We love our LEGO games here at Everybody Plays, sinking an ungodly amount of time into seeking out every well-hidden collectable in the cutesy, brick-themed levels, punching our way through wave upon wave of plasticised enemies and arguing over how best to solve a puzzle. And it's not just us who appreciates a bit of co-op fun, as just last week, the newly released LEGO Marvel's Avengers knocked Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 off the top of the charts, much to our delight. But now LEGO Marvel's Avengers is out in the wild, what's next for the folks at Traveller's Tales? Star Wars, it seems.
Initially leaked via an Italian Amazon listing, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be hitting the Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Playstation 4, PS Vita, PC, Wii U and 3DS in just a few short months time - this June - and promises to feature Rey, Finn, Poe, BB-8, Kylo Ren, crash happy rebel hotshot pilot Poe Dameron, Chewbacca, Captain Phasma, General Hux, C-3PO and Han Solo as playable characters in the game (although, knowing LEGO games as we know LEGO games, there'll probably be a whole lot more). More interestingly, it also mentioned that the game will feature some exclusive content that "bridges the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens" - which makes this a pretty significant event. Who knew a LEGO game would be the only way to find out what happens between the two films?
Finn is easily the best of the new characters too.
Promising to retell the story of the Force Awakens film "through the clever and witty Lego lens", all the key moments from the film will be here, ready to be played through in co-op, from hunting for scraps on the desert wasteland of Jakku, to the final showdown(s) on Starkiller Base.
But LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens promises to bring with it a whole host of new features too, adding a few new twists to the traditional LEGO formula. First off are new 'Multi-Builds', which let you choose what you build the available LEGO bricks into - something that sounds like a great way of channelling the real toys' creativity. The new Blaster Battles meanwhile, seem to add a bit more strategy to the usual smack-everything-till-it's-dead LEGO combat we've grown accustomed to, letting you use your surroundings as cover when fighting against the First Order. We just hope they work a little better than the real-time strategy segments from the LEGO Clone Wars game!
Of course, it wouldn't be a Star Wars game without some sort of space battles, and again LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens plans to deliver, promising to let players "experience the thrill of high-speed flight gameplay through arena-based battles and dogfights in space", by taking the controls of a variety of Star Wars craft, including the Millennium Falcon.
Pew pew pew
As an added bonus for Playstation owners, those who buy the game on the Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 will also have access to a couple of pieces of exclusive downloadable add-ons in the form of the Droid Character Pack and the Phantom Limb Level Pack, although the pricing for these for players on other formats - and what they contain - has yet to be announced.
A new LEGO game based on the latest Star Wars film certainly makes sense, given Cheshire studio Traveller's Tales' history with the franchise - their first licensed game was LEGO Star Wars, released way back in 2005, so this marks something of a homecoming for the team. Set to hit every console imaginable in around six months time, we're going to have to get our skates on if we're ever going to complete Lego Marvel's Avengers before then! What this means for our scoop on Guardians of the Galaxy being the next Lego game though, we're not sure...
Needless to say, we're beyond excited for this one - and we hope you are too! In the mean time, why not have a gander at the new announcement trailer, which bears more than a passing resemblance to another big trailer that was released last year...
