LEGO Star Wars: The New Yoda Chronicles: Review (aka Yoda II)

     After playing the turly awful LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles, I had been extremely skeptical about the follow up LEGO Star Wars: The NEW Yoda Chronicles, also known as Yoda II.  Much to my surprise, developers The LEGO Group had taken it in a much better direction.
     Gone are the mobile RTS levels and in their place are 3 types of perpetual-runner type levels.  After choosing to side with either Jedi Master Yoda or Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader (the only real differences are cosmetic), players take up missions to collect Holocrons through various falling, running, and flying levels.
     The first type is actually the worst of the bunch.  You begin with a character in free fall, and have to avoid various objects in your path, collecting health and holocrons along the way.  The controls for these levels are downright horrendous and irritatingly unresponsive.  Even at their best they are clunky and aggravating.

     Next up are the running levels.  Players are hurried along paths on various planets and can shuffle side to side, jump over holes or gaps, and attack enemies and obstacles that appear.  Not a whole lot, but they are short and fun while collecting those plentiful Holocrons.

     Lastly, and easily the best and most fun, are the flight levels.  These have players flying around in vehicles in a 3D area shooting enemy ships and collecting the Holocrons that spill out.  The graphics are great, the flight controls can a little restrictive, but also very well done considering this is essentially a pocket-sized space flight simulation.  What surprised me about these levels is how great a delight they were to play.  Honestly, if this game was only the flight levels it may have been a much bigger hit.

     In the time I've been playing this, they've added 2 new ship type levels and 4 new character levels.  Just enough to keep players interest going.  LEGO Star Wars: The New Yoda Chronicles is far better than the first game, and is really worth playing just for the space battle levels alone.  The game has great graphics, clean and crisp sound effects, and is an all around decent free game with no pesky ads interfering with your play.  It may not be the best game for replayability, or most imaginative use of either the Star Wars or LEGO video game franchises, but it will afford you an enjoyable way to eat up some nice 5 minute periods of time.