LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game (Xbox) Review

Date purchased: Mar. 22, 2013
Price paid: $6.50
Dates played: Dec. 2018 to Jan. 2019
Playtime: ~25h
Date reviewed: Jan. 6, 2019
Date posted: Feb. 12, 2023
Rating: 8/10

I beat all three episodes, plus the bonus episode. I got everything except Invincibility, which I would have to grind for about 1M studs to buy.

I had a lot of fun with this. It actually made me want to find everything, the first time that's happened since I played Spyro the Dragon a couple years ago. The pod racer chapter was the only part I didn't like. I believe it's impossible to die, so to me, that makes it more of an activity than a game (to be consistent with my view that a game has to have a loss condition). This game runs through the three prequel movies. I've only seen Episode 1, so I have no idea what the 2nd two movies are about, and barely remember what the first one is about.

A few things keep this from being a 9 or 10:
The biggest issue is the lack of camera control, especially when the right analog stick has no use.
Inconsistency with the Chapter plot summary scroll -- sometimes not having a skip, sometimes having a skip with when you can skip it sometimes being really early and sometimes being pretty much at the end making the option pointless in those cases. Also with the plot scroll, a few of them cut off pretty much as soon as the last line of text appears on the screen.
Some audio issues from inconsistent volume and the sound effects being out of synch with the video in a couple places, the worst being one of the intros where the SFX are about 1 second ahead of the video.
Even though it is geared toward children, the lack of a failure condition does drag it down a bit.

I have the second Lego Star Wars game, and after playing this one, I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the other Lego games.