Summary Return of the Noobs

Pros: Lego Star Wars II has a huge amount of unlockables, and a long list of playable charecters including two customizable ones.
Cons: The camera is terrible (especially in 2-player mode), the game is FULL of countless annoying glitches, the graphics aren't really very impressive, and the game is just too easy.

Reviewer's Comments

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS GAME:
Collected all gold bricks, Power Bricks, Minikits, and true jedi's (100% completed the game) Twice on two different memory cards. Also helped a friend get to about 70%.

Graphics:
The backrounds aren't very good, and there is a lack of detail and quality in the game's overall graphics (Compare them to Twilight Princess or Star Fox Adventures). They're plain to be sure but not entirely poor; just rather amature.
Rating: 6

Controls:
The controls are not really at all impressive. You can adjust the camera but so slightly it doesn't really come in handy. Really the main thing you're doing if you're not rapidly pressing B to easilly wipeout swarms of enemies, is pressing X near interactive objects laying around. There's just not alot to the controls, and they are rather inaccurate.
Rating: 7

World/Level Design:
The game did a fairly good job of turning the scenes from the movies into playable levels. Although, they can be pretty complicated to manuever through at times, the levels do have a sense of detail and plenty of hidden rooms.
Rating: 7.5

Personal Skill:
As far as combat goes, there just isn't very much skill. Although you may have to do some thinking to find some studs, minikits, or power bricks, essentially the puzzles are all much the same. Pull a couple levers, open a door in freeplay mode, really either you're running back and forth through the level or you're pressing X near whatever you can find. With all that said, no there's not a whole lot of skill involved in this game.
Rating: 6

Combat:
Here's an area in which the game suffers noticably. Using the force on people to kill them never works becuase you get shot while doing it and you stop. Lightsaber weilding charecters basically just double-jump, then use their "slam attack" to clear the foes and defend themselves, while the blaster-wielding charecters just jump around frantically while rapidly pressing B until everything's gone. The infinite enemies are particularly annoying and though at times you can stop them from coming, there are plety of instances where that isn't an option. You try to build something just after killing the last enemy and what do you know? there's another four that just dropped down and they're shooting at you to make you stop working on it. Of course it isn't all doing the same stale move or two to defeat your pathetically easy to kill foes. It's especially annoying how everything auto-aims; it takes away a lot of the skill there would be while using a blaster if it had been otherwise. Deflecting laser shots takes some skill to be sure, and I can still kick my friend's virtual butt in a lightsaber fight.
Rating: 5

Items:
The items in this game are mostly just collectable things needed to advance through the game; which isn't bad, there just should be more items that can be used to power-up your charecter(Some cheats can be bought to upgrade your charecter but it's not the same as in-level items).
Rating: 7

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are okay although especially annoying is the charecter's strange, comical voices. The music of course is from the original Star Wars movies however, they didn't exactly do a great job in choosing the music. Some isn't even from the movies and plenty are repetative and boring.
Rating: 6

The Point of the game/Story:
The point? Well there's so much to do and unlock, there's certainly a fun reason to play. The story is based on the movies but with a twist, adding comical cutscenes and events to the overall story, which is funny at times to be sure, but now and then it seems they were making it all into a joke. Overall though, this area is one of the better ones.
Rating: 8.5

Gameplay:
Lego Star Wars II's strength comes from the collectable items, such as, Gold Bricks, Power Bricks, Minikits, ect. but the game does tend to lose it's flavor after the third or fourth time you replay a level. The glitches can seriously ruin your experience however. I've seen everything: Leaving the last room of the Dagobah Level and returning to find there's no X-Wing in the water, using Palpatine's force move on someone while they fall off the edge to make them invincible (which is actually kind of nice), getting an AT-ST stuck between two cliffsides in above a chasm while it just floated there, Seeing Buba Fett doing his animation in the demo on cloud city but not showing the demo, item blocks randomly becoming invinsible, enemies or random non-plaably charecters becoming invinsible, simple collision errors, the minikit detector showing a minikit I've already got, getting minikits I already had, and the list goes on...
The gameplay considering the rather sloppy inaccurate controls, the combat being either very annoying or too easy, never getting game overs when you die, and having infinite lives and chances of completing something, and the unparrelled number of glitches, needless to say isn't very impressive. The unlockables, a huge list of Charecters, comical cutscenes, and two customizable charecters, do stand as some of the games pros however.
Rating: 7

Replay:
Despite failing in a few areas Lego Star Wars II does have an outstanding replay. You can do everything over and over again, going back through and collecting items, and even fighting bosses over again. It's virtually perfect!
Rating: 9

Overall: 7