I cannot help but think that if LEGO has had such an impact on Star Wars, what impact could it have on my life, if my world was to become all Legoified? I could change my hair on a day to day basis, I could build and rebuild my house at will, and the term getting a lift would have a whole new meaning… cars won't take you where you want to go - the giant hand in the sky will! I could reuse my litter and build something useful out of it, if I was sick of my dog, I could shape him into a cat - and if I fancied good night, I could pool my resources and build a woman! Unfortunately, my life will never be Legoified, but apparently Batman's life will soon be, as the same team sets to make those boomerangs blocky in LEGO Batman next year!

Although LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy isn't that different to the last instalment we were treated to a short while ago, it does have one key thing to make this second-in-the-series a must buy. What's that you ask? Why, it's the original trilogy of course! While the first game covered Episodes I, II, and III, the sequel covers the original trilogy, and that's IV, V and VI. These are the Episodes that Star Wars is famous for. It's a little bit of a review cliché, but I'm going to have to say it - if you're a fan of Star Wars then you simply must buy this game!

The reason for this is simple, and behind this simple reason is a question. What made the first LEGO Star Wars so popular? I'd hazard a guess that it's the parody spin on a popular series with LEGO characters that does it. Players can see some of their favourite scenes from Star Wars acted out by LEGO characters in a LEGO environment. That reason alone is why the previous game was a raging success, and that same reason is why The Original Trilogy will be an even bigger hit - because it doesn't get much better than seeing the Hoth Battle done with LEGO vehicles!

For those who don't quite know how LEGO Star Wars works, let me fill you in - you control one character at a time from the cast in that level and you can expect to see and control familiar faces from the very Star Wars scene you are playing. You might already have other familiar characters following you, or you might meet and pick some up along the way. You can switch between the characters in your party at the press of a button - and you will need to switch between them too! This is because most characters have unique traits, the majority of which are crucial to the story. Some are droids, like R2-D2, who can open certain doors or even disable other droid characters, while others may be Bounty Hunters that have the ability to throw bombs and blow objects up that may pose a problem to regular characters. Another example is the Jedi - and I'm sure you can guess how much fun these characters are to play! Perform various light sabre attacks, use the force to move LEGO, even use your powers to break enemies into pieces. And the great thing is, the Jedi aren't few and far between - you're playing as one within the first twenty minutes! Huzzah!

Surprisingly simple, yet astonishingly deep, LEGO Star Wars II seems a little more interactive that the original; at every corner there's a door that only certain characters can open (which leaves plenty of replay value, as you may have to come back to these doors in Freeplay mode), or there is always something to build up, such as platforms, generators, or a little jukebox, which when built played a Star Wars theme remix that had my enemies dancing, allowing us to sneak past them! The building side of things isn't under your control - you cannot build what you choose, you simply walk up to a pile of bricks, hold down the action button, and watch your character build. Although this might not sound that exciting, many moments of greatness revolve around this system. Like the jukebox, another recent feat was building a platform, jumping onto the platform and then the Jedi in the team lifted the platform up like an elevator, to the floor above with his force powers! In addition to building and opening doors, some characters can fly around the setting, others can use grapple hooks to get where they want - you can push objects around to push down switches, use some environmental objects such as cranes to solve rather challenging puzzles, jump on and ride creatures, or even get into vehicles!

I love how the LEGO characters control, and how they walk - it's just so fluid and so, well LEGO-like, that you cannot hep but fall in love with the package as a whole. The graphics are so quirky and fun that it makes a nice change from all those serious games out there - the level design is fantastic, to see Star Wars environments all done in LEGO, and then the characters you encounter, again, all in LEGO, the way they walk, the way they shoot, the little expressions and poses these little characters pull when you leave them alone for a minute, it's all just priceless - a joy to look at and, therefore, a joy to play. The happy go lucky vibes radiate from the television, warming you with their light-hearted bliss. The sound is also very catchy; traditional Star Wars music, often jazzed up, runs in the background, while light sabre noises and the sound of blasters firing fills up the rest of the foreground, giving you a game that sounds authentically Star Wars.

When the excellent gameplay, fantastic visuals, authentic sound and tongue-in-cheek humour all comes together, you have the brick schematics for LEGO Star Wars II. Shooting Darth with a blaster, only to get laughed at, running into caves, blowing down shiny objects with detonators, or moving blocks to a position to be built with my force powers, or disabling enemy droids and bringing down force fields, using my team of Star Wars characters to their full potential, one wonders, does this game ever get boring?

To build more life on top of this foundation of robust Lego gameplay, there are even more things to sink your teeth into. Of course, the whole new inclusion of being able to drive more vehicles is a welcome one; you'll come across many, from small ones that appear on the occasional level, such as landspeeders, to dedicated pilot levels, such as the snowspeeder Hoth level, zipping around as fluid as water, performing back flips, circling around enemy vehicles and destroying them - it gives the gameplay a lot more variety. As before, Freeplay is back, a mode that allows you to replay any level you have completed with any of the characters you have unlocked. In LSW II you can actually make your own characters, from the hair to the pants, and then the arms, to the hands, to the cape, and then the weapon - and then play as them in Freeplay, in addition to the proper characters you already have in your possession. Collecting studs, the form of currency in LEGO Star Wars, allows you to buy new characters, cheats and secrets - many of which have a great impact on the game in one way or another, which is yet another notch on the lasting appeal belt!

But the final block on this almost perfect model comes in the form of co-op mode; every level in story mode can be played with a friend, so then there are two of you to control the crew of characters, two of you to work co-operatively, and two of you to break Darth in two! Basically, as if LEGO Star Wars II wasn't fun enough, the whole experience is just multiplied by two! When you were a kid, and you had a modest LEGO collection, but then your friend brought around his or her blocks too, and you combined them to make something even bigger, even better, well - you can compare that to this, as the co-op is absolutely out of this world!

As with the first game, the characters don't talk in cut scenes; instead they just hum or beep, and because actions speak louder than words, everything comes across fresh, polished and very entertaining - every cut scene is a thoroughly entertaining, subtle parody of the film's equivalent, with hilariously accurate recreations of key scenes, but with added humour, such as R2-D2 falling out of the speeder on the way to Mos Eisley, then Luke knocking someone flying as he parks the speeder, getting a dirty look from Obi-Wan. When you head into the cantina, you're just in time to see Han Solo blast Greedo to pieces, after which Obi-Wan cuts the arms off the walrus-like alien that attacks Luke. It's just priceless, and the tongue in cheek humour combined with the exact rendition of many classic scenes makes for some of the best viewing Star Wars fans will ever find outside of the films.

Last year I gave LEGO Star Wars a high eight out of ten. LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy gets my thumbs up again, but this time we've ascended to a nine. What was once thought to be a novelty game has now established itself as a hit series, putting a not so serious spin on whatever it touches. With more meat than the last game, 100 levels of fun, unmatched co-op gameplay, the feature to make your own characters, the superb visuals and the funky Star Wars tunes, I simply cannot fault what's on offer. An online co-op mode would have been nice, but maybe it's better to play side by side after all. Want to see how a real LEGO model is built? As Yoda might say, buy this you must!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).