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Our next podcast recording (15.1.22): The Traveller's Tales/TT Games LEGO series (Patreon)

Published:
2022-01-10 15:15:49
Edited:
2022-01-10 15:21:08
Imported:
2022-01

Content

Please leave your opinions and experiences of any of the many, many LEGO titles - specifically those developed by TT Games - from Lego Star Wars: The Video Game (2005), all the way through to The Lego Movie 2 Videogame (2019).

Comments

Alex79

I can't pretend I've not played dozens of Lego games over the years, and they've played a formative role in introducing my children to video games, but can I honestly say I've ever enjoyed them? Not really. They're, at best, *ok*. I think there is a bit of a fallacy in people describing them as good games for children. The puzzles are often obtuse to the point where I've needed to look at guides and walkthroughs, and my children have just become frustrated wandering around not knowing what to do or where to go next. This is especially bad in the later, more open games. I think there's a lot to like - the addition of voice acting brought genuine humour, and it's always nice seeing Lego versions of your favourite characters. But I think the gameplay is generally quite boring, combat and exploration just about scraping by as passable, and I think the games have terrible signposting. A specific example of everything I think is wrong with these games is The Hobbit. Progress is frequently gatekept by irritatingly forced collection of parts to move on, and you never have a clear idea of where you should be heading next. I understand how loved these games are, but I'm really not a big fan, however I remain thankful that they've provided at least some kind of fun to share with my children.

Dave Roberts

The first one of these I played as a grown man was Lego Star Wars while I was in the apple store one afternoon. For some reason I hated it because it was too difficult, i suspect i was so appallingly hungover that I couldn’t muster the brain power of a 7 year old. I rediscovered them when I got my vita and while travelling to and around China I played through LOTR and Harry Potter. I did this not because they were fun (which they kind of were), but because they haemorrhaged Platinum trophies like nothing else. It became obvious after a while that I enjoyed them more when I loved the IP they were based on, and they seemed patronisingly repetitive otherwise. This made them a kind of dam in the river of movie tie-in games, where they fulfilled the “while i’m in the mood” role perfectly. They were funny and fan servicey and the clickity-click of lego pieces being collected was even more of an addictive audio cue than the ratchet and clank equivalent. I do think the Lego brand of comedy had the Charlie Chaplin issue where the jokes failed to land a lot more once they started using “voice acting” (though it was more like an attempt at a Cassetteboy video game). When I returned to N.Ireland and I was reviewing games regularly, I was given review copies of the Jurassic Park and Avengers and was thoroughly impressed by the consistency, evolution, and scope since the early days. Unfortunately now my relationship with them has become “why would i play that when i could be playing something else”. They are good but they are not good enough, but if i had kids (or if i was still teaching and left unsupervised) I would definitely encourage them to play the Lego games.

James Bridcut

Long time fan, first time podcast comment contributer The Lego games; A seemingly never-ending franchise that can simultaneously offer pure joy and utter frustration in equal measure. From their amusing re-imagining of well known cinematic scenes, deep pool of unlockable characters to its charming aesthetic and relaxing (albeit sometimes repetitive) gameplay I, along with my son, have spent HUNDREDS of enjoyable hours on these games. However, the experience can be soured by bugs, crashes, the occasional horrid controls (FLYING RACES!) and the developers seemingly unnecessary need (in recent years) to overhaul the games UI and structure with each successive iteration. All that said, there are very few games than offer this type of co-op experience and (mostly!) stress free gaming that can be enjoyed by the entire family. Here's hoping they can distill all the best bits from the previous entries and deliver the ultimate lego game experience with the much delayed upcoming Star Wars Saga. PS. Keep up the excellent work. Your podcast has been a constant beckon of light in what has been, lets be fair, a pretty crappy 18/24 months!

Alex79

Good point re: the bugs. The Switch ports especially, of which we own a few, are really quite unstable, and coupled with the awfully long load times can lead to quite some frustration!

James Bridcut

Totally agree! Lego City Undercover on the Wii U had painful load times....

Ashton Herrmann

My first ever experience with one of the LEGO games in this series came in the form of a brief session of LEGO Star Wars for the Wii with my wife's very young cousin. I was a young man, maybe 24 years old, and for the first time in my life, I legitimately felt like I could not understand, visually, what was happening on the screen. My coop partner was breaking down things and building others, swapping between characters to solve puzzles, and basically carrying us through the whole game. I, on the other hand, was hopelessly lost. Everything on the screen looked bland and, uh, well, blocky. I honestly don't know if I could have acclimated to the game's aesthetic with more exposure, but I didn't play another LEGO game for years, convinced that they simply weren't from me. Fast forward nearly a full decade into the future, and my daughter gets a copy of Lego Jurassic World on the Switch from a friend for her birthday. She pops it in and falls instantly in love with not only the game, but with Jurassic Park as well. We went on to watch all 5 current movies afterwards. She and her sisters had so much fun playing it, that I ended up buying the Lego LOTR game and playing through the entire thing with them myself. I appreciate the sense of humor the games have as well as their unique ability to immerse players into a cinematic world without ever taking themselves too seriously. And they offered a fun way to ease my girls into some scarier, more intense movies. As we watched Jurassic Park, my kids would call out all their favorite characters and all the ways the movies were different from the games. Unfortunately, both games seemed prone to some frustrating technical hangups. LEGO Jurassic World completely erased my daughter's save file at one point, and she was forced to start over from the very beginning. LEGO LOTR soft locked on us multiple times, and I had to look up or devise workarounds each time in order to progress, often by messing with frame rates or cautioning my kids not to attack certain opponents at certain times. The most spectacular bug we ever encountered happened to me as I was battling a Mumakil/Oliphant in LEGO LOTR. The massive pachyderm stomped on me and sent me flying so high into the air, it made Skyrim's mammoth physics look realistic. After several moments of vertical flight, the battlefield of Minas Tirith little more than a point of light beneath my feet, I returned from orbit and landed without even a single lost heart. My daughters and I were all in hysterics by this point. Even still, these games are great, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming Skywalker Saga release.

Veronica Jane

Oh lord, I'd forgotten how often I had to reset Lego LOTR because it had frozen for the third time that play session

Broken Circus

Probably a bit late with this one, but here we go nonetheless. Lego Star Wars on the PS2 was the first game I ever 100%-ed. I recall it being an enjoyable experience at the time, and I remember wanting more when I was done collecting Minikits and attaining True Jedi status on each level. Since then, I've dipped in and out of the TT Lego series. I got LSW2 and the Complete Saga when they were released, as well as Indiana Jones, and while I didn't 100% them, I definitely got my fair share of playtime out of each. I also played Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter at friends' houses, although by that point I felt like the format was getting a bit stale. Lego City Undercover did a lot to shake it up, and I loved that game to bits as a result. It's one of the rare open world games that I stuck to until the end and that I want to go back to and 100% sometime. Most recently, I 100%-ed the Complete Saga...and realised why I never did it back in the day. What a slog! It's a fun game, but I had definitely had my fill and then some by the end. The trouble I have is that, for better or worse, all the TT Lego games are very formulaic. I can't really speak to the later ones - Undercover does things differently enough that it feels like a step forward, but even then, when I was playing it I recognised a lot of the tropes from Lego Star Wars. As such, whenever I play them, I long for the days of classic Lego games; which, while the quality was certainly variable, they were at least unique and were willing to be "out there" in terms of design. The TT games feel a bit too safe in comparison. Having said all that, I have fun with them, and that's what matters. In closing, I'll just say this: drop the voice acting, bring back the pantomime!