This is certainly a long game, covering each of the six Star Wars movies, each with six chapters in them (usually four are essentially 3rd person shooters, almost 2D style, and two are “flying” chapters – IE, Death Star attack, or the asteroid field flight of the Millenium Falcon).

There are portions of this game (coincidentally, much like the other game I’m going to review today) that are there just to “give you something to do so that you don’t get to ‘100% completion’ until you’ve done it.”  For Lego Star Wars, there are at least three levels of completion (if you wanted to split hairs, there’s more):

• Finishing all of the “Stories”
• Getting all of the gold bricks
• Getting to 100% completion

I’ve given up on the 100% thing, but I did get all the gold bricks.  In a few cases I had to refer to walkthroughs online to get to that point.  And when it comes to most “chapters” of the game, you’ll end up playing it once in “Story” mode, and then at least one more time in “Free Play” mode to get everything you need for all of the gold (and red “extra”) bricks.

All in all it is a very long, but very fun, game.  Some of the “extras” (basically powerups) make going though the chapters easier, but a some point using some of them become rediculous (when you get all of the multiplier bonuses, which stack, you can collect “studs” at 3840 times normal).  Certain ones can be actually fustrating, or dangerous to use.  However, a few of them (such as Force Grapple and Dark Side) just eliminate the need to switch characters, particularly in Free Play mode.

Oh, and at some point, playing Jar Jar actually is useful.

Anyway, I liked it.  The Story mode is fun, but has some distractions and fustrations (particularly if your playing Story mode with no “Force” capable characters, or no Dark Side capable characters, as you’ll note opportunities to use Force powers all over the place, some of which are restricted to “Dark Side” characters only).  Free Play mode is even more fun, since you can switch to characters with other abilities at will (and, to get all the gold bricks for a given chapter, necessary).

Worth even $45, I’d say.