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lieselstarwarsgamesWe started the game with a lengthy but fun Return of the Jedi prologue. Now we start TFA proper.
I hope this level won’t be as long as the last one – it was a chore to upload all those screenshots since my computer could only handle uploading one at a time.
Anyway, the prologue transitions to a “Thirty years later” (cue SpongeBob narrator) time card and Poe’s X-Wing landing on D’Qar and Admiral Statura hilariously sending him on the mission to Jakku without Poe being able to get a word in edgewise.
Once the cutscene ends, we get a loading screen of D’Qar’s base being built out of Legos, and you can even rotate the base with the arrow keys, kind of like how you can play with Mario’s face in the Super Mario 64 opening screen. Pretty neat.
Once we’re off our loading screen, we get to explore our hub world: the Resistance base.
You can follow the “ghost studs” to get where you need to be, but hell, this is a Lego game, so let’s explore some. You can have Poe run around the building and he might overhear some funny dialogue, but once you exit, 3PO will greet him.
There’s a spot here where you can build something, but we need ten Gold Bricks to build it, so we’ll have to remember to come back later. There’s also a terminal nearby where you can replay previously-completed levels in either Story or Free Play Mode.
I went running around, enjoying the atmosphere, and I even went running in the grass. Why? Because I could. I didn’t find anything interesting in the grass, but hey, sometimes in a video game you just want to run around.
But at the base itself, I did find a guy eating ice cream on top of a gonk droid.
Only in a Lego game do you find something so random and hilarious. You can even shoot the gonk droid to bits, but it will respawn and the guy will get right back on and continue enjoying his ice cream.
Speaking of random, near the ice cream guy I shot some crates and was able to use the crates’ debris to build an alarm clock to wake up a sleeping Resistance soldier. No, I’m not making any of that up.
Anyway, there’s a Gold Brick floating in the air near the ice cream guy, but it’s too high for us to reach – or is it. Next door to the ice cream guy is the platform where Poe’s X-Wing is docked, but the mechanic tending to it drops a crate that breaks into a bunch of bricks we can use to build stuff, so let’s build a lever thingy to bring down the platform under the Gold Brick.
Then BB-8 can get on the platform and Poe can shoot the lever thingy, sending the platform back up where BB-8 can grab the Gold Brick! Don’t you love teamwork?
Anyway, now that we’ve gotten the Gold Brick, I think we can take off for Jakku . . . except that thanks to the clumsy mechanic, Poe can’t reach his X-Wing, so let’s shoot our lever thingy and rebuild it into an astro droid terminal.
Activating the terminal will fling BB-8 onto the landing platform, where he can grapple down some bricks that Poe can jump up on to get to his X-Wing . . .
. . . and we’ll be shown a probably-not-accurate-at-all map of the galaxy.
Let’s take off to Jakku!
We have the opening cutscene of Lor San Tekka giving the map fragment to Poe (and Poe gets a really sweet look after Tekka says “The general? To me she’s royalty.”), then the First Order lands and Poe goes to help the villagers fight.
Of course, the first thing we’re gonna do is destroy the villagers’ stuff to get the studs inside, including their water vats. Hey, they’ll all be dead soon anyway, so it’s not like they’ll need them for much longer.
Also, shortly after beginning the level I got the “We need more troops” achievement for killing fifty stormtroopers (I assume that includes the stormtroopers that I killed in the previous level as well). Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff here for such a small village, including what looks like a makeshift bowling alley.
I shot the pins down and a one out of three announcement flashed on the screen, so is there more bowling somewhere along the way?
Speaking of, you can build a crate here.
And you can also hide under it.
You can even move around while hiding under the crate, but you’ll be about as slow as a gonk droid. Plus, once you get out from under the crate, a villager will steal it and hide under it themselves, but hey, if you build three of those crates you’ll get a minikit.
Our main goal for now is to fix two power generators. One of them is in a guy’s hut, but the door is locked and he moans, “Oh no, did someone change the code? I told them to leave it as one-two-three-four, it’s completely secure!” HAHAHAHA!!!
Well, we’ve got to figure out how to get in his house. If Poe explores a little outside his hut, he’ll see these Aurebesh letters floating around this crane – what’s THAT about?
Turns out the letters are a sign that Poe can examine the crane with his quadrnoculars, but before we do that, let’s look around the village some more. You’ll see a woman complaining that her door’s stuck and lamenting that she didn’t get a door with hinges and a handle.
