It was no surprise that after the success of the original game that The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame was produced to coincide with the release of the new movie. Emmett and Lucy are back to take on an army of DUPLO. However you’ll quickly discover the game only loosely ties in with the film, apart from the odd sound byte from Lucy the two main characters don’t actually have voices. This was picked up by my kids straight away, thankfully it didn’t spoil their enjoyment.
As you would expect TT Games have managed to improve upon a winning formula by introducing a LEGO World style action game, each world you discover has a set of main missions to complete and a boss to kill before you can begin to explore a bit more. The missions themselves are fairly entertaining and revolve around building items to help you move on, such as a launch pad to help you move to a higher level or a generator to power a building. Missions don’t require you to fill a stud meter this time round either, instead you’ll collect resources that can be used to build the various items you need.
The boss fights are multi layered too, you’ll have to use some puzzle solving skills to defeat some of them. Before you can move on to other worlds you’ll need to find purple bricks which will then grant you access, again it very similar to LEGO Worlds.
As you can imagine there is quite a bit to discover, with hundreds of items that you can build and use within the game, but thankfully TT Games have kept the menu system fairly simple, giving you quick access to all the items you will need.
You’ll discover a growing number of tools as you play, there is a rather fetching pair of power gloves that can smash through big bits of scenery, item scanners that help you discover new builds and you can even paint structures whichever colour you desire.
Relics unlock characters, items, vehicles, and buildings and they are all unlocked via chests that are dotted around the different hubs. They are easy to find but an utter pain to redeem, it’s all just really slow makes things very laborious. Each chest needs to be redeemed at the shop within the hub you are in, the trouble is you have to spend time looking at each one as you unlock them, increasing the boredom levels.
Every time you end up with duplicates they are turned into shards which can be used on Mega Relics which guarantee you with items you don’t have. The other good news is that there are no signs of Microtransactions.
The game feels slow, moving across the world take much longer than it should and a lot of the time you’ll discover that the world have huge empty space with nothing going on, which is even more frustrating when you realise how long the game takes to load. Despite the load times the game performs pretty well on the Xbox One X and generally looks fantastic.
It’s a shame that the game didn’t make the effort with things like the voice acting, as it would have made a big difference to the game and certainly the enjoyment children will get from it. Mine mentioned it on more than once occasion.
Thankfully there is enough things to do in the game that took their minds away from it. When you are done with the main planets you should go and discover some of the world’s that have been recreated from the first game, it’s also worth checking out a special world called Syspocalypstar, where you are free to build whatever you like, when my boys discovered this they rarely went back to the main game.
After the huge amount of fun we had in the original game The LEGO Movie 2 videogame is a bit of a disappointment, it just doesn’t have the charm the first game gave us, however there are some nice ideas and it will be a good distraction during the upcoming Easter Holidays.
Thanks to Warner Bros. for providing us with a review code for the game.
The LEGO Movie 2 videogame
Pros
- Lots to keep the family entertained
- Planets are interesting to explore
Cons
- Lack of voice acting is a shame
- Slow pace spoils the fun
