So far, my track record with the LEGO Star Wars games has been downhill ever since, well, the very first one, LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, which came out in 2005. LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga has its share of issues, and LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens was fine if a bit forgettable…though controlling BB-8 was a pure blast of delight. In fact, I’ve been having more and more issues with the latest LEGO games, and I think I’m starting to become no longer a fan of their structure and demand of grinding out studs to purchase everything from here to the moon.
The nitty-gritty is upon us: LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is another action-adventure videogame based on The Clone Wars animated series, of which I’ve never seen a single episode though I know a lot people like it greatly, developed by Traveller’s Tales and published by LucasArts. It was originally released in March 2011 for the PlayStation 3, PSP, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo 3DS consoles, and I ended up playing it via backwards-compatibility on my Xbox One. It features missions and characters from The Clone Wars television series, as well as everyone’s favorite characters from the original Star Wars saga, and there are both single-player and multiplayer gameplay modes to engage in.
The game engine used by previous LEGO Star Wars games has been upgraded to now hold more than 200 moving units or objects on-screen. That’s cool and all…and yet, I hated having swarms of constantly respawning enemies attack me as I tried to figure out what to do next. It didn’t add anything but frustration, especially as you see your stud count dropping with each and every death. Another dent in the hood is the fact that a majority of missions feel aimless, and the game doesn’t help you know where to go or what to do, especially the large levels where you need to take control of a number of enemy areas; for instance, some structures can only be destroyed by using a commander-like Stormtrooper to have a bunch of other Stormtroopers shoot at it in unison while other structures can simply be taken down by a lightsaber or tank. Getting around in these large areas is also a slog, and having vehicles that blow up after one or two hits doesn’t help.
The more traditional levels in LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars are fine, if the standard formula affair. It’s when the developers try to do something outside of it that things become wearisome. Such as the spaceship flying levels that have you going to and fro, landing on various ships to pull a lever or hit a doo-hickie or something like that. Or the big battlefield levels where you have to destroy enemy strongholds and build your own on top of them, all while dealing with an unending wave of enemies out for blood. Using the Force to move objects around still requires a great deal of patience; don’t expect perfection when trying to build a climbable tower. The hub zone is tiresome to navigate through and confusing, and many areas are blocked off until you have a specific amount of gold bricks; also, say you need R2-D2 to open a door, but you aren’t currently running around as it…you need to travel back to a menu desk, select it from the character list, and then travel back to where the door was and pray, pray, you don’t need another character to do something else, otherwise it is a lot of retreading.
Here’s a first: I used cheat codes to unlock a bulk of the red bricks in LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars. I’ve never done this before, but the idea of replaying all these levels again just seems so taxing on my mind, and the cheats don’t seem to affect unlocking Achievements. This will also be the first LEGO game that I don’t complete to 100%, and I’m actually okay with that. I’m going to finish the things I want to do, like getting True Jedi in every level and buying all the characters, but other than that…I’m ready to say goodbye to this brickish world. Also, I may very well do the same thing with LEGO City Undercover, another title that seems to require a ton of grinding and replaying to fully finish; at least that one had a fun story to follow.
Grinding Down 