Lego Star Wars dubbed ‘Lego May Cry’ as players continue to discover brutal new combos

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is out now and, video games being video games, the first thing people discovered was that you could take advantage of the fact that Lego kids are unbeatable. Not that anything dies in a Lego game, of course, they just turn into component bricks, but the fact that kids don’t even do that means players can use aerial combos to jump parts of the map (opens in new tab)a technique that has been dubbed “Child’s Flight.” (opens in new tab)

Lego Star Wars introduces a new combat system to the series that takes more than a few cues from classic action games and, in particular, Devil May Cry’s aerial combos. That is to say, you can stay in the air by delivering repeated blows – and if you can craft a specific sequence of hits, potentially create a loop that will keep you in the air and demolish anything.

This being a Lego game, and so comprehensive, it also includes a metric ton of Star Wars characters you can play with. Child Flight’s exploration was noticed by a Red Orb, which continues to experiment with different characters’ air combo strings and produce surprising results. Take Queen Padmé, for example:

And now for a somewhat cursed phrase: Here’s the Jar Jar technology.

Sorry, do you want more Jar Jar technology? Will you cry?

The above user, Revoltell, has been testing the system more extensively and writes (opens in new tab): “You can use Qui-gonn’s Dive Kick at the opposite angle to have reverse magnetism and kick forward while bringing enemies towards you, and shift laterally when storing strength skills. This game is actually just DMC with a skin of Star Wars.”

All it needed, of course, was the Devil May Cry overlay and soundtrack:

This… I don’t even know how this is a Lego game.

Finally: a true non-blockable reset technology from General Grievous.

Expect that from a Lego Star Wars game, I didn’t.

A strange bit of context for this is that in January of this year, a polygon report (opens in new tab) highlighted issues of tightness and disagreement among staff on the project. One of the ‘issues’ was combat overhauls, including a 27-hit combat tree, which was apparently removed after focus tests showed users were only using one button to fight.

“The director would request new mechanics on a whim, then ask for them to be changed, without ever fixing anything that really mattered,” the director said. a former employee said at the time (opens in new tab). “Read every review of a Lego game. They always say the same [things]: ‘Platform is pants, camera is terrible, no online co-op.’ So let’s add a God of War style combat tree! Five year olds will love it.”

Game development really is a strange beast. Who knows what five-year-olds think of Jar Jar combing Anakain across a big gap, but big kids seem to love it.