LEGO Star Wars III Press Day

We’ve always loved the LEGO Star Wars video games at Total Sci-Fi, but it’s often seemed like a shame that more kids weren’t playing with real LEGO, instead of this whizzy virtual stuff. No one ever yelled in pain from standing on a virtual LEGO brick on their way for a midnight wee. That’s a rite of passage no kid should be denied.

To rectify this a little, the clever people at LucasArts invited Total Sci-Fi to play the latest game, LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, over breakfast in the Saatchi Gallery, while also creating our own little works of art in the form of Clone Troopers made from real LEGO! What strange lives we journalists lead.

Assisting TSF and other assembled hacks was Duncan, introduced as “a LEGO Certified Professional” and one of only 13 LEGO Master Builders in the world. Most of the other journos had brought their kids along as an excuse to relive their childhoods for an hour or so. But Total Sci-Fi has no shame, and we rocked up all by ourselves, giving us more time to load up on the complimentary croissants, and to have a chat with Graham.

“This isn’t your standard build,” Duncan told us, proudly. “It’s intended more as an adult build, and should probably take around two hours.” Round one to the childless guy scoffing the croissants. In your face, infants.

“The model itself is a bespoke six-to-one scale minifigure, which is to say it’s a standard LEGO Clone Trooper scaled up to be 216 times bigger than the original,” Duncan goes on. “You can’t buy these in the shops, and some of the bricks aren’t even made any more. I had to track some of them down secondhand.”

Total Sci-Fi didn’t realise there was a thriving trade in rare, discontinued LEGO bricks, but we’re not surprised. Slightly more surprising is that Duncan makes a full-time living out of planning and building one-off LEGO creations like this, for gifts and for corporate events.

“There aren’t that many of us,” Duncan admits. “I’m the only LEGO Certified Professional in the UK. I just started building LEGO when I was a kid, and I never stopped. Well, except for a few years in the RAF.”

As an engineer, no doubt, we joke as we marvel at the intricacies of the Clone Trooper’s working arm and leg joints.

“No, I shot planes down,” he replies darkly. Blimey. Back to the LEGO, please…

After two hours, most of the assembled parents and children have assembled a working pair of Clone Trooper legs. Or rather, the parents are uncovering the mysteries of giant LEGO hip joints, while the kids are busy playing LEGO Star Wars III on the giant flatscreens at the other end of the room. Given that this whole event is intended to promote the game, TSF decides we ought to take a look, too.

Compared to previous LEGO Star Wars games, this one seems massive. Huge ground battles and ship-to-ship combat complement running-around-cute-LEGO-corridors of its predecessors. There are dozens of playable characters, from the movies as well as The Clone Wars TV series, and while the main game storyline is easy for kids to follow, adult fans can spend hours conquering the galaxy as the bad guys, before winning it all back as the goodies.

For the kids, the biggest kick comes from the two-player mode, where you can battle head-to-head (or brick-to-brick). Earning rewards allows you to build better bases, ships, weapons, etc. Except, of course, you don’t actually build them. They just appear on the screen. Looking back at the dads scrabbling around for that elusive 1x3 stud piece with a mixture of frustration and deep, Zen-like satisfaction, you can’t help but feel that something has been lost.

Still, maybe through LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, some of these kids will pick up real LEGO that bit more often. Maybe during a power cut, at least (another prime time for stepping on the damned things). Perhaps one or two them will even become the Master Builders of tomorrow, baffling a whole new generation of journalists – all of whom are nostalgic for the days of Xbox 360s, and stepping on a Wii controller in the night.

LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars is released on 25 March 2011, and Total Sci-Fi will have a full review very soon.

For more about LEGO Certified Professional Duncan Titmarsh, see www.bright-bricks.com

Words: Simon Hugo