The Force for Kids: Lego Star Wars Video Game

By Jonathan Berohn

If you are a parent with young kids (6-12 year-olds), you're no doubt familiar with the dilemma of the video game. That dilemma, of course, is that kids this age want video games, but most game designers seem far more interested with the teen and young adult audience. Lego Star Wars tries to help close that gap by offering a Star Wars for the young fans who aren't ready for the more intense Knights of the Old Republic series or Republic Commando.

The Story

One of the great things about Lego Star Wars is that-if you have the patience and perseverance-you get to play through all of the movies.  This means a couple things: one, there's plenty of content to keep your kids busy for a while.  And two, there's a very wide variety of action.

Game Play

As you would expect in a game aimed at younger kids, game play is pretty straightforward.  For the most part, you run around whacking things with your lightsaber or shooting them with your blaster, while helpful onscreen hits pop up when you need to do something different.  A simple yet ingenious life system also lets kids avoid the frustration factor of death and restarting.  In Lego Star Wars, death means that your character comes apart into his constituent Lego blocks, and then you are instantly regenerated so you can keep going.  But.

"Challenges"

For all its focus on simplicity and playability in the mechanics of normal game play, Lego Star Wars has some real stumpers that cause problems.

First of all, the total lack of any onscreen guidance as to where you should go next leads very easily to frustration.  Advancing through levels often turns into a question of trial and error-which can get quite old.

Second, some of the mini-games like the pod racing on Tatooine are unbelievably hard.  It took me several tries to negotiate the three laps in the required time (why one wouldn't suffice in a kids game is beyond me).  The game does save each stage you complete, but the whole process took me well over an hour, and my 6 and 8 year-olds gave up in frustration.

All in all, these problems with Lego Star Wars give you another dilemma.  The game is fun but flawed, but there aren't a whole lot of compelling alternatives out there for young kids-especially if they are Star Wars fans.