LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens (PS Vita) Review

The formulae of the LEGO game is tried and tested. This is the 5th instalment of a LEGO Star Wars title and TT Games has had plenty of time to perfect it, even managing to make something great out of the prequels! Anyone who's ever played a LEGO title (and it'd be tricky to find many who haven't these days) knows what to expect here. The fundamentals of the gameplay remain the same: trek across stages destroying blocks, and building others whilst completing simple puzzles.

The Force Awakens goes with the familiar hub areas outside of levels instead of a single open world. It makes sense to have numerous smaller hubs in this way, considering the Star Wars setting with its numerous planets to traverse, but it can't live up to the superb high bar set by Marvel. That being said, the storytelling here is far superior.

It lends itself very well to the LEGO formulae, with each of the major plot points transforming into stages, altered slightly to include the series signature humour. This fits perfectly with the source material, making for many funny moments, like, for example, how Kylo Ren's sulky moods and tantrums look even better as he trashes his emo kid bedroom, or an entire stage which is dedicated to Rey, who uses force suggestions on her Stormtrooper guard while they banter.

This entry adds some new features and stages, puzzles have a new "multi build" feature that gives different options on what to build at numerous points, these builds can then be destroyed and other choices built. It's not yet utilised to its fullest, but it's clear this will be a major gameplay feature going forward. The combat gets a new addition too, with some new cover shooter sections, which are simple and brief, but an enjoyable addition. There are also plenty of space combat battles, like X-wing-on-Tie Fighter dogfights above the forests of Takodana, or flying the Falcon through the Star Destroyer wreckage of Jakku. Some of these are free flying battles, but some are on-rails, such as taking on the Starkiller in a sequence reminiscent of the old Death Star trench. Both types of flying style stage are tons of fun; it's no Rogue Squadron, but a quick paced fun addition none the less.

To play through the story only takes around 6-8 hours, but, as with all the LEGO games, there is a ton of reasons to keep playing. Each stage has the usual collectables to track down, red and gold bricks, mini-kits, and the "True Jedi" meter to fill by collecting a huge number of studs along with specific challenges on each to try and complete - and many of these collectables require revisiting the stages with unlockable characters to reach 100%. Outside of the stages, each of the hubs are also filled with the usual collectables and (something new) collectable pieces of Carbonite hidden across the Galaxy to unlock classic characters. There are so very many characters to collect too, over 200. Furthermore, there are other additional stages in the form of side missions, including reliving the famous Forest of Endor from Return of the Jedi.

Fantastic news for this port too. In the past Vita versions of LEGO games the port has been from the 3DS release instead of from the console, resulting in a heavily cut down version of the console version. Here, however, there is very little to differentiate it away from the big home console releases. Some of the stages are slightly smaller, and some of the extra content is missing but the core game is much unchanged.