LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars Review (7/10)

Remember Geonosis? Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme were trapped in a desert arena by the evil Count Dooku, until Mace Windu leapt onto the podium and...melted Jango Fett's ice cream with his lightsaber, enraging the bounty hunter and sparking all-out war. If you've ever played a LEGO game before, you'll know that the trademark moments of comedy made out of iconic film scenes are among the most memorable parts of the experience. From the off, then, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is left at a disadvantage with only two seasons of a fairly forgettable animated series to go on, especially as the majority of the science-fiction saga's fanbase don't watch it often so won't remember key moments and see the comedy in their portrayal. With this comes a fundamental problem- when the franchises loses its sense of nostalgia, the game itself becomes a fairly standard hack-and-slash title, albeit with a couple of rather cool new innovations; these include a basic real-time strategy mode that allows players to choose the best ways of winning key battles in the war, space confrontations taking place both in ships and on foot, and a 'SceneSwap' feature that sets the tone of the TV show well and adds difficulty to some puzzles. All of the aforementioned additions are great, really adding more scale to the LEGO series than ever before, but only the kids who watch the programme are going to get the full experience, and there again sometimes the game lacks objective markers so could become too frustrating for children too! But I'm being too harsh on what is still a well-meaning sequel that has a lot of perks- the gameplay is well above average, John Williams' brilliant score is varied and compelling throughout and the graphics are the best so far (just wait until you see the boss battles!). Obviously, if that's all you need from a LEGO game, go ahead and take £40 to your nearest game retailer, but at that price I think we should be demanding a little bit more, and I can't help feel this might need to be the place where the LEGO Star Wars instalments end.