 So, this video is about LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga. Not the complete saga, but I'll be talking about it a bit. But slow down, bucko, let me explain myself. A lot of people are walking around dislike bombing anyone who has anything negative to say about the LEGO game, but I ask you to freeze. Before you impulsively make a decision you might regret because trust me pal, you don't want to make me pee-o'd. Know the blaster? Get a popcorn, soda, a yu-hu-brained chocolate milk. I'm not sponsored, but I do like a cold chocolate milk. And sit down, because we're going on an adventure. About LEGO. I love LEGOs. While making this video I made a LEGO Boba for helmet because he's my favorite Star Wars character. The cool bounty hunter one, not the lazy old crybaby. Like a benza. Yes. I also made a ship and an X-Wing. They're not toys, but assets. They'll go up and resell value, I promise. And when I was once young and beautiful, I played LEGO Star Wars The Complete Saga. And it made my childhood awesome as I made countless memories and I was splendid. I know, how original. A 2000s baby group with the most popular children's game. But sometime 2019 I heard that a new LEGO Star Wars game was releasing sometime 2020. With all nine of the Star Wars films titled, The Skywalker Saga. And I was extremely excited and worried at the same time. Because video games are usually 60 bucks, which meant I had to save money, but I enjoyed spending all my money on Macha-flavored Boba 2. But then the Skywalker Saga had a big delay, so I continued to buy my Boba T in peace. Hmm, a delay. That sounds like something that also happened to this other little game named Cuphead. You might have heard it, maybe not, I don't know. You see Cuphead had a trailer in 2013 that said it was going to release in 2014, but then Cuphead released in, boom, 2017. Four years after its initial launch date. The Skywalker Saga released this year, April 5th, 2022. Which is two years after its original launch date of sometime 2020. So I'm going to assume the game had like maybe four years of development time from TT games. Who had that Disney dough in comparison to the little Cuphead team. But like Cuphead, we have another friend in the mix named Cyberpunk 2077. The game everybody loved. Cyberpunk 2077 also went past its initial launch date. And got more delays than I have shits to give when I have to bring it up in regards to dev hell. It's getting old, man. When you look at Cuphead's 2013 trailer and its 2017 finished game, you go, Oh my, the original game looked very small in scale. But now in the game's launch, it's amazing. They definitely worked their ass off with that delay to get the best game they could out to the people. I would make Halo Infinite jokes, but that already got a whole hour of my time. Fuck them. Remember, this was little studio MDHR where the brothers who made the game remortgaged their houses to even fund it. They didn't have that Star Wars cheddar or the Polish government flooding their pockets like CD Projekt Red. I'm serious. By the way, the Polish government gave them $7 million for some reason. Most, you know, the story went. Cyberpunk was a disaster. And the original teaser trailer was in like 2013. And the game cost a total of 316 million to make. It would take 6.32 cyberpunks to equal one Kanye West. So when you have these delays in games, it's not always due to extra work and polish. It could be many factors like a development hell, higher executive panic, or COVID restrictions. There's many ways you cannot make a game with full potential during a large window of time. But I wasn't thinking this with the Skywalker saga. Over the shoulder mechanics, wall running, 300 unique LEGO characters, a new combat system, a combo system, boss fights, space exploration, skill trees. I originally thought this game was going to be a new coat of paint where I do the funny platform and hear the LEGO groans. It looked extremely ambitious, especially for a LEGO game. Because most of them suck ass. You stay the hell over here, Batman and Indiana Jones. So yeah, I was pretty excited. Nine individual games with new mechanics. Four years of dev time. I am tired of fearing for the worst. For once in my shriveled little life, I'm going to take a leap of faith and have some optimism. I'm trying to get copyrighted. Sorry if you hear the f... It's so fucking hot. Guys, I know some of you will be mad, but it's just my opinion. Nah, I'm fucking with you. If you want to cope or scream about someone saying anything negative about the new brick game, leave your shit dislike and bounce. It's a LEGO game made for children, no shit, so is the complete saga. And that game also had shit I didn't like in it, but also had elements that are way better than this game. Same goes to the LEGO Star Wars 3. Everyone keeps forgetting about that game, but there's some stuff I like in it. Degrading media due to the only being for children is stupid. Guess I'm looking at you Oscars. So many kids watch these movies over and over and over. You kissed your dad on the valve? Don't have- LEGO or not, it's still a video game that's attempting to be ambitious with new mechanics in it. It's also marketed itself towards Star Wars fans or those with nostalgia toward the complete saga. Also anything of any media could be praise or critique no matter its intended audience. Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is a great animated film, not a great animated kids film. But Skipper has Spider-Man and that's for- I don't care, shut the fuck up. Ugh, sorry to those that had to see all that. I took my breathing exercises and counted fluffy clouds. Now I'm ready to talk about the brick game again. It's been weird to talk about this game, because it's a LEGO game so it's made for kids. And it's a LEGO game so you shouldn't value it at all, because it's a LEGO game. Also it's a LEGO game that isn't the old one so you're blinded by nostalgia if you don't like it. There's no winning. You're either a sourpuss or a blinded fanboy. A lot of people say that this game is taking them right back to their childhood. The updated game mechanics are great. The stakes are high in this game. The general gameplay loop is really fun and a massive step up from the complete saga. So I think this is one of the games where we just tip the hat to the developers because they realistically couldn't have done a better job with this one. Is he walking out? Okay. And it seems like the extra time that they took with this game to get it right with all of those delays was worth it in the end. It's like actual record of how it went through so much. What a day. Backdrops suck. Look at them. They're all programmed the same. It's like literally just like left, right? It's like they all suck because it feels like a complete package. People actually think like this and it makes me feel crazy because in my little mind I see a lot of problems that shouldn't be brushed off due to it being a LEGO game. Like I said, no matter what you believe, TT games decided to change the formula and modernize it. And when you switch to a modern formula, you still have a lot of cracks in the foundation. But before I start bad talk in the brick game, let me talk about what I like first because it's honestly the little list I could speed through it quickly. The graphics are pretty. I believe the game was made on the Unreal Engine and it's super appealing to have these plastic little LEGO figures in such realistic settings. And it gave me Battlefront vibes and EA Battlefront 1 and 2 are gorgeous looking games. Even today, there's still some of the most visually impressive looking environments graphically. So at times during my play throughout, catch myself just exploring the environments to look at all the foliage, getting studs for no reason. Look, I leave little footprints in the mud and snow. Here's a DM from my pal Jamef where he gives an explanation on why there's stuff in the snow because he's a game guy and knows about game stuff. Everybody give a thanks to the busted glasses. Also, some of the cut scenes actually got a good chuckle out of me. Some didn't and were kind of tone deaf, but the scenes that you slapstick with witty delivery actually had a bit of charm. And that's all the good things I have written on my little checklist. So now let's get to the reason why most of you are here. When I was first playing the Phantom Menace, I was having fun because it was fresh and I got to learn about all the new game mechanics and use them in action for the first time. But as the game continued, I started to notice a lot of problems really quickly. And it popped my little immersion bubble, making me spot out the Mysterio illusion. While playing the Skywalker saga, I began to feel personally insulted by how little the game viewed my intelligence. At times, I could be an idiot. Fuck it. Most times, I could be an idiot, but I'm not that dumb to where I'm on par with whoever this game was designed for. See. You're like doing like two damage per hit. I would rather have my fifth grade teachers recommend to my parents that I go into special ed classes than be given a copy of the Skywalker saga with the words uttered, this seems like a game that's made for you. The Skywalker saga is a facade of smoke and mirrors. It gives you the keys to a brand new Lamborghini, but you're only allowed to drive around the neighborhood while you have somebody else accompany you to then find out you weren't ever driving at all because it's just a simulation. From a distance, everything on the surface is amazing. The combos look cool. The action looks fun. But after the tenth time of doing the same thing, you sit back and realize I'm not really doing anything. There were moments where I was ready for combat, but the game kept me on a leash and held me down just before the fun began. The Skywalker saga wants you to suspend your disbelief and have faith that you're being challenged, but will take every opportunity to remove any feeling of urgency or resistance. It's fun at first when you're throwing a lightsaber and being aggressive, but when you come to the realization that only five enemies spawn at a time and they want you to kill them so badly to the point they will act absurdly brain dead and do nothing, it starts to feel like a joyless cakewalk. Like, look at this battle. This battle sucks. Where is everything? Oh, who called it? Who said it? Two troops on the beach. Like, two of