The latest OPM demo disk has the long awaited LEGO Star Wars 2 demo... which is the first time there's been something worthwhile on that disk for months. Rhonda and I played it for two hours last night, unlocking (I think) all but one thing. We're really excited for this one to hit stores.
The demo purports to be level 3 of the A New Hope section, covering the moment Luke and Ben drive in to Mos Eisley until the point when the gang takes off in the Falcon. So if that's level 3, what's 1 and 2? 1 could be a rehash of the secret Episode 4 level from the first LEGO Star Wars, perhaps done from Princess Leia's point of view. And I'll bet 2 is some kind of Luke-searching-for-R2 level.
Once you beat the level, the demo lets you Free Play it with a full roster of playable characters... including a Womp Rat! This is Star Wars history here, folks: a playable Womp Rat! The demo even includes a build-a-character feature, which I'll assume is pared down from the full version. As you can see from the phone screenshot, Rhonda put the Slave Leia head on Han's fashionable vest. And I made a Jedi Bith with Boba Fett's torso and Greedo's arms.
There looks to be a lot more sidebar type junk to do in LEGO Star Wars 2, most of which is just increasingly clever ways to score minikit pieces. For example, there's a pile of pieces on rooftop that you assemble into little mounted swivel guns, which then begins a shoot-the-womp-rat game. In-level vehicles are a Cool New Thing for LSW2, and the demo shows this off with a landspeeder and two AT-STs. And some dewbacks!
The only sad part is that everything that was crappy about the first one has returned for the sequel. If this demo is at all indicative of the final game, you'll still waste a lot of time fighting the constrictive camera in two player co-op. "Move back! Move back! I'm pinned against the screen border and getting picked off by stormtroopers!" Freaking hell. Doesn't look like they addressed that problem at all.
We even found a pair of major bugs. At one part, we leaped from higher ground to opposite sides of a dividing barrier, with no way to reunite unless one of us dropped out while the other one performed the longish sequence of events to build an AT-ST (which you're supposed to use to blow up those barriers.)
And shortly after that, Rhonda's character became stuck halfway between her control and AI control. She could swap and attack, but she could not move; her Slave Leia Solo just followed me around as if she was a CPU player. I had to enter a new zone to fix the problem.
I don't know if that's a demo issue or if we'll see that kind of crap in the main game. I guess I should be happy the demo didn't erase my memory card. Regardless, this game will be more awesome than 97% of anything else that shipped this year, so we'll take it.
If you find enough studs throughout the demo, you get some character unlock codes for the full game - which is out in mid-September, by the way. Here's the total demo spoiler shot:
