LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars Impressions

Ever since LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game hit stores in 2005, taking players through the storylines of the prequel films while adding a nice comedic edge to the darker scenes, the franchise of child-orientated titles has gone from strength to strength under developer Travellers' Tales, adapting other memorable heroes like Indiana Jones, Batman and Harry Potter with tweaks to the formula made each time. Now, six years on from that somewhat groundbreaking release, we arrive at the third Star Wars sequel, based around the Clone Wars animated spin-off that in itself is proving a hit on the Sky Movies channel right now. That means you'll be able to take control of Ahsoka Tano, Plo Koon, Commander Cody and enemy Battle Droids as well as using the Scene-Swap feature (portraying when two different stories are going at once) and participating in strategic battles both on the ground and in space. In the demo I played, the levels Shadow of Malevolance and Destroy Malevolance were available, and from what I can see so far it is going to be LEGO Star Wars through and through with a relatively larger scale- but in 2011, is 'the same with tweaks' really what we're looking for? Shadow allowed me a chance to test out one of the space battles early on, yet it didn't seem far removed from the attacks on the Death Stars that featured in The Original Trilogy, so certainly won't surprise those who have played all of the previous LSW titles. The trademark humour remains intact, yet the episodic structure of the TV series means that there will be far less iconic scenes for fans to replay than in previous titles. Destroy took place inside Malevolance, utilising Scene-Swap as Anakin and Obi-Wan split up to manoeuvre General Grevious' battleship. However, I worked in co-op with another player, and the line to separate the now individual cameras just made things more awkward than when both players were on the screen in earlier versions, a flaw which will likely force some players to go it solo (a real shame when co-op play used to be one of the main draws of the LEGO games). Overall, from what I can see there's very little to get excited about with The Clone Wars, and unless something big changes inbetween now and its March release, I'll be expecting to award a higher score to the May-bound LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game. Most disturbing...