The coming together of two of the biggest franchises the world has ever seen doesn't come across as something that would make an impressive game but Eidos have completely dumbfounded me and produced one of the best Star Wars games there is around. It was originally meant to be aimed at the younger market but the gameplay and action has led it to become an all round mainstream title, and one that will impress fans of action games, Starwars and Lego alike.

Most people know the storylines of the movies. The game doesn't follow the movies from start to finish as we expected. Rather it picks up the main action sequences from the films and lets you play through them either alone or in co-operative play with a second player. However despite this the storylines remain quite in tact when compared to the films. The developers have just taken the fluff out. While the game fills in the details, it may be hard to understand if you have not seen the original two episodes. The game does have Episode III content but due to the movie not being out yet, we are not allowed to discuss what we have seen yet.

The game plays extremely well in terms of a third person action title. Two players can take part at the same time, with an extremely intuitive multiplayer system. The second player can jump in and out of the game anytime with the main multiplayer mode being co-op through the single player campaign. Each movie contains five missions for a total of fifteen and there is a secret level which is unlocked by getting high scores on each mission. To do this is not easy however because despite the fact you have unlimited continues, and come back to life pretty much where the character died, you lose money and this money is used to buy new characters to play as in the free play mode, and it also affects how well you're ranked.

The main crux of the game is playing through interactive versions of major scenes from the films such as the fight with Darth Maul. Perhaps this is what makes the game so fun to play, the familiarity with the scenes and knowing what's going to happen next. Anticipating how they have built it into a Lego form. This is one of our criticisms with the game however, and that is that some of the game is not built out of Lego. All the characters are and most of the ships, but there are times when it's disappointing.

Throughout the game you control many different characters from the films such as Young Anakin, R2 D2 and a number of droids. There are many others to find as well and you can change between characters to solve puzzles. This is what makes Lego Star Wars such a great game. The force powers are used to solve puzzles with Lego bricks scattered around the place. Holding the force button may create new platforms to use to progress further and how the developers have done this is quite ingenious. You can also use characters such as Yoda in scenes where he is not seen in the movies, in the free play mode.

One of the coolest aspects of the game other than the levels is the fact that it is all Lego - It's just fun to play. On the topic of the levels though, they are all designed well and are extremely close to the movies, albeit in Lego form of course. The graphics are one of the better features of the game with all the characters represented quite well. There is no voice acting in the game but the sound effects are authentic as they come from Skywalker Sound, Lucasart's official library.

Lego Star Wars is a game that came out of no where and will really surprise a lot of people who decide to pick it up. There may be other Star Wars games out there but Lego Star Wars covers more in one game than most of them and focuses only on the sequences rather than whole films which makes for excellent gameplay. Lego Star Wars is out now from Eidos.