The LEGO Movie Videogame

Genre: 3D Action-Platformer

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

The LEGO Movie Videogame is a family-friendly 3D Action-Platformer released in 2014 on PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Wii U, with an entirely different game bearing the same title also coming to PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS in 2014, and then to mobile devices in 2015. As the title indicates, this game takes the usual Traveller’s Tales formula for making LEGO videogames and applies it to the videogame based on LEGO’s own major theatrical debut.

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”That’s My Jam”

In many ways, The LEGO Movie Videogame looks fantastic, with the game’s world looking just as detailed and full of life and personality as the film it’s based on. There are even nice little touches like explosions being made out of LEGO blocks. However, things here look just a bit too neat and tidy compared to the movie, which famously was designed to look like not only was everything made out of LEGO pieces, but those LEGO pieces had scratches and smudges you would expect from real-world use. In particular, the way the game animates is much the same as all other LEGO videogames, when the film made it a point to animate as if everything were a stop-motion animated film.

This is more noticeable due to the game making heavy use of video clips pulled directly from the film, and transitioning from one to the other just does not have anywhere near the sort of seamlessness that you would expect to find going from a computer-animated film designed to look like LEGO blocks to a computer-animated videogame designed to look like LEGO blocks. Often, even the lighting doesn’t look quite right. All of this is fine, it’s just a bit disappointing.

This “not quite right”-ness continues to the way this game sounds, with voice-alikes for all of the characters joining voiced film clips of those same characters. For the most part, these actors do a pretty good job imitating the likes of Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, and Will Ferrell, but occasionally you’ll hear a voice that’s just… off. But of course, it’s a fool’s errand to try to replace someone like Morgan Freeman. Meