LEGO Dimensions: What’s the deal with all the add-on packs?

I like LEGO Dimensions, which feels slightly strange to say considering I wasn’t bothered about it about two weeks ago. But the Starter Pack, with its included toys and all the content it offers, won me over. The problem for you, and your wallet, is that this is just the start: there are numerous Level Packs, Fun Packs and Team Packs already on store shelves. And if you’ve handed over £80 or more to get going with LEGO Dimensions, chances are you’re in it for the long, expensive haul. But is it any good and do you need all of it?

To answer the final question first, you kind of need an awful lot of it if you’re going to see every inch of LEGO Dimensions. While many of the gated areas require you own a character with a certain ability (shooting a laser beam for example, can be done with Superman, Cyborg and others), there are areas that ask for specific characters. Unikitty from the LEGO movie, for example, is the only character that can get through rainbow bricks, while you’ll need Aquaman to summon the power of Atlantis.

These two characters are also only available in Fun Packs, containing a single character and a vehicle, so if you’ve already bought packs that contain characters who offer similar skillsets, what they bring to the game is naturally lessened. Considering the exploration worlds for the DC comics and the LEGO Movie are already unlocked in the Starter Pack, you will mostly be buying for completionist’s sake – not a bad thing if you’re into that, but I’m not overly keen on single character specific unlocks. (I should note that while I’m 99 per cent confident that this is how it works, I may be entirely wrong. You essentially have to be Egon Spengler to figure out exactly which characters you need to buy in order to see everything the game has to offer – which itself is an issue as most of us share more similarities with Slimer).

On to the additional content itself then, and it’s pretty much all great, but a tad costly until you explore everything the packs unlock. Level packs – for Portal, Back to the Future, and The Simpsons – give you access to brand new story-based campaigns in each world, albeit fairly short ones that are similar to each chapter in the Starter Pack. To build the toys and play through the story you’re looking at about two hours. That doesn’t seem like much (and it isn’t, even if the quality is very high), but each pack also gives you access to the open-world zone for the character.

These mini worlds to explore and complete quests in are excellent, adding hours of gameplay to each Level Pack purchase. You’ll also unlock these mini areas the first time you buy a character from any of the other dimensions, so even though the Fun Packs and Team Packs don’t include story DLC, they do bring plenty of content. You obviously also get to go into all the story levels and gain access to areas previously locked off to the three starter characters, which will add a ton of game time if you want to collect everything.

I’ve said it a few times, but it’s worth stressing that you’re actually buying LEGO with each pack. While the toys for Disney Infinity and Skylanders are nicely made, they can’t compare to getting LEGO bricks and pieces that you need to put together. The builds don’t take long, but it somehow adds so much to the overall experience. I’m simply more attached to my LEGO figures, the Portal turret, Homer’s car and the rest. I like seeing them on the game’s portal board. I like rebuilding the vehicles into different forms. I like LEGO and until Dimensions I really didn’t care about it much at all.

If you’ve bought LEGO Dimensions you’re already on the road to financial ruin, but the good news is that most your early additional purchases will give you a solid chunk of new stuff to check out. After that you’ll be buying primarily to collect everything, both in-game and for your display cabinet. Thankfully the quality of content is high across the board and the real LEGO toys makes the pricing that bit easier to swallow.