Exclusive to Tesco in the UK, Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox have released today the first LEGO themed Star Wars animation, named The Padawan Menace. IF you’ve ever played aLEGO Star Wars video game before, you’ll know from the cut-scenes that these are aimed at younger viewers and are steeped in more humour than normal. This adventure is no different.
It costs £5 for the DVD and £8 for the Blu-Ray – the latter comes with an exclusive “Young Han” Lego figure. There’s also a few extras to make up for the fact that the main feature is just 21 minutes long.
None-the-less, on Blu-Ray it’s the full 1080 resolution and looks brilliant – the LEGO brick animation is very well done. Sounds and music from the original movies are also used to good effect. It has a U (Universal) certificate.
I was not expecting a great deal for something cheap that’s aimed at younger kids but thoroughly enjoyed it.
Here’s the “official” description and a trailer video…
A routine Jedi Academy field trip is turned into a rip-roaring comic adventure in LEGO Star Wars: The Padawan Menace. Tour guide Master Yoda leads a group of rambunctious Jedi Younglings through Senate chambers when he senses a disturbance in the Force. Summoned to help save the Republic, he discovers that one of the Younglings, Ian, has secretly boarded his ship…and young Ian has a taste for adventure! Meanwhile, C-3PO and R2-D2 are put in charge of the boisterous group and find themselves in over their heads. As the evil Sith prepare to wreak havoc, it’s up to Yoda and the Droids to ensure that their young charges aren’t torn to bricks!
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Summary of LEGO Star Wars : The Padawan Menace
It only has a short feature but it looks and sounds gorgeous. The story is fun and there’s an entertaining cameo too. Star Wars fans and kids will really enjoy it. Maybe a filler for Christmas? Reviewed by David Artiss on 7th November 2011.
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Nintendo Wii U – my first impressions
The Wii was needing a replacement because, although popular at first, sales have slumped. The Wii was always behind the Xbox and PS3 in terms of processor and graphics capabilities but I think the lack of media capabilities drove more people to find consoles such as the PS3 a more tempting proposition – it’s recently come down to £200 and that includes a built in blu-ray player as well as iPlayer, ITV Player and 4oD built-in.
So, rumours with rife before the launch at E3. It had already leaked that the controller would have a built-in screen – I could image a small colour LCD that could display useful information. Further rumours including a hard drive, Blu-ray player and 4GB memory. None of these were scoffed by followers as they seemed eminently practical.
However, now we know the details I’m left deeply, deeply underwhelmed.
The console itself looks like a more rounded version of the Wii. It uses it’s own optical disc format – they appear to be Blu-ray capacity without being so. So no movie watching. Still. No hard drive either. The processor and GPU specs don’t appear to be definite but it looks like it may be as good as the PS3 and Xbox (hardly next generation) – at least it’s HD now. It’s backwards compatible with the Wii but not the Gamecube. And that’s about it.
The controller, on the other hand, is huge. It’s not a small screen built in, but a large one. Quite how this is to be used I’m not sure – I’m not sure how you concentrate on a game on your main screen and look at this at the same time. It looks like a tablet and will probably feel heavy after a while. It does have a camera built-in though, so that could be interesting.
However, there’s not talk of the Wii U using a sensor bar so one of the revolutionary things about the Wii has been lost – indeed the controller doesn’t have a pointing device in it.
But here’s the big rub… you only get one controller with the Wii U and, because of the price of them, Nintendo say that they won’t be available to buy separately. I’m assuming Wii controllers are compatible, but where’s the fun of creating a new type of controller for a “family console” and restricting it to one each. Indeed, Microsoft Kinect in particular and Sony Play to a lesser extent are shifting away from the controllers and getting the console to do the work – that way you can have lots of people using it with a minimum of cost.
It will be out mid-2012. I’m not excited.
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