Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to intro Monki's double shot of LEGO STAR WARS 2 coverage. I've played the game through myself and really have fun with it (even though the vehicle controls are frustratingly backassward). I remember what a shock it was that the first game, focusing on the prequel trilogy, was as fun to play as it was and now I got to play through movies I actually like, so bonus! Anyway, here's Monki's review and interview with LEGO STAR WARS producer David Perkinson! Enjoy!!!

Greetings humans, Monki here with my first stab at a review for the AICN games section.

I grew up a Lego kid. I played with Legos a LOT. To this day I still receive a Lego set each and every Christmas from my parents. From an 18-Wheeler Model Team set, to a foot and a half tall Yoda I built last Christmas, I've gotten my hands on them all.

I also grew up as a Star Wars child. I can't count the number of times I watched my VHS copies of Episode IV and Empire, or how many times I caught the movies on TBS growing up.

And now, like peanut butter and jelly, like mustard and mayonaise, (or mustardayonaise) some crazy genius at LucasArts has created an insanely fun game based on two of my all time favorite things. Lego Star Wars.

Actually, I'm going to be talking about Lego Star Wars 2 in this article, so keep that in mind if you hit up the store; the original Lego Star Wars was all about the prequels, and as fun as it is to go swinging a light saber around as Darth Maul, it is so much cooler to do it as old Obi-Wan or Darth Vader.

The Mos Eisley Cantina acts as the central hub to this game as you get to play in scenes from each of the original three movies. Start off by checking out episode IV and watching a faithful recreation of the intro. Leah's cruiser being shot at by the destroyer, Vader's boarding, the hallway shootouts. All of that stuff is here in in-game cinema and playable sections. You get to seamlessly bounce around to whichever characters you have in your party via a simple button press. So, if you have Han, Chewie, Luke and Threepio you can use Threepio to get through computer controlled doors, Han to blast Storm Troopers from a distance and Luke to go in close with his light saber. Quick and easy.

Also mixed in with the classic scenery are little easter eggs hidden about the game. Crazy stuff like Storm Troopers enjoying a hot-tub in the midst of battle, that kind of stuff. This game doesn't mind keeping things fun, which is a much needed relief in this day and age of brutal-violent headshot first-person shooter games. Now don't get me wrong, nothing is more satisfying than dropping a Nazi from 300 yards with a sniper rifle in CoD2, but sometimes you want to take a step back, take a momment to laugh. Instead of watching Schindler's List over and over why not throw Baseketball in once in a while, ya know?

I actually played this game with my sister for a brief amount of time. I bring this up due to one main reason. My sister DOES NOT PLAY VIDEO GAMES. I was at her boyfriend's place playing the game with them in the room when I tossed her a controller to jump in. (Oh, that is one really cool aspect, you can have a second player join or exit the game whenever you are playing, very old-school arcade style.) So, she jumps on and after a few brief instructions from me as to what buttons do what, she was playing right along with me having a great time. Now, I can count on two fingers how many games my sister has enjoyed playing in the past three generations of consoles, so this fact was not overlooked by me.

I recommend this game. Are you a gamer trying to get your girlfriend (do gamers with girlfriends really exist?) why not drop this in and let your lass have the second controller. Are you a parent hell-bent on keeping your 7-year-old indoors instead of playing outside in the sun? Why not play along with your kid, show them how hip you are and tell them of the days when controllers only had two action buttons and no analog sticks.

The only problem I have with this game is the lack of voice-work in it. All of the cut-scenes (which are still very well done) are mimed, so we don't get any dialog along with the action. I'm just curious how long it would take to get Mark Hamill, who still is in the voice-acting game, to record some dialog as Luke. How rad would that be?

Okay, that is pretty much the extent of my thoughts on this one, throw it in your GameFly queue and give it a shot some time, it's a lot of fun and provides tons of playing time for you by yourself or with a buddy. Okay, now as a bonus feature to this first review, I managed to get a brief interview with one of the game's producers, David Perkinson who works over at LucasArts.

MONKI: What role did you play in the production of Lego Star Wars?

DAVID: I'm the producer at LucasArts for LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, which means that I have the good fortune of working with not only the team at TT Games in the UK but with all of the talented people at LucasArts in pretty much every facet of game development.

MONKI: Whose idea was it to combine the Star Wars Universe with Legos?

DAVID: The credit on that really has to go to the guys at TT Games over in the UK. When LEGO Interactive disbanded several years ago, TT Games (then known as Giant Interactive) snatched up the rights to do LEGO games, and with the Star Wars LEGO sets being among their best sellers ever, the idea for LEGO Star Wars was bornÉ

MONKI: Which Star Wars movies come in to play during the course of this game?

DAVID: As the subtitle indicates, we're tackling the Original Trilogy here. So it's the adventures of Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie Ð the whole gang you grew up with. However, there is the option to import characters you unlocked from the original LEGO Star Wars. So you could feasibly have Darth Maul and General Grievous be big heroes of the Rebellion.

MONKI: Do we see any worlds that weren't in the movie? Any extra scenes?

DAVID: The game sticks to the same locations you saw in the movies, but for the sake of gameplay we had to embellish in places, of course. For example, there's a whole level of Luke and Ben fighting Tusken Raiders en route to the Jawa sandcrawler. There's also a hot tub in the Death Star.

MONKI: How involved is George Lucas in the production of the game? Do you have to get his blessing or does he turn a blind eye?

DAVID: Like all LucasArts games, we've presented this game to George, and it has his full blessing. In fact, he loves it. It was a real thrill to see him laugh when we showed it to him.

MONKI: What has been done to distinguish this game from all of the other movie-based games out there?

DAVID: Well, for one thing, not many movie-based games feature their characters in LEGO form Ð we do have that going for us. And largely as a result of that, there's tons of tongue-in-cheek humor. I think I can honestly say this will turn out to be one of the funniest games of the year, if not the funniest. And the fact that it's more or less a spoof of the movies we all grew up with and love only makes it more enjoyable.

MONKI: How did you get your start in the video game industry? Do you have any tips for the aspiring geeks out there that want to break in to this field?

DAVID: Well, like a lot of people on the production side, I got my start in the industry doing QA for Sega of America back in the Genesis days. Testing can be a tough job with lots of long hours, but it's an invaluable way to see how games are made and how the process of getting something ready to ship works.

MONKI: Are there any secret codes / cheats you can share with our readers?

DAVID: Enter UCK868 for a very unique take on the stormtrooper uniform.

MONKI: Can you give us a hint at what is coming next in the world of Star Wars games?

DAVID: Well, still this year we've got an awesome expansion to Star Wars: Empire at War called Forces of Corruption for PCs, where you can also check out a couple of cool compilations, Star Wars Galaxies: The Complete Online Adventures and Star Wars: The Best of PC.

DAVID: And we haven't announced our big next-gen Star Wars game officially yet, but it's going to be amazing. You'll see the Force in ways you've never seen it before, and the story has a bombshell or two to drop on the Star Wars canon. You should be hearing more on it in the coming months.

Oh man, "drop a bomb on the Star Wars canon."?? Believe you me, I'm going to be staying on top of this one until I figure out what the hell that means. I saw the "force" demo at E3 back in May and it blew me away (that demo was shown at Comic-Con and on Hyperdrive or whatever that pay-for-Star Wars service is called too) and it looks freakin' awesome. Kick-to-the-chest kind of awesome. So, while the crusty bastard Quint heads to London I'm going to go kidnap and extort information from hi-ranking execs at LucasArts. Wish me luck, until I get out of jail, back up the tree I go.

-Monki