The Lego Star Wars games are finally available for purchase for Android. At a price point of $6.99, is the game worth your time and money?
Warner Brothers released their game, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga, into the Google Play Store at the end of last month and I’ve been wanting to review it ever since I saw that it was released. Lego Star Wars: The Complete Sage was originally released back in 2007 for consoles like the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS. In December of 2013 the game made its first appearance on mobile(not handheld) when it was released for iOS.
It’s taken Warner Brothers close to a year and a half to get the game ported and released for Android and on top of that the developers are charging $6.99 for the game. Is it worth the money? Has it been worth the wait? These are the questions I’m going to try to answer to the best of my ability. Game reviews are entirely subjective but I will try my best to explain my reasoning behind things that I dislike and things that I enjoy. This way, if you agree with my reasoning then hopefully you will understand if the game is for you too.
It’s no secret that a lot of companies have had their hands in these games. I actually bought episodes 1-3 on the Nintendo DS back when it was available and I quite enjoyed the games.
These games are interesting due to the multiple layers that are there. Being a Lego game, you would think they are made for kids but that is not the case. At least, because of the more complex puzzles and platforming that is required, I don’t see how I could have beaten this game when I was a kid. Maybe things are different now though. Games can be much more complex than the platforming games I grew up with(NES Mario).
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga starts off just like you would think, the traditional Star Wars way. I won’t be covering the story of the games because if you are a fan of Star Wars then you already know what the games are about. These games take you through the major plot points of all six Star Wars episodes from beginning to end. So, the game will start you off at Episode 1 and take you all the way through to Episode 6.
The different episodes are sectioned off in different rooms with different doors and you can’t access the later episodes until you are finished with the one before it. On that note, each of the episodes are broken down into individual levels and you’ll have to complete them one by one until you finish them all. This lets you move onto the next level and each one of these represents another major plot point of the movie/story. Once you complete all of the levels for a certain episode then you can move onto the next one.
So naturally you will start off at Episode 1, then you’ll go into Chapter 1 of that episode and then you will get your first introductory scene where you read about what is going on in typical Star Wars fashion. Again, I’m not going to cover the story here since anyone who cares about Star Wars has probably already seen it and if you haven’t, stop reading this review and go rent/buy it on the Google Play Store right now. You owe it to yourself to watch through them and experience this fantastic story. I won’t even blame you if you decide to skip Episodes 1 and 2 either :p
Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga Review
After the introduction to the back story of what is going on in the Star Wars universe, you’re given some cinematic sequences that fits in perfectly with the Lego universe. If you haven’t played a Lego game before then you should know that they don’t take themselves seriously at all. You’ll see some genuinely funny scenes that seem to come out of no where and you won’t need any knowledge of the Star Wars universe to enjoy them on the most basic level. However, the more you know about Legos and the Star Wars universe the more you will appreciate the amount of thought that went into them.
You start off in a Cantina controlling what looks to be Qui-Gon Jinn. This is where you will get used to the controls of the game and there are three different controller setups, however only two are shown to you at first. The first control setting is Touch and this is exactly as it sounds. Touch a chair and your character will attack the chair. Touch a cup that can be controlled with the Force and you will use the force on it. Touch an empty spot in the level and your character will move to that spot. Lastly, if you touch on an enemy then you will approach that enemy and attack it automatically.
The second type of control settings you have are the virtual buttons type of controls. This is where you won’t see any controls on the left side of the screen and then you’ll see four virtual buttons on the right side of the screen. Touching an empty spot on the left side of the screen and you’ll see a virtual directional pad appear so you can slide your thumb around and move your character. Tapping on one of the virtual buttons on the right side of the screen will do an action for that button. As you see here, the top button will change your character to another one that you are near, touching the left one will attack, touching the right one will use the Force and touching the bottom one will make your character jump.
As I mentioned, there’s a third type of control setup and that is with a controller. I have to say, as excited as I was about this game when I first heard about it, I was thoroughly disappointed with it until I connected a controller to it and saw that this was a hidden way to play the game. This could just be me though. I’m not a fan of the virtual buttons when it comes to playing games on mobile. Touch-based controls have to be very simple, like they are in Leo’s Fortune, before they work well in a mobile game. At least for me. So, if you don’t have a controller and you aren’t a fan of touch-based controls then Star Wars: The Complete Saga might not be for you.
