Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is an Action-Adventure game that builds on the long recognised family-friendly fun and quality game play that is the hallmark of the Lego video game franchise. The game features fan favourite scenes from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and seasons 1 and 2 of the hit animated TV series, all retold using the easy to use Lego video game play mechanics. Additional features include: new characters and combat abilities, 2 player support with split screen, 16 different systems to explore and massive ground battles...

With review scores on other sites ranging from 7/10 to 10/10 I'm starting to wonder how many of the online press actually play the games they review. None of them seem to have noticed that this game is so full of bugs that it's almost unplayable.

The first time I played this I became stuck on the very first level. When prompted to press "Y" to change to another character the resulting button pressing had no effect. My controller is fairly old and so I switched to a new one... still no result. Even odder was that as I moved across the screen a strange black line would appear. So I reattached my old controller and rebooted the machine. That seemed to do the trick.

In a later level I was attacked by a group of invisible droids which I couldn't destroy and insisted on firing a volley of missiles at my location. Later in the same level I was stumped because I was unable to find all three Lego bricks that would allow me to open a sealed door. One, which was in plain sight, I was unable to free. I tried jumping and smashing my lightsabre on the ground, I tried using the Force... nothing happened. I spent about 30 minutes searching and still couldn't work it out. So I switched off and came back to it later (a pain because it was miles from a save point). When I finally got back to that section of the game I was able to use the Force to pick up the block immediately.

In the end I threw in the towel and gave up on the entire game when at the start of a later level I became frustrated when I had to use the Force in order to move four large Lego blocks into some sort of formation. The first problem was that at random intervals my character would once again simply lose his ability to use the Force, which meant I had to move him so that the blocks were off screen, change to another character and then change back. Then there was the fact that to place the blocks I had to spend ages fiddling around and if I made one false move, and the wrong block accidentally landed on another block, then I had to lift the connected blocks up and drop them in order for them to break apart (which they didn't always do) so that I could start all over again.

There were numerous other little bugs which is a crying shame because at it's core this is a good, solid game that plays well and looks amazing. There's the trademark humorous cut sequences as well as some difficult segments where you are required to stop and think about how to progress (a hint here is to look for anything glowing slightly) rather than just ploughing your way through the levels hitting anything that moves. There are some interesting additions, like having the ability to control an army of clones and setting them off to attack a target (and differently armed armies are effective only against certain targets), or the variety of vehicles you can use to get around your environment.

The game play is more in depth than previous games in the series, there's more variety, the graphics look much more polished and the playing area is larger.

If a patched update is released soon to fix these problems (although there are so many that I doubt most of them will be addressed) then this offering could be one of the best LEGO games released. However, as it stands, it's an almost unplayable mess of a game.

5

Darren Rea