Of course, that’s doubly hilarious since almost all doors in the SW universe slide open and don’t have hinges or handles.
Also, I love this windchime that has an astro droid’s head on the top. Hopefully that’s just a decoration and it wasn’t made from an actual astro droid’s head.
Exploring a bit more will reveal . . . a soccer goal.
Hey, no reason why the villagers on a harsh desert planet can’t enjoy their sports. I’m gonna guess I’m supposed to play soccer somehow like how I blasted those bowling pins. There were some bricks nearby and I used them to build this . . . thing, but I’m not sure what to do next.
Guess we’ll have to come back to the soccer goal later. Anyway, near the soccer goal (and next to an astro droid sand sculpture – HA!) is a villager named Dasha Promenti who wants to practice her blaster skills, so let’s build her a pair of stormtrooper dummies.
She then gets . . . really into her target practice, shooting the dummies and rebuilding the dummies just to shoot them again, so let’s leave her to her fun and grab the Power Brick that appeared for our trouble.
Okay, I think we can work on those generators now. Let’s have a look at that crane with the quadrnoculars.
We can scroll around with the quadrnoculars until we zero in on the crane’s weak point, then we can shoot down the load it was carrying, which explodes into a set of bricks.
First, we can use the bricks to build a launcher, which launches BB-8 onto the crane.
Then we can shoot the launcher and reuse the bricks to build a grapple hook on the crane.
Use Poe’s grapple gun to rotate the crane so BB-8 can get on top of the building.
Have BB-8 activate the terminal on the roof and the guy’s door will open. I’d tell the guy to remember his password next time except that he’s going to be dead soon.
Inside the guy’s house, we can shoot all his possessions to bits to get the studs that are probably his life savings, but he won’t need either of them soon.
Oh look, turns out BB-8 can activate generators. THAT’S what we built by the soccer goal! Well we’ll have to go back there after we activate the generator here.
But first . . . how about some basketball?
They must really like their sports here, but let’s build a launcher to shoot BB-8 into the net!
You have to score a certain number of BB-8 baskets before you get the announcement that you’ve done enough (I wasn’t counting, so I’m not sure how many, I'm gonna guess five), but now that we’ve used Poe’s best friend as a basketball, let’s head back to the soccer net and activate that generator.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to use BB-8 as a soccer ball – the generator just spits out a soccer ball.
Dribble the soccer ball into the net and you’ll finally get that minikit! Yay! There’s always time for some good old-fashioned sports when the tyrants are invading, right? Where were we? Oh yeah, we need to fix the other generator. Well, let’s use the grapple to get the door open.
Once inside, we can destroy the stuff and lament that the people in the pictures will be dead soon – and hey look, doesn’t that white pile of bricks look familiar?
Yes, we can use them to build another minikit!
Well, after BB-8 activates the second generator, in come Phasma and her troops (including one who looks like he doesn’t want to be here – three guesses who he is). Dasha – the villager who was doing target practice earlier – tells Poe that they’re after Lor San Tekka, so we’ve got to get to him even though anyone who’s seen the movie knows his fate.
Anyway, Dasha temporarily joins our party for the stealth blaster battle.
By the way, in this battle I got the “Stormtrooper Syndrome” achievement . . . which is for missing your targets ten times in a stealth battle. Yeah, sometimes games like to throw in achievements that taunt you for playing badly, but I can laugh at the achievement’s name, so it’s all good.
After we take out the required number of stormtroopers, we’ve got more trouble to worry about – all these plastic flames blocking our way. Fortunately, there’s also a grapple hook, which lets us pull down some precious Lego bricks.
We can assemble the bricks into a sweet cannon . . . thing.
Even better, it’s a water cannon, which BB-8 can turn on to put out the flames – but then we’ve got troopers rushing after us.
As you can see, Poe fell apart here, but fortunately, I already reached True Jedi by this point. Anyway, we have to creep through the barriers and shoot the troopers who get in our way. Fortunately, the creeping isn’t slow-as-fuck like it is in some games, so it’s not annoying.
And before you know it, we’re in another stealth battle.
Dasha keeps telling us that we’ve got to save Tekka, but we all know how that’s gonna go. Still, it’s the noble thing to try, right? Unfortunately, we’ve got forcefields to deal with now.
But Poe knows just what to do – shoot the generators’ fuels cells to turn of the forcefields and then bam, we can take out the stormtroopers! Just don’t think about how they were all kidnapped as babies and brainwashed into fighting for the First Order – that will put a damper in the fun.
Of course, there’s something else in the way after we’ve taken out the forcefields – a First Order shuttle, but thankfully Poe’s quadrnoculars can discern its weak point.
Quadrnoculars – never leave the Resistance base without them. Bad news: when we shoot down the shuttle and it crashes, that leaves us surrounded by flames. Good news: there’s a water tower nearby.
Since the villagers aren’t going to need the water tower for much longer, we don’t have to feel guilty for pulling it down to put out the flames.
Am I joking too much about how the villagers will be dead soon? Probably, but hey, Lego games make fun of the serious scenes all the time. Course, later on we run into ANOTHER barrier of flames and a First Order shuttle. Fortunately, there’s also a convenient astro droid panel.
Who sets up these droid panels, anyway? I mean, this one actually blows up the shuttle – you’d think the First Order wouldn’t want them there, but at least our way is clear.
We pass some villagers who say Lor San Tekka is in trouble and he’s close by. After taking out some more stormtroopers and forcefields, we’re almost there, but we’ve got another wall of plastic flames in our way. Luckily, there’s a giant water pump nearby, but a frighten guy nearby tells us it’s broken. However, when we shoot some nearby shit, we’ll get a multi-build kit.
It actually took me a while to figure out the order of stuff to build and the frightened guy kept repeating that we needed to fill the tub with water and rotate it over the flames and it got pretty annoying, but oh well, he’ll be dead soon. When I finally figured out which hoses to fix first, I was able to pump water to fill the tub.
Then BB-8 could rotate the tub over the flames and dump it over the fire.
With that done, we finally reach Tekka – just as Kylo’s TIE lands. Kylo has some difficulty with his lightsaber blade shooting out of the wrong extensions, but then he figures he doesn’t need his lightsaber to kill Tekka – he can just Force-choke him and then Force-fling him away. Poe sends BB-8 off with the map fragment before getting captured (which totally wasn’t inspired by anything else, nope!) and the level ends, awarding us the “I’ll come back for you” achievement for finishing the first level.
Join us next time!
I hope this level won’t be as long as the last one – it was a chore to upload all those screenshots since my computer could only handle uploading one at a time.
Anyway, the prologue transitions to a “Thirty years later” (cue SpongeBob narrator) time card and Poe’s X-Wing landing on D’Qar and Admiral Statura hilariously sending him on the mission to Jakku without Poe being able to get a word in edgewise.
Once the cutscene ends, we get a loading screen of D’Qar’s base being built out of Legos, and you can even rotate the base with the arrow keys, kind of like how you can play with Mario’s face in the Super Mario 64 opening screen. Pretty neat.
Once we’re off our loading screen, we get to explore our hub world: the Resistance base.
You can follow the “ghost studs” to get where you need to be, but hell, this is a Lego game, so let’s explore some. You can have Poe run around the building and he might overhear some funny dialogue, but once you exit, 3PO will greet him.
There’s a spot here where you can build something, but we need ten Gold Bricks to build it, so we’ll have to remember to come back later. There’s also a terminal nearby where you can replay previously-completed levels in either Story or Free Play Mode.
I went running around, enjoying the atmosphere, and I even went running in the grass. Why? Because I could. I didn’t find anything interesting in the grass, but hey, sometimes in a video game you just want to run around.
But at the base itself, I did find a guy eating ice cream on top of a gonk droid.
Only in a Lego game do you find something so random and hilarious. You can even shoot the gonk droid to bits, but it will respawn and the guy will get right back on and continue enjoying his ice cream.
Speaking of random, near the ice cream guy I shot some crates and was able to use the crates’ debris to build an alarm clock to wake up a sleeping Resistance soldier. No, I’m not making any of that up.
Anyway, there’s a Gold Brick floating in the air near the ice cream guy, but it’s too high for us to reach – or is it. Next door to the ice cream guy is the platform where Poe’s X-Wing is docked, but the mechanic tending to it drops a crate that breaks into a bunch of bricks we can use to build stuff, so let’s build a lever thingy to bring down the platform under the Gold Brick.
Then BB-8 can get on the platform and Poe can shoot the lever thingy, sending the platform back up where BB-8 can grab the Gold Brick! Don’t you love teamwork?
Anyway, now that we’ve gotten the Gold Brick, I think we can take off for Jakku . . . except that thanks to the clumsy mechanic, Poe can’t reach his X-Wing, so let’s shoot our lever thingy and rebuild it into an astro droid terminal.
Activating the terminal will fling BB-8 onto the landing platform, where he can grapple down some bricks that Poe can jump up on to get to his X-Wing . . .
. . . and we’ll be shown a probably-not-accurate-at-all map of the galaxy.
Let’s take off to Jakku!
We have the opening cutscene of Lor San Tekka giving the map fragment to Poe (and Poe gets a really sweet look after Tekka says “The general? To me she’s royalty.”), then the First Order lands and Poe goes to help the villagers fight.
Of course, the first thing we’re gonna do is destroy the villagers’ stuff to get the studs inside, including their water vats. Hey, they’ll all be dead soon anyway, so it’s not like they’ll need them for much longer.
Also, shortly after beginning the level I got the “We need more troops” achievement for killing fifty stormtroopers (I assume that includes the stormtroopers that I killed in the previous level as well). Anyway, there’s a lot of stuff here for such a small village, including what looks like a makeshift bowling alley.
I shot the pins down and a one out of three announcement flashed on the screen, so is there more bowling somewhere along the way?
Speaking of, you can build a crate here.
And you can also hide under it.
You can even move around while hiding under the crate, but you’ll be about as slow as a gonk droid. Plus, once you get out from under the crate, a villager will steal it and hide under it themselves, but hey, if you build three of those crates you’ll get a minikit.
Our main goal for now is to fix two power generators. One of them is in a guy’s hut, but the door is locked and he moans, “Oh no, did someone change the code? I told them to leave it as one-two-three-four, it’s completely secure!” HAHAHAHA!!!
Well, we’ve got to figure out how to get in his house. If Poe explores a little outside his hut, he’ll see these Aurebesh letters floating around this crane – what’s THAT about?
Turns out the letters are a sign that Poe can examine the crane with his quadrnoculars, but before we do that, let’s look around the village some more. You’ll see a woman complaining that her door’s stuck and lamenting that she didn’t get a door with hinges and a handle.
Of course, that’s doubly hilarious since almost all doors in the SW universe slide open and don’t have hinges or handles.
Also, I love this windchime that has an astro droid’s head on the top. Hopefully that’s just a decoration and it wasn’t made from an actual astro droid’s head.
Exploring a bit more will reveal . . . a soccer goal.
Hey, no reason why the villagers on a harsh desert planet can’t enjoy their sports. I’m gonna guess I’m supposed to play soccer somehow like how I blasted those bowling pins. There were some bricks nearby and I used them to build this . . . thing, but I’m not sure what to do next.
Guess we’ll have to come back to the soccer goal later. Anyway, near the soccer goal (and next to an astro droid sand sculpture – HA!) is a villager named Dasha Promenti who wants to practice her blaster skills, so let’s build her a pair of stormtrooper dummies.
She then gets . . . really into her target practice, shooting the dummies and rebuilding the dummies just to shoot them again, so let’s leave her to her fun and grab the Power Brick that appeared for our trouble.
Okay, I think we can work on those generators now. Let’s have a look at that crane with the quadrnoculars.
We can scroll around with the quadrnoculars until we zero in on the crane’s weak point, then we can shoot down the load it was carrying, which explodes into a set of bricks.
First, we can use the bricks to build a launcher, which launches BB-8 onto the crane.
Then we can shoot the launcher and reuse the bricks to build a grapple hook on the crane.
Use Poe’s grapple gun to rotate the crane so BB-8 can get on top of the building.
Have BB-8 activate the terminal on the roof and the guy’s door will open. I’d tell the guy to remember his password next time except that he’s going to be dead soon.
Inside the guy’s house, we can shoot all his possessions to bits to get the studs that are probably his life savings, but he won’t need either of them soon.
Oh look, turns out BB-8 can activate generators. THAT’S what we built by the soccer goal! Well we’ll have to go back there after we activate the generator here.
But first . . . how about some basketball?
They must really like their sports here, but let’s build a launcher to shoot BB-8 into the net!
You have to score a certain number of BB-8 baskets before you get the announcement that you’ve done enough (I wasn’t counting, so I’m not sure how many, I'm gonna guess five), but now that we’ve used Poe’s best friend as a basketball, let’s head back to the soccer net and activate that generator.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to use BB-8 as a soccer ball – the generator just spits out a soccer ball.
Dribble the soccer ball into the net and you’ll finally get that minikit! Yay! There’s always time for some good old-fashioned sports when the tyrants are invading, right? Where were we? Oh yeah, we need to fix the other generator. Well, let’s use the grapple to get the door open.
Once inside, we can destroy the stuff and lament that the people in the pictures will be dead soon – and hey look, doesn’t that white pile of bricks look familiar?
Yes, we can use them to build another minikit!
Well, after BB-8 activates the second generator, in come Phasma and her troops (including one who looks like he doesn’t want to be here – three guesses who he is). Dasha – the villager who was doing target practice earlier – tells Poe that they’re after Lor San Tekka, so we’ve got to get to him even though anyone who’s seen the movie knows his fate.
Anyway, Dasha temporarily joins our party for the stealth blaster battle.
By the way, in this battle I got the “Stormtrooper Syndrome” achievement . . . which is for missing your targets ten times in a stealth battle. Yeah, sometimes games like to throw in achievements that taunt you for playing badly, but I can laugh at the achievement’s name, so it’s all good.
After we take out the required number of stormtroopers, we’ve got more trouble to worry about – all these plastic flames blocking our way. Fortunately, there’s also a grapple hook, which lets us pull down some precious Lego bricks.
We can assemble the bricks into a sweet cannon . . . thing.
Even better, it’s a water cannon, which BB-8 can turn on to put out the flames – but then we’ve got troopers rushing after us.
As you can see, Poe fell apart here, but fortunately, I already reached True Jedi by this point. Anyway, we have to creep through the barriers and shoot the troopers who get in our way. Fortunately, the creeping isn’t slow-as-fuck like it is in some games, so it’s not annoying.
And before you know it, we’re in another stealth battle.
Dasha keeps telling us that we’ve got to save Tekka, but we all know how that’s gonna go. Still, it’s the noble thing to try, right? Unfortunately, we’ve got forcefields to deal with now.
But Poe knows just what to do – shoot the generators’ fuels cells to turn of the forcefields and then bam, we can take out the stormtroopers! Just don’t think about how they were all kidnapped as babies and brainwashed into fighting for the First Order – that will put a damper in the fun.
Of course, there’s something else in the way after we’ve taken out the forcefields – a First Order shuttle, but thankfully Poe’s quadrnoculars can discern its weak point.
Quadrnoculars – never leave the Resistance base without them. Bad news: when we shoot down the shuttle and it crashes, that leaves us surrounded by flames. Good news: there’s a water tower nearby.
Since the villagers aren’t going to need the water tower for much longer, we don’t have to feel guilty for pulling it down to put out the flames.
Am I joking too much about how the villagers will be dead soon? Probably, but hey, Lego games make fun of the serious scenes all the time. Course, later on we run into ANOTHER barrier of flames and a First Order shuttle. Fortunately, there’s also a convenient astro droid panel.
Who sets up these droid panels, anyway? I mean, this one actually blows up the shuttle – you’d think the First Order wouldn’t want them there, but at least our way is clear.
We pass some villagers who say Lor San Tekka is in trouble and he’s close by. After taking out some more stormtroopers and forcefields, we’re almost there, but we’ve got another wall of plastic flames in our way. Luckily, there’s a giant water pump nearby, but a frighten guy nearby tells us it’s broken. However, when we shoot some nearby shit, we’ll get a multi-build kit.
It actually took me a while to figure out the order of stuff to build and the frightened guy kept repeating that we needed to fill the tub with water and rotate it over the flames and it got pretty annoying, but oh well, he’ll be dead soon. When I finally figured out which hoses to fix first, I was able to pump water to fill the tub.
Then BB-8 could rotate the tub over the flames and dump it over the fire.
With that done, we finally reach Tekka – just as Kylo’s TIE lands. Kylo has some difficulty with his lightsaber blade shooting out of the wrong extensions, but then he figures he doesn’t need his lightsaber to kill Tekka – he can just Force-choke him and then Force-fling him away. Poe sends BB-8 off with the map fragment before getting captured (which totally wasn’t inspired by anything else, nope!) and the level ends, awarding us the “I’ll come back for you” achievement for finishing the first level.
Join us next time!