I was literally about to give up on the game before I thought about trying a controller to see if it would work. I have one of those Nyko controller mounts that I picked up for $10 or $15 dollars and it lets me mount a smartphone(or even a tablet) to it while attaching it to a console controller. I saw they made them for both Xbox and PlayStation and since I had a PS4 controller I bought that one. So all I have to do is mount my LG G3 to the Nyko holder, and then connect the controller to the smartphone with an OTG cable. I will say that after I connected the controller to the game, I had to exit out of the game and enter it again before it would register. Even though the menu said it the controller was connected, the game wouldn’t register the button inputs.
Speaking of the controller, the one thing I wish they would add is the ability to configure what the buttons do. The way it’s set by default, on the PS4 controller, Triangle is attack, Square is jump and X is the Force. You can use both the Directional Pad and the Analog Stick to control your character so that is nice but those button presets just seem way, way off to me and they don’t even match with what the virtual button presets are. On top of all that, L1 is the button to change the active character. It’s just all out of place compared to what I would like them to be. I can understand that everyone has their own preferences so having the option to configure the button presses would be an amazing update that I would like to see. Until then I’ll just have to get used to how they are by default.
The game plays just as it does on the console or the handheld systems. The goal is to complete the levels and collect as many Lego pieces as possible. You’ll see things with loose Legos near it and you’ll hold the Force button down to reassemble those pieces. You’ll see glowing items all over the game and you’re supposed to use the Force on all of those. When you do, some Lego pieces will fall out and you use that to buy items(like you see in the shop above). You can also destroy breakables in the game, like chairs, and those will drop some Legos for you to collect too. The last image here shows a purple lightsaber and that is what happens when you pick up a powerup in the game. It only lasts a short time but you’ll do more damage during that time.
As a completionist, I spend most of my time in the levels is done making sure I collect as many items as possible and trying to figure out all of the puzzles that I come across. As I mentioned earlier, one of the things I like most about this game(and the Lego games) is the multiple layers of extras. Puzzles can be extra challenging, platforming in certain spots can be incredibly tough, and there are hidden rooms and bonuses all over the place. Take these images for example.
You come across a room that you can’t get into but you see an image of a character’s head there. So this tells you that if you get a C-3PO type of character(protocol droid I believe) then you can have that character unlock the door for you. But he isn’t anywhere around there. For this first level, you have to go multiple doors down, use the ‘switch character’ button so that you can control this droid and then walk him all the way back to that door. Have him open the door, switch back to one of your Jedis and then go in and collect your reward. In some of these rooms there are extra puzzles for you to solve so you can collect more Legos
Sometimes those characters aren’t available in that level and you’ll have to purchase them from the shop that I showed you earlier. This adds some replayability to the game as you’ll want to complete the levels multiple times if you want to unlock all the secrets. Again, as a completionist, these types of extras are really satisfying to me. Not being able to collect a certain item or enter a certain room because I need a character that I unlock later in the game is great. Not everyone likes this type of game though so of course your mileage will vary.
The last thing I wanted to mention was performance. My LG G3 with CM12.1 seemed to struggle with this game on the default kernel settings. It wasn’t until I changed the Kernel governor from Interactive to Ondemand that I was able to play it very smoothly. Now, this could be a drawback from using an AOSP custom ROM like CyanogenMod. OEM skins like LG UX, TouchWiz, and Sense might not have the same trouble. Still, you’re going to want to play a little bit of the game as soon as you download it to make sure it is playable on your device. You have an hour or two for your refund window so make sure the performance is satisfactory for you and if it isn’t then ask for a refund while you still have time.
Star Wars: The Complete Saga is priced kind of high when there are so many games that offer so many hours of entertainment for way less than half of what they are asking for here. I enjoy these types of games and I don’t mind paying some money for them because they are fun for me. This won’t be the case for everyone though. The game doesn’t have any in-app purchases so you won’t have to worry about being nagged for more money once you have already paid 7 dollars for this one.
Some people are just fine with playing a freemium game without feeling any urge to pump money into the game. If that is the case, and you are 100% entertained by those games then it is going to be hard to convince you to pay as much money for this game as they are asking for. Still, there are plenty of people who are more than willing to pay a few bucks for a console caliber game and not be nagged with in-app purchases as well as not having to see in-app advertisements. This game is definitely for you then and if you are even remotely a fan of either Star Wars or the Lego franchise then you should get your money’s worth here.
Have you had a chance to play Star Wars: The Complete Saga on iOS, Android or any of the consoles yet? What do you think of this series and what do you think of how it is presented on mobile? Are you a fan of the Touch controls, the Virtual buttons or the Controller controls? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
