Lego Star Wars II on the Nintendo DS

Got to have a go with LSWII on the DS, It's a3+ game, but boy is it frustrating at times. I have to wonder if the designers every tried to play it; let's see.

Flicking switches can be annoying as it's difficult to see if your facing the switch to activate, as it's the same button as attack it can be a little annoying.

The DS has no diagonal controls it's just up, down, left, and right. On the first level you're walking along a suspended platform then turning and walking along another. On the screen these form a lopsided "^" shape and you have no diagonal control. Better yet once you cross these platforms you have to rotate a switch by pushing against it, with no diagonal controls.

Bad camera angles were annoying especially as the camera is non-controllable.

[Update the camera is controllable, you click on the camera icon on the bottom screen and twirl a globe around. IOW not something you can do in combat, but it might have made the platform walking easier. Of course setting the angles correctly in the first place would have been even better]

There's a grapple point you can use to get to a higher platform, but it's 'behind a wall. You have to walk behind the wall to trigger a change in camera angle to see it - this is not a hidden secret you have to use this to advance. Likewise on another level the camera went nuts and couldn't decide which way to point and just went into a topspin. Moving forward it settled down, but left me highly disorientated as to which way I was supposed to be going.

Character AI. Wow they're dumb. Using a grapple point I've had the other character knock me off the edge when they used it. I've had them standing on the other side of a moving block I'm trying to shove and stopping me. I've had them surrounding an enemy (which they can't kill) forcing me to either shoot and kill them or move in for a close attack. Best of all I've had them commit constant suicide...

... Trying to cross some quicksand via a platform. Obi-wan has no problem as being a Jedi he can double-jump across, Luke not yet a Jedi has a single jump followed by a dive. So I hop over to the platform as Obi-wan and on to the other side and find myself hearing the repeated death of Luke. He jumped for the platform, but he started in the wrong place and got killed. Now he's been resurrected at the closest safe point to his death, which is on a slope. You can't jump on a slope so he simply stands there sliding down into the quicksand at which point he's resurrected back into the same spot. I have to jump back over wait until he now walks towards me, then jump to the platform, wait until he jumps over from his new position then jump across and wait again.

The puzzles are annoying at times, but this is due to poor layout. You need C3-P0 to open a door. As you enter the room you see he's on a high platform. You grapple up and cross the two diagonal walkways I mentioned earlier then turn one of them around. Except how far do you turn it? The platform extends out of camera view so start at 3 o'clock and turn it to 6'o'clock and it goes nowhere, same with 12 o'clock. Nope it has to be 9 o'clock and then you zigzag across it.

Another fun one was having R2-D2 trapped at the bottom of a cliff. The other characters could jump from ledge to ledge, but they were too high for R2. Getting to the top you see C3-P0 on a ledge with another ledge opposite. Ah-hah R2's a hoverer so you get him up there, hover across and activate him. Cue 5 minutes of trying to get R2 up this cliff. Silly me the ledge that P0 is on is reachable via a double-jump Jedi except 75% of the time you try this you don't succeed and thus assume that it's not jumpable.

Finally the help system stinks. Approach a movable box and the action pauses while a message comes up telling you that boxes such as these are movable. Move the box, move another box, move to the next screen approach the box and... a message appears telling you that these boxes are movable. As there's no in-mission save this seems a little pointless. It does the same for doors that can only be opened by a certain type of character, it does it when you approach the door control as that character and it does it even after you've opened the door.

Oh and the edge detection was a pain with the controls and non-movable camera I kept walking off platforms while picking up goodies and with no depth you couldn't tell if some of the goodies were on the platform or floating just off from it.

Gotta say I wasn't impressed... nice graphics though :-P