pc or wii.

[Sivad]

ok. my sister uncovered my old pc copy of lego star wars 2, so we ended up playing it and now shes obsesed with it and im starting to like it again. so now we r aiming to get all the other lego games. so my question is should we get them on pc or wii. or psp. cause those r the only platforms we have that the lego games have been released on. (i dont care about the mobile version.) for certain reasons well probs get star wars 1, star wars cs and batman on pc but as for the other ones we r open to opinions. and also, is there a point in getting both star wars 1 and cs. if not then which one should we get. like i said before we already have 2. thx in advance for reading and answering this long post.

[Arantor]

I don't think there's much point getting LSW 1 if you're getting the Complete Saga as all the levels in LSW 1 are in the Saga, though with a few little tweaks to them in a few places based on how things were upgraded in LSW 2 (mostly to do with aiming) - if you liked LSW 2, there's only more of the same for the most part.

I suspect going down the Saga route is probably the best bet, I'm not sure off hand what extras other than the main story levels there are in LSW 1 or 2, but in the Saga you get the six films (six levels per film), plus six bonus areas (some of which are the 'original', harder versions of levels in LSW 1, while the main game is 'easier' on those levels), plus 20 'bounty hunter missions', plus various ways of completing the main levels (there's the regular+free play modes, plus Super Story mode to complete all six levels of a film in under an hour, plus the Challenge minikits to collect all 10 minikits on a level in 10 minutes)

Personally I found Super Story mode and the Challenge minikits to be overly frustrating, but like I said I don't know what bonus material you get in LSW 1 & 2.

Caution though: if you're getting Lego Harry Potter, especially on the Wii, it's a tad buggy. Notably on the Wii version (which I own), there's a level that if you enter it for the first time and for whatever reason fail to complete it, you will not be able to re-enter that level at all, and will have to restart your game if you wish to get 100%. There's also a room under one of the classrooms where you're supposed to build a dragon that will flip you back out again, but in practice you not only have to jump on the dragon but mash the living daylights out of the jump button (this is a workaround supplied by Traveller's Tales themselves on one of their team's Twitter feeds)


Personally, I found LSW the most irritating of the games to complete, but if you're looking at the others...

Batman's fun, you get to play as both Batman/Robin/Batgirl and the villains. The biggest frustration for me was the number of batsuits that you can switch through in free play. The two bonus levels are a tad less fun IMO, but relatively minor overall. Has a few levels where the camera angles are frustrating to work with. Also has driving/flying levels similar to LSW's, so if you enjoyed that, there's more of the same.

Indiana Jones is fun too, but it has a few moments that are incredibly frustrated when you're trying to jump between rotating columns, also some of the scenes where you're escaping from the Germans in the mountains are very frustrating. Lego IJ itself only covers the first three films, IJ 2 has the first three films redone with the fourth film. (I only own the first game, not that interested by the second, looks like a blatant cash-in). In gameplay terms, the driving/flying type levels are gone, and this time around there's more emphasis on puzzle solving - this time around you have to pick items up and use them in the right place, something that didn't happen before. Also, different to previous games, you don't just find red bricks, you have to also get the red brick to a postbox to post it home, making it slightly more puzzle-like. I also found certain scenes very frustrating where you had a lot of enemies appearing, far more than you could properly deal with at once (e.g. on the airship)

Harry Potter is fun, bugs notwithstanding. It's probably the game I spent the most time playing, given how many characters there are to unlock (since you unlock variations of characters with different outfits too), and unlike the other games there is also a massive meta level: while your 'hub' where you view progress, buy unlocked items etc. is the Leaky Cauldron, you have the places you go to complete story elements of the first four Harry Potter films, and for everything in between, there's Hogwarts Castle. You go round the castle in between 'levels', as that's where all the red bricks are as well as plenty of characters to unlock. As in Lego IJ, you not only have to find the red bricks but get them to a sending-home point, which is not usually a problem, but it does hint where there will be a red brick. Also notably different this time around is the minikits - unlike the previous formula of 10 pieces of minikit per level, there are the 4 pieces of Hogwarts crest to find per level and a 'student in peril' to find (there's 24, one per level, plus a further 26 throughout Hogwarts castle) - in some ways that's better, because you have a more specific target but in others, it's actually harder to get some crest pieces because of having to do 10 things along the way for a single piece. Like Lego IJ, there's none of the flying/driving interludes that were in the earlier games, though there are some points where you drive a car and fly a broom but these are still closer to normal play. There are 'picking bits up to use them' but it's not as important as it is in Lego IJ. Probably the single most frustrating element for me are the points where you have to use Wingardium Leviosar (much like LSW's Force ability) on Lego bricks, only you're using it to pick up and place bricks to build stairs or bridges. It's very fiddly on a Wii, I doubt it'll be much different on a PC.

Lastly, Pirates of the Caribbean. Same general deal as before - covers all 4 films, but only does 5 levels per film. Doesn't hurt it, though. We're back to the conventional hub level (though you can't unlock parts of it until you've done some of the levels and earned gold bricks), and this time we're also back to 10 minikit pieces per level. There's also 'Jack's Compass' which points the way to 8 items throughout each level to find. There are a few bigger changes this time around though - most importantly that there are a lot more arrows and hints to guide you up front about what you're supposed to be doing and where you're supposed to be going. Much like Lego IJ, it does revolve around picking items up to use them. I find this particular game to be the most polished of the games, interestingly enough. There's no store selling you gold bricks to make a nice round number, the red bricks aren't hidden within levels this time around - they're all in the hub level, and this one just feels more balanced to play.


All in all, if you like the style of play in LSW 2, I doubt you'll be too disappointed with any of the other games. They each have their little foibles and their great points - the sense of humour hasn't diminished at all, for example.

[Jothki]

I've played all of the Lego Star Wars games and Lego Harry Potter 1-4 on the Wii, and Lego Batman on Steam. They all worked reasonably well, though Batman is fairly awkward in some places if you're using WASD. Having an actual control stick for motion is nice, and the Wii games don't force you to chose between control sticks and the pointer for targeting, which would probably be particularly important for the Harry Potter games due to all the spells.

One more warning about the first Harry Potter and bugs. The house dormitories can be opened normally by students of the appropriate house, but faculty members can open them as well. However, this is probably a bad idea, in one playthrough I used Snape to open up the Slytherin dormitory and ended up with it stuck open and all the others permanently stuck shut. I ended up having to restart the entire playthrough. I'm not sure if that was the actual cause or if it will always make it happen, but sticking to students appears to be safe.

[excalibur1814]

Play on the PC as you can get them cheap and also use an Xbox 360 controller

[Sivad]

Thanks for all the replies, got busy and forgot I even opened this thread. Luckily all the advice was still helpful as we were also to busy to act on getting any of these games.