them. Like, look, actually, two droids. God, what a look you... I'm losing every shot. You could walk up to bad guys and they won't do anything. I don't know if the game's bugged or the AI is just that stupid. Half the time, the fuckers will look like they're strolling to their nine to five. Just another day's work. So the only reason to attack brain dead NPCs is to honestly entertain yourself. It's like playing with an unplugged controller. Oh, wait, this shit ain't even on. What the fucking... I just won't know, bro. And on top of the combat handholding, you also have zero consequences in any altercation. So it feels even more monotonous. There's no checkpoints, death menus or setbacks in the main game. You could die as many times as you want and just lose studs, which doesn't hurt you unless you're a four-eyed freak and wants a hundred this game. It's OK if you're a four-eyed freak, by the way, I don't hate you. So there's no learning curve or any incentive to try something new in each approach. I'm not saying the Complete Saga did this any better. There's a video by JXC, which breaks down the positives and negatives of the Complete Saga. And they make a point to how a lot of these same criticisms apply to the Complete Saga outside of its platforming. Which this game doesn't even have, by the way. But the difference is that game is 15 years old, with completely different mechanics. The Complete Saga is an immune to criticism. I agree with that video that having no stakes at times made the game insanely boring. But it's pretty fucking pathetic when somebody's gotcha moment is stating that a 15-year-old game also had the same faults as the new one, which released 15 years later. But like, imagine if there were characters that only blasters were really effective towards. And vice versa with Saber characters. It would add more variety to the game instead of just holding down the X button or the right trigger to pop off enemy helmets. Which is kind of distracting, not gonna lie. You're gunning down little LEGO people with little LEGO families. Except the clones and droids. Fuck. Even for important story segments, the game lets you have no fun at all with what is happening in the narrative. In The Phantom Menace, there's a part where you have to take out droids and snail tanks that want to penetrate your bubble. So you have to lob little balls at it. And your only objective is to destroy a certain amount of shit. If the enemies get too close, they'll just disintegrate. They don't lower the shields or get into the bubble. They just die. And keep responding to die again until you can meet the quota that lets you progress. And for that quota, there's no timer. You could do nothing and nothing will happen. You could fight a big fish and it'll tell you to dodge the most obnoxious ways possible. Oh no, look, you should click B. Look, you have 25 seconds to click B. Oh my god, he did it. What a good job. And if you mess up, nothing happens. The game will progress anyway. I tried to fail certain segments of the game and it will literally not let you fail. It's a kids game, Skipper. My fucking dog could pass these segments. It's so annoying because the hand holding makes these segments no longer fun. It's impossible to feel immersed when your intelligence is constantly being degraded. Even to children, this isn't difficult. Most games children play today are like competitive battle royales. And honestly, what kid enjoys a game where you do nothing while everything is handed to you? The Barney game? The Barney game did that. And who the fuck talks about the Barney game today? No one. You hear about Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot Sonic, games where you actually do shit, not the fucking stupid Barney game where it just hands you everything. Fuck you, Barney. You can't even do platforming in this game like the Complete Saga. That's crazy. Look at this. You can click A to jump to the thing. You don't even actually have to jump. The best mission in the Complete Saga is the Anakin and Obi-Wan fight in part 3 because that actual stakes and allows you to play the game and mess up. This was also stated in the JXC video, which is once again down in the description. There's platforming segments that have lava catching up to you, which forces the level to have checkpoints because parts are being consumed by lava. So you have a timer while actually doing something engaging and if you fail, you have to restart. Those are stakes that add attention to the gameplay. Skywalker Saga had 15 years to implement stuff like this and even if there's no platforming anymore due to the game mechanics, you could still use the current game mechanics you already have with the same principles. Why does the game have to be so dumbed down to the point where people can't even platform anymore? It could be possible. You could do your own shit, but you just can't. You just have to look at something and click the A button. I'm not fucking with you. You literally can't do your own platforming anymore. And this happens in the Revenge of the Sith mission that I just praised the Complete Saga for doing 15 years ago. This is 15 years later. Even Roblox minigames for five-year-olds have platforming where you could lose