due to its simplistic nature that may put some players off from persevering to find everything.

Value 5.0

Unfortunately, having just played previous titles in the series as well as other versions on other consoles, it was hard to enjoy this version as well.

Overall

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is definitely an improvement from previous titles, but I cannot help but feel that this franchise in general needs to take a little bit of a breather. It wont happen though, since weve got another title releasing within the next month or so. Still, Star Wars fans and those who love the LEGO games will definitely find an enjoyable title in here, although dont expect it to be particularly challenging.