Players can spend their hard-earned Lego 'studs' at the Cantina to purchase new ships and characters, though they will not be of any assistance to you in the Story mode. The game boasts the return of Free Play mode, allowing gamers to grab any of their unlocked favorites and run through levels. The game makes it almost necessary to do so, as many levels have rooms only stormtroopers or bounty hunters can enter. As an addition, the game also now offers Challenge mode, offering the same experience as Free Play, but with a timer forcing gamers through levels in a hurry.
The game's other addition to entice some multiplayer action is the Two-Player Arcade. Entering the arcade offers gamers a handful of levels and three basic modes to choose from - Duel, Battle Enemies, and Collect Studs. Duel, as the name suggests, pits one player against the other in a fight through the level. Players will want to be careful how they set up the match, as those in search of the 'score fifty points in Arcade mode' will notice that each round of 'x' kills awards one point. Set the mode at fifty, and you could spend half an hour for one measly point. Battle Enemies and Collect Studs work much in the same way, with gamers battling against each other to reach the numeric goal before the other. None of the three modes adds much to the game, leaving most gamers' minds as soon as they have tried it once.
The thirty-six levels of XBox Live-fuelled Star Wars co-op goodness are not as cool as they sound. The entire game uses a slick 'drop-in/drop-out' system, but the gameplay itself has hiccups. While the wonky camera system fails to ruin the game in single-player, it nearly saps all the fun out of playing co-op. The game has no regard for your being on separate televisions, and forces you to remain on the same screen as your Live counterpart. Most levels this works fine, but when you get to a point where you have to make odd jumps that only one character can make, it is a struggle.
If the camera does not destroy your fun, the strange-looking lag might. How gamers can play full sixteen player all-out deathmatches on Halo 3 yet be unable to accurately see what their one partner is doing on Star Wars is unbelievable. Ask your partner to push a block, and then watch them jump quickly to the side of it, then top, then side, then back again. Ask them what they see, and odds are they will have no clue what you are talking about. Rather than providing all the different choices for how to play with your friends, developers should have spent more time stabilizing the Story mode, which is where most gamers will spend their time online.
The game's simple control scheme works well, with the lone exception of switching characters. Using 'Y' to switch to the nearest friendly character works well, so long as there is only one other character around. The game seems to make its own decisions on who you are trying to use, and hardly ever gets the character change correct; taking a half-dozen tries to switch correctly. On levels with five or six characters to choose from, you may just start killing off the ones you do not want to use to make it easier on yourself.
Between all the unlockable and hidden items in the game, replay is almost required. Despite some issues with the camera and odd occasional lag over Live, you will do so happily. At over 160 playable characters, even if some are just costume changes, Star Wars offers enough depth and choices to warrant spending the extra $30 on this version over the Original Trilogy.