and have to start over. Kids do parkour for fun and Minecraft. I get my ass whooped by little children in bed wars. Who wants to do this? What kid is going to enjoy feeling like an absolute moron while having shit handed to them? It's the video game equivalent to being spoon-fed while someone wipes your ass. And it applies to every inch of this game. At first, you think the flying segments are similar to Battlefront 2 due to the cool smoke and mirrors of the gameplay, but then you realize it's just another mystery or a trick and the objective is turning into something like shrewt five turrets or kill this amount of enemy ships to progress while you have no pushbacks at all. You can't lose or start over so all the thrill of having pressure is gone and instead you start to feel like a zombie that just holds the right trigger. The only cool mission was the pod racing segment which was still incredibly fucking easy and worse than the complete sagas version but at least you had the possibility of losing which would make you restart. But most of the space battles are just copy and paste and when you have to do it over and over and over again for nine films it becomes impossible to suspend your disbelief and that imagination just turns into flat-out boredom. It makes the gameplay loop repetitive without any satisfaction and a lot of the games like this just full of recycling. The first villain boss fight you take part in is against Darth Maul who does a dash, ground pound, and basic attack. And at first I assumed this was exclusive to Darth Maul but then I later realized that every boss does the exact same fucking thing. Dooku, Vader, Anakin, Luke, Kylo, every boss. Why do you have fire red hair? And if they have lightning involved they also have the same mechanic where you have all the time in the world to throw back at them and don't even get me started with Boba Fett's boss fight. I didn't even shoot you. Ow, come on! And on top of that the combat in the boss fights are hilariously awful. The most effective character is RTD2 because it allows you to just whack the enemy without getting locked in repetitive animations. If you're a saber character the bosses will put you into a button spam with no timer so you can just sit there forever and tease the game or they want you to spam Y over and over again because if you had to switch between random buttons that would be way too much of a challenge. Remember, you're an idiot who can't even jump to a simple fucking block. And guess what? If you fail whatsoever nothing happens. So what's the point of dodging around and predicting attacks if nothing is effective when you perish? Health doesn't reset, the fight doesn't reset, it's pointless. The complete saga boss fights were horrendous as well. You could exploit them and kill them quickly with like a ground pound attack. But that's a 15 year old game, improve on the past. And even though the boss fights in this game suck and aren't challenging at all the most disgraceful part is how generic everything is. If every boss had their own unique set of animations and sequences I could give it a pass but it's all recycled making it not even fun as an experience. The phasma fights were generic and easy in both the sequel games but at least it was something new in comparison to every Saber fight. I keep mentioning smoke and mirrors because that's what this game is. You watch the trailers and you see all these new additions and assume the best but TT cut corners. 300 unique characters, my ass. You have nine classes with a bunch of different characters underneath those classes that do the same thing. All bounty hunters shoot a three round burst and are able to access the same stuff. Some might have a small gimmick like a jet pack that lasts one second but most of the roster has nothing different besides appearances. For example, the Scoundrels could do a special shot thing where the game still holds your hand and auto locks for you. Also, the scavengers could do the Ark of Night Glide. Even down to basic mechanics, they're simplistic and boring. Blaster characters do the same shit without much variation. You have no reload animation so you can just pull the trigger and shoot at stuff endlessly. I know it's Star Wars. I'm not expecting Han Solo to put a drum mag in his DL 44 but Battlefront had a good twist with the reload system and made it so your guns could overheat. It would change the pace of combat and not let things become stale. Assuming the combat had a challenge. Like I mentioned earlier, the NPCs are so dumb down that you won't find much conflict. Like the cover mechanic is a joke. You won't need it because you will never be in harm's way and you will never be overwhelmed. It's just another instance of trailer bait. And the lightsaber characters all do the same shit as well. Hold the X button and do a sweaty combo that most of the time is unnecessary because enemies will never put up a fight and will often kill themselves while you do nothing. The lightsaber characters had different combo chains but I was expecting more of the delay. Like unique abilities are something to make the characters vividly stand apart from each other besides universal skill tree options which you really don't need. You