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I should have watched the movie first. The game has given me plenty of laughs, but I’ve since come to realize that I’ve now ruined all of the best jokes from the film and this tie-in hasn’t really tried anything new. Not the most surprising crime for a game entitled ‘The Lego Movie Videogame’, but there we are.
You’ve got the same brick-smashing, character-collecting gameplay that you’ll have been expecting, wrapped around a 90-minute movie script. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (depending on your feelings towards the brick smashing bit), but I regret not experiencing the laughs on the big screen first, with the intended pacing.
It’s not all doom and gloom; in fact it’s a wonderfully colourful game to play though. At times you may even regret breaking absolutely everything that you encounter into little plastic pieces. Each new area draws inspiration from Lego sets old and new, and whereas the opening town of ‘Bricksburg’ may seem a bit mundane (that’s sort of the point), you’ll soon be venturing into the sublime and the nonsensical. Playable characters are equally varied, giving the player the option to control Batman, or you know… a rainbow-spewing kitten unicorn.
The Lego Movie’s main problem is its origin. Whereas past movie tie-ins have gleefully poked fun at their source material, adapting Hogwarts, Middle-Earth, or Gotham (among others) to fit the Lego universe, this game isn’t given that opportunity, and is poorer for it. Using clips from the film during cutscenes and rarely making its own gags, I’m reminded that I don’t play the Lego games for their simplistic gameplay, which predictably hasn’t changed here.
Instead, I play them to see other, famous worlds reimagined with that Lego magic. There’s nothing wrong with The Lego Movie Videogame, but it just doesn’t have the same appeal as other entries in the series.
Version Tested: PS4. Played for 7 hours.
