LEGO Dimensions

Genre: 3D Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Note: Are you confused by all this “Toys to Life” stuff? Check out eShopperReviews’ helpful guide here!

LEGO Dimensions is a family-friendly 3D Action-Platformer released in 2015 on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Wii U. This is a “Toys to Life” game that reads special LEGO Dimension discs attached to LEGO characters and uses that to enable players to bring different characters, vehicles, levels, and even new story campaigns into the game. Much like Amiibos, LEGO Infinity discs have NFC chips in the disc, which can be read by a “Portal” device that connects to your Wii U via a USB port.

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Getting Started

For those wondering about what additional toys/gadgets/doodads you’ll need to get to enjoy this game, know that in order to play this game, you need to get a compatible LEGO Infinity portal. This includes portals made for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 platforms (not the Xbox 360 or Xbox One platforms though – those won’t work).

You will also need at least the figurines (or rather, the discs they stand on) that were included in the Starter Pack – Batman, Gandalf, Wildstyle, and the Batmobile. Other LEGO Dimensions figurines add various content to the game, and allow players to access optional areas in the game, but those four figurines are the only ones required for the main game.

Also, know that before you start the game, you will need to load everything – the game requires players to download updates to play much of the expansion content even if you have the figurines. This can be very time-consuming, and will require roughly 15GB of space.

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Taking LEGO Videogames to a New Dimension?

Players with some familiarity with the LEGO games will have some idea what to expect from the presentation here. The game uses 3D characters and environments, with all characters and some environmental elements being made out of the blocky LEGO bricks and figurines. There are some nice effects for some characters’ abilities, and it can be satisfying to see destructible elements of the environment break apart into pieces, though they disappear shortly afterward. There are even some nice touches, such as Wyldstyle having an exaggerated animation style designed to imitate stop-motion animation, much as she appears in The LEGO Movie.

This game also makes heavy use of both musical themes and character voices from the many franchises included within it, with voice work here partly done by the original actors, partly by voice-alike, and partly by archival recordings. For example, Elizabeth Banks reprises her role as Wyldstyle from The LEGO Movie, and Dan Castellaneta reprises his role as Homer Simpson, but Gandalf is portrayed by voice-alike Tom Kane, and Ethan Hunt is portrayed by archival voice clips of Tom Cruise from the Mission: Impossible movies. It’s an eclectic mix, but given the cost it would take to hire some of these actors, and given that many of these characters were portrayed by actors who have since passed, this sort of patchwork voice acting is understandable.

Less understandable are the odd performance issues this game has, including framerate drops and stuttering, as well as some bizarre sound issues – namely, sometimes the sound is oddly muffled. Since this isn’t exactly a massive undertaking going on in this game, these technical issues are both perplexing and disappointing.

One more element I should mention here is the game’s story, which does a wonderful job of combining these characters from different universes in amusing situations, such as Batman instantly concluding that Wizard of Oz’s Scarecrow is a villain behind the current situation (since Batman has of course had some bad experiences with his own Scarecrow). This was one of the biggest highlights of the game, in my opinion.

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Piecing Together the Same Old Gameplay?

Despite its multiple-world premise and the massive crossover potential present here, the core gameplay itself will be very, very familiar to anyone who’s ever played one of the many LEGO games over the years. It’s a kind of family-friendly 3D Action-Platformer with very light puzzle elements. Players swap between different characters, some of which have unique abilities, or at least abilities shared between only a few select characters. As you progress, you’ll encounter obstacles that require a specific ability to progress, so switching back and forth between characters is vital.

One new element this game adds makes use of the different areas on the portal – there is a central circle area, a larger left area and a matching right area. As you play the game, you will sometimes need to move a character’s figurine from one of these areas to another. This is a bit gimmicky, and while it’s amusing at first, it quickly becomes cumbersome when you get to a boss or area that repeatedly wants to move these things around.

Another frustrating element is that areas blocked off unless you have a certain type of character can themselves have areas blocked off unless you have another character. It seems kinda’ sleazy, and it’s really frustrating to reach into your collection to use a different character to access a new area, only to find you can’t make headway in that area because you need another character you don’t have.

It’s hard to play through this game’s frustrations without your mind drifting to how other LEGO games handle this character-specific ability stuff… where you just select the character out of an in-game menu after you’ve acquired them. Because of this, if you’ve already played a LEGO game before, LEGO Dimensions seems frustrating and inconvenient by comparison, rather than empowering and world-expanding like I’m sure the game’s creators wanted it to be.

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Like Stepping on a LEGO Brick

LEGO Dimensions should have been an easy recipe for success. What better franchise for the Toys to Life craze than the LEGO toys that players already love? And what better way to add an extra enticement than to promise the blending of various worlds, where you can have Harry Potter meet Marty McFly, have Batman team up with Scooby-Doo, and have the Ghostbusters taking a ride in Kitt from Knight Rider? Unfortunately, this game adds layers of frustration and inconvenience on top of the already-stale formula that LEGO games had been in for years, and doesn’t add much that truly makes it feel like the Toys to Life thing actually adds to the formula (beyond adding a lot of expensive toys you need to buy to access everything in the game). On top of this, the technical issues and the need to frontload a lot of downloading to get the game to recognize the toys you already bought… in the end, the result feels like so much wasted potential.

But at the very least, the LEGO toys themselves are still really cool…

tl;dr – LEGO Dimensions is a 3D Action-Platformer that takes the standard Lego game formula and adds in the Toys to Life formula, giving players the ability to bring in characters from all sorts of various worlds (well, in Lego form, at least). Unfortunately, the Toys to Life elements add little to the game, the LEGO gameplay feels pretty stale here, and there are a number of technical issues and annoyances that make this game seem more frustrating to play than the average LEGO game. If you love LEGOs and dream of seeing these various universes collide, you’ll still likely get some thrill out of all of this, but that thrill will be tempered by the game constantly disappointing you with its problems.

Grade: C-

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