have oddball characters like Job of the Hut and the Rain Corps but most of the main cast is just copy-paste. The skill trees are so basic and unnecessary that you could go through the whole game without getting any of them. You'll actually have a better time if you don't upgrade at all due to how little of a challenge this game already is. Unless you want to make the cakewalk even easier then go ahead you could do a combat slide or build faster. Sweet man, go bananas. Another issue I have is the level design. The nine games move at breakneck speed with most the objectives having you go from point A to point B while having nothing stand out within them. Do you think anyone's going to be speed running in this game? Come on, dude. Come on. In episode three, I killed Count Dooku in a mid-ass boss fight. Do it. You're General Grievous. What? Then killed General Grievous literally two minutes later. A lot of the levels are dumbed down and I assume this is due to the massive scale of the game but it made the game a worse experience to play because I was doing all the repetitive stuff I mentioned earlier but without any of the cool set pieces that you have in a game like the Complete Saga. And a lot of the set pieces from the Complete Saga are lowered in scale and dumbed down heavily. Like during the Battle of Kashyyyk you got to go save three Wookies and do the same fight sequences over and over again and it ended super quickly. Compare this to the same level from the Complete Saga and it's night and fucking day but if you're still not convinced and you want an example that absolutely no one will deny look at the Colosseum mission from Lego Star Wars 3 then look at this game. This is actually fucking real. The AI in this game are straight up busted and do nothing but stand still. Look how barren everything is. Look at this and then look at the older game. This came out in 2011. I want to play this game. Where the fuck is this? Oh whoever did this is getting fired. They didn't want to program what they're gonna do. Yeah. Lazy ass. Oh my God. Look at the distance. Look at Jack. Look this girl's doing nothing. Oh this is so bad at this point. It's a platoon doing Jack. Look at him. He's a platoon. Pretty graphics but shitty level design. Like look at the General Grievous fight. This is what's in the game. This is supposed to be the scene where the two Tulfs storm in. Are you serious? Look at these assholes. It's like they came out of the tavern from Wreck-It Ralph and they're ready to go work their nine to five. The complete saga lets levels drag a bit so you could experience the story sequences. You might do a couple puzzles and go to new areas but in this game they just want to show you what is happening and get you out as quickly as you got in. And like I just showed for example, besides the graphics the levels are fucking boring and generic. And when I wasn't doing boring speed run levels I was doing things that were a complete waste of time. There's a part where you have to play as Mace Windu so you could get into your ship to go to a cutscene to then die. You don't get a fight between Mace Windu and Sidious but earlier in the game you get to go to a boring library and ask questions before taking a fast travel to somewhere else. There's a part where you play as Pregnant Padme where you go to your ship so you could go to a cutscene and once again die. Most of the flying stuff is like this. The flying in this game sucks. Once again, smoke and mirrors, you're not going around vast majorities of space. It's used like Destiny. You get fucking Destiny animations to go from planet to planet. This is the same game, by the way, that cut out the whole entire space battle sequence from the beginning of the third movie. That awesome space battle is just a rushed ass cutscene. It was in the complete saga and was one of the best vehicle missions in that game. Why is it not in this one? The Skywalker saga has a ton of cut content that's instead replaced by useless shit like giving food to Dexter Jackson's customers. Like in The Last Jedi, you don't get to play the Battle of Crayon. Instead you get a cutscene of it. There's a half mission where you have to like turn on radio towers as well and it's super fucking generic. You don't get to play as Luke getting knocked out but you get to do like boring radio shit. There's so much dead air alongside breakneck pace that it's just all around fucking confusing to play. And the cutscenes don't assist this at all. There's a part in A New Hope where Luke says he doesn't want to go on adventures with Obi-Wan. Then he goes to his aunt and uncle's house, immediately realizes they're dead. And three seconds later, after this realization, he wants to go on an adventure with Obi-Wan. You must learn the ways of the Force. You gotta get home, it's late, I'm in for it as it is. There's nothing for me here now. I wanna learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father. In the complete saga, all the characters only mumbled with brief clips so you could understand what was going on. So it's okay if you didn't get the full context of what was happening because it's a Lego game that has you playing most of the set pieces of what's happening in the game. But in this game, there'll be cutscenes that just feel completely awkward. Like that Luke segment because it's extremely serious while trying to retell the story of the movies. And it's also even strange after the cutscenes because there's segments where you just follow people while they try to make up for borrowed time by making Star Wars references or they might even completely re-quote the movies. This is really prevalent when you meet Obi-Wan in episode four or when you're following Luke around in The Last Jedi where he word for word copies a joke from the movie. Jakku. All right, that is pretty much nowhere. Jakku. All right, that is pretty much nowhere. And it dims some of the charm because instead of getting a goofy Lego game that's based off the movies, it's not trying to retell the movies while cutting out major details while also rushing missions but also dragging down missions with unnecessary bullshit. TT games, are you rushing or dragging? This shit's insanely awkward. But hey, at least you get to experience it with a friend. Right? Right? I got on back for Blood's case for not having basic game features. I got on Halo Infinite's case for not having basic game features. Why the fuck in 2022 do we still not have basic shit like online co-op? 15 years later and you were not able to play with friends online to do co-op in this game. I know it's a funny meme to tell people to go outside and co-op in real life but sometimes the cookie just doesn't crumble like that. I'm not going to England to play an annoying ass protocol droid while Typo gets to be Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's the bare minimum. Why is there no online co-op? If you're on Steam, you can do the cloud feature but it doesn't allow you to make challenge progression. You also have to deal with an annoying ass split screen hood and it requires a good internet connection since it's cloud play so the screen is gonna be fuzzy. You also have other pieces of cut content that was in the complete saga like custom characters that are for some reason not in this game. I don't know why but it's just not. It's annoying and should be in the game but let me pivot to talking about the split screen menu and just the hood in general. The UI for this game is fucking disgusting. You have so much unnecessary bullshit on screen and it's obnoxious. You don't even need the mini-map because the game tells you where the objective is every 10 seconds. And split screen co-op is just so ugly with two small little windows. And that's because co-op in this game just generally sucks. In the complete saga, the only cool thing about being player two is when you got to be someone with a lightsaber or R2-D2 due to him being able to fly. You can't fly in this game. And R2 fell off. And the only reason to use R2 is for shitty puzzles. Complete saga had easy puzzles as well but some of them had charm. What the fuck is charming about clicking a D-pad and doing repetitive matching puzzles? So fucking lazy. Also if you're in any boss battle, player two could just suck a dick. They're gonna be watching, that's all. The final battle of episode three in the complete saga was smart. And it can and Obi-Wan had to work together to escape the lava that was trying to consume them. And then at the end, you're both able to beat each other's ass. In this game, C-3PO has to spectate while player one does everything. Actually, that's not true, I'm sorry. Player two has to do chores while player one does everything. Like what the fuck is Commander Cody supposed to do during the general Grievous fight? It's like the game wasn't designed for co-op. They just wanted player one to switch in between characters. Phantom Menace is fun because you get to play as Obi-Wan throughout the whole thing. But any other game, you're fucked. Why is it so bad in this game? Overall, I went to the Skywalker saga with hope and optimism, but came out disappointed. Not because of nostalgia or loyalty to the complete saga, but because I think there's a lot of problems with how the game plays. And I told most of them to you now. I do still feel pretty insane though. It seems like a lot of people are turning a blind eye to what's wrong in this game to rekindle the nostalgia they once had. This is not the best Lego game, as Mahler put it. This game is not a fun adaptation of the movies where you get to explore a Lego version of someone retelling stories you are familiar with. It's an awkward, rushed, and meme-heavy highlight reel of each movie with 10 minutes of gameplay content per episode. I referenced a video by JXC a couple times, but they made a video that was an hour and 30 minutes long breaking down the complete saga. And while that game has issues, it has a lot of fucking charm. Skywalker Saga will probably be the best-selling Lego game and it makes sense why. Gaming has been mediocre and the smoke and mirrors makes it look like a love letter to everyone's childhood. But once you learn how the magic trick works, it's hard to be mesmerized. Thank you for listening to me bitch about a Lego game. I have other videos on the channel where I also bitch about other stuff. Subscribe if you want. I'm getting close to 100K. I'm Dr. Skipper and I'm still drinking Chaka Mug. No way!