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Review: LEGO Worlds

Legos, the company, is a lot like Amazon. They're known for one thing, but secretly they're both trying to take over the world. I think this dawned on me while out Christmas shopping one year and came across a Lego Minecraft Lego set. This was before Amazon made it possible to never have to see the sun anymore (take that, melanoma!). I stared at the set thinking you now had a physical version of the game that seemed to be loosely based on the brickks themselves. It wasn't quite brick-ception, but it was close.

Protect the brand, in case someone thought this was Mega Bloks Worlds or something.

Over the past couple of years, Lego has gone way beyond Batman, Star Wars, and the like with its all encompassing Lego Dimensions game. But again, that wasn't enough and so recently Lego has released Lego Worlds, where you can visit an infinite number of worlds, explore them, gather stuff, and theoretically share your discoveries with your friends online. Since this sounds way too much like the Lego version of No Man's Sky, I decided I would delegate the review of this game to my kids. You should have seen their faces light up when I told them I wanted them to play a new Lego game. It was the stuff of dreams they thought. Those smiling faces turned to scorn once they discovered there would be homework. I know, I'll be shocked if I don't win Father of the Year.

Overview

Lego Worlds is an open sandbox type game that lets you explore an almost limitless number of worlds in their galaxy. You can play by yourself or coach co-op via splitscreen mode. Even in two player mode, you have to share a spaceship and that means both players are confined to the same world at the same time. If you've played a Lego game in the last ten years or so, you should feel pretty much at home with the controls, look, often wonky camera, and Tt game's writers odd sense of humor. From what I gather as I watched my kids play it, you have to complete mini quests on worlds to get gold lego bricks. Sometimes you could find treasure chests that would give you gold bricks or other rewards. These gold bricks upgrade your abilities. You can use these abilities to change the planet's environment however you want. Also, you can interact with the planet's inhabitants in various ways, some of which may be hostile. Finally, you also can change your appearance as you progress though the game. My personal favorite thing about the game was actually the loading screen between worlds. It was packed with what seemed like hundreds of various sayings.

But let's see how my kids reviewed the game that they spent nearly a week playing. I'll ask the questions and I have edited their responses for spelling and clarity. Also, during the week an update for the game was released that may have fixed some of the bugs that the kids encountered.

What did you like best about Lego Worlds?

Agent S: I liked the freeness. How you could literally do whatever you wanted. Ride on an octopus, complete quests, search for chests, or find different worlds.

Agent J: I liked the different tools. Also, I liked how each world had different vehicles that you could get, or the cool chests with other things in them.

Agent X: I liked exploring the different worlds and the different items you can get.

What didn't you like about Lego Worlds?

Agent S: As with all Lego games the camera movement was too free. It needed a place to stop and it didn't. That and the more bricks you got the more it seemed to crash.

Agent J: I didn't like the glitches and how when you started you could only operate PUG-Z [the rocketship you start with]. I didn't like the golden heart trolls that I tried to kill.

Agent X: I didn't like the caves because I would get stuck and couldn't get out to get back to where I came from.

Was it fun? What was fun about it?

Agent S: It was definitely fun. The funniness(sp) of it all. The [speech] bubbles of the ship. The way certain characters acted in different situations. The random animals that you can ride is always fun as well.

Agent J: It was fun. It was very fun exploring the different worlds and finding different characters.

Agent X: Yes it was fun. What was fun was all the things the rocket said like "squashing carrots" or "launching cows". I liked the animals that you could ride. They were really fun.

[Editor's Note: Agent J didn't see there was another page of questions or just decided not to answer them. He had to do extra chores as a result]

What would say the point of the game is? In other words, how would you describe the game to a friend?

Agent S: I would describe it as a game that is trying to be different. You don't just start out being able to create what you want. You have to work for it.

Agent X: The point of the game is to become a master builder and to create your own world where put whatever you want, wherever you want it.

If you have to choose between Lego Worlds and Minecraft, which would you choose and why?

Agent S: I would choose Lego Worlds, because it is so much more fun. Much more to do, more to explore.

Agent X: One that one I would choose Lego Worlds because it is a little more reliable than Minecraft is with crashing and better speed.

[Editor's Note: We have Minecraft on the PS3 and it does have some reliability and crashing issues on that system]

Is the game good enough to try and convince Mom to buy it. Why or why not?

Agent S: I don't know. I would think so. Mainly because it's fun for everybody to play and watch.

Agent X: Yes because it's not like a violent game, and it's meant for kids. It can be for adults if they like it a lot because you can build or copy things.

A few observations that I noticed. Tt Games has been making Lego games for close to fifteen years now. You'd think that would be long enough for them to fix the camera issues that seem to plague almost every Lego game they've ever made. Also, the voice narration and writing is top notch. Unfortunately, the game engine sometimes likes to repeat it, over and over and over. During one gameplay session, the game repeated the same voice line five times back to back. Hopefully, they will patch it. Otherwise, the voice over will become the game's biggest annoyance. Still, one of the best parts of almost every Lego game is its writing and humor and this game is no different. There's just a level of playfulness in everything the characters do and encounter that you always find in Lego games.

As I mentioned above as an interesting bit about the game is that as you progress, you would get additional builder tools. You could use those tools to build your world, or as my kids discovered, you could use those tools to essentially raze the world looking for chests, which contained all kinds of various in-game loot.

You'll notice that my kids all thought the game was worth buying. It's been about two weeks since they played it and they haven't been asking about it since. In fact, Agent S has been doing all of the spring cleaning and extra chores to earn up enough to buy Breath of the Wild and really hasn't mentioned Lego Worlds at all. This afternoon they all played Minecraft together and I still didn't hear a "You know. Lego Worlds was better" or "I miss playing Lego Worlds". I'll have to say the enthusiam to play the game and to want to buy it may have been some excitement that quickly disappeared with the game. Still, they did enjoy playing it, but that was before they knew there would be homework as I wanted to get their unbiased opinions.

Finally, as I watched them play, I couldn't help but think about how much it reminded me of both Minecraft and No Man's Sky. It has the building and creation aspects of Minecraft and the world travelling and exploration pieces of No Man's Sky. But even still, as a game, it still seems to lack a purpose. You can explore other Worlds, you can ride vehicles and creatures, and you can build things, but the game never quite gets to the part of explaining why you want to do those things or even why it might be important. You're not there to save the galaxy, or survive, or anything. In that sense, it really is a sandbox game, where you can go and play and your imagination is the limit. Like Sandboxes, it is also easy to outgrow. As of this writing, Lego Worlds is retailing for $19.99 on Amazon for both PS4 and Xbox One. It's ten cents more for PC strangely enough. So if you want something you can let your kids play safely and should keep them occupied for a while, this may be the game for you. However, if you already have Minecraft or Terreria or even Lego Dimensions, you probably already have something similar. Kind of like a Lego Minecraft Lego set.

The Verdict

6.5 Okay

The Good

  • Lots to explore
  • Plenty of Lego humor
  • Build what you want, where you want
  • Family Friendly
  • 2 player split-screen

The Bad

  • Camera Misbehaves
  • Voice narration gets stuck on repeat
  • With right tools, exploration no longer needed
  • Game lacks a reason to want to play it.

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