LEGO Friends

Genre: Misc.

Players: 1

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Review:

LEGO Friends, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013 and ported to mobile devices and Nintendo DS in 2014, is not a game based on the LEGO adaptation of the 90s New York sitcom of the same name. Rather, this is a videogame extension of LEGO’s line of products targeted to attract young female players.

The gameplay of this game asks the question, “Imagine if you took a typical LEGO game, removed all the combat, and removed all the puzzles. What would you have?”

The answer is fetch quests. Lots of fetch quests.

The presentation here is pretty poor, and I’m not just saying that because I’m not the target audience. The 3D environments are bland and the 3D characters look more stiff and lacking in personality than the standard LEGO figurines found in other videogames. Also, the voice acting is odd and surreal. This is not how people talk (no, not even young girls).

And as if it wasn’t bad enough that this is a game full of dull fetch quests, things are made even worse due to the dull pacing that keeps interrupting you with unskippable messages, which got so bad that I started to get tempted to set down my Nintendo 3DS and do something else while I waited for it to move on to the next thing.

Not all “girl games” are bad… but a lot of them are indeed very bad, and LEGO Friends is one of those bad games. The game can’t think of anything interesting for you to do, can’t display it in a way that’s fun and engaging, and can’t even be bothered to keep things moving at a decent pace. It’s like this game is trying to frustrate and bore you. Do yourself a favor and play something else instead.

tl;dr – LEGO Friends is a game that takes the standard LEGO game formula, gets rid of all of the action and puzzles, and just leaves tedious fetch quests. Then, it slows down the pacing to a crawl, and ensures that the presentation is awkward and off-putting. Go make friends with some other game, this game is most certainly not your friend.

Grade: D-

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