With all the games I’ve been playing on and off, I managed to finish one of them. Sometimes I’ll play one game for too long and run out of steam, then come back and pick it up later. In this case, I was playing on my wife’s iPad, since it’s a Universal app. After I got about ¾ of the way through though, it started crashing all the time. And hardly any games take advantage of iCloud saving. Luckily, I’m a nerd. Using a program called iExplorer (it’s not Internet Explorer), you can look at a horribly organised list of apps on your device, open them up and check the contents. It’s easy to do through Finder with apps in your iTunes library, but if you want the saves made on the device you have to use this program. It’s ugly and not optimal in a lot of ways but it works. So I copied the saves, installed the game on my iPhone, used the program again to dump the save in the game’s proper folder and bingo, works perfectly. I also use this program to back up my saves when I’m done with a game and want to delete it, because I’m always running out of space on there but I don’t want to lose the save forever.

Anyway, I moved to the smaller screen and finished the story mode. Now I’m doing Free Play, trying to at least unlock Snape. Our dream team for the other iterations of this franchise is Neville and Snape, for whatever reason. It’s one of the most fun parts, teaming up all your favourite characters. Like imagine if in Empire, Vader and Boba Fett went on adventures in between trying to capture the Rebel scum. Well you can do that.

So speaking of other games in the Lego series, this particular iteration is, as far as I know so far, unique to most others. It has a fixed isometric perspective rather then the moving 3D of others (although handheld versions are usually more fixed than console ones, and the older GBA versions were isometric), it features many more but shorter levels, rather than the usual 6 levels per episode. It has RPG-ish qualities of collecting items in an inventory and doing small tasks for people. There are gameplay elements that require use of the touchscreen, such as Cooking Mama-style potion making and drawn symbols to cast spells. And perhaps most significantly, there is a large amount of written dialogue in this game, which allows greater clarity of what you are to do, and interaction between characters and NPCs. While the silent recreations of famous scenes and expressive grunts and expressions has always been a core part of the Lego games, the two newest installments (Batman 2 and LOTR) have introduced spoken dialogue. This game was the first, however.

Traveller’s Tales have always made the console games, and I have noticed that in some ways the quality or perhaps polish has dropped off a bit in more recent games. This may have to do with playing Wii ports of games primarily for more powerful consoles. The Wii version of Saga was a port of the two Star Wars trilogies from the PS2, with the PS3 and 360 versions getting a graphical upgrade from this. After that, games were developed for the PS3 and 360 then downgraded for the Wii, which may explain the drop I noticed.

On the other hand, the handheld versions are developed by a subsidiary, TT Fusion. Now I haven’t played that many of the handheld ones, but most ape the console ones, being mainly stripped-down conversions. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the formula is so solid. But HP1-4 portable represented a big departure from this formula, and its inventiveness and willingness to try new things must be applauded. In fact, I think it is a much better game for it, having seen parts of Star Wars Saga and HP5-7 portable. It just seems like it’s more suited to the platform as it was made from scratch, not beholden to its console brother. Instead of inviting comparison in which it would most likely come up short, it differentiates itself.

So I’m a bit of an aficianado of the Lego series, having played Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy (PC), Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Wii), Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 (Wii), Lego Pirates of the Carribean: The Video Game (Wii), and Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (Wii). Also demoes of the two Batman games. I also rented Indy 2 with my friend once, but that was only to hack his Wii and install homebrew. My first one though was one of the Star Wars ones on PS2, I don’t remember which. So it may be a little late for this, but they work like this. Lego licenses a good IP, and makes some physical sets. I guess the popular ones then get handed over to TT, who makes a game out of it, mostly following the same formula: recreate the plot of the media which was licensed, abbreviated and with humorous touches. Set levels in the most significant or most gamey segments (sometimes having to make things up to add, to make for a whole level). Fill the levels with collectables and destructable objects. Include an appropriate hub (the Cantina or the Leaky Cauldron). Finally, make just about every character from the series playable, with some abilities shared between them.

The strength of the formula is its simplicity for novice gamers, making for family-friendly gaming sessions; the ubiquitous co-op, which means that you can have fun together; and the worlds and characters attached to the strong IP they have licensed, which let you relive your favourite stories in amusing Lego style. Of course, handheld games have less reliance on co-op. They do multi-cart multiplayer apparently, but not this one (at least, not on iOS). So no family together gaming, but the rest of the formula is there, along with the strong collectathon focus (a favourite genre of mine, having grown up on Rare’s N64 3D platformers).

All this adds up to an enjoyable game, and especially in this case the novelty of its mix of familiarity and differences to other Lego games made it fun for me. It can be a little rough around the edges, but frankly all of TT’s Lego games are like that and aside from some awkward controls there’s not too much to fault it for. Many faults can be forgiven because the gameplay is simple and doesn’t rely on strict timing or precision. It’s just exploring, puzzles, some light action. The faults are also of lesser magnitude than the console’s, which more often than you’d like could lock up or glitch objects or characters very badly, forcing you to either restart the level or in some cases power off the console.

But I should wrap this up. This game was great value (on sale for $1, sure beats the $50 DS version), and its uniqueness within the Lego game family is appreciated, makes it stand out. It’s unfortunate that Fusion seems to have gone back to their previous model of cut-down console remakes. This style could have developed to give handheld iterations their own identity. As it is, there’s not as much motivation for people to get both if they’re too similar. So if you like Lego games, this is worth checking out more than any other portable version, especially with its easy availability on the App Store. I love digital distribution, you don’t have to deal with stupid stores, it’s all the same price. Ahem, anyway, having said that there are many portables I haven’t played, I’d especially like to try the GBA ones since they’re also in a different style. But it’s a fun little game, not too hardcore, and could still probably be played together with a kid on an iPad perhaps. Nice little time-waster. Ok, until next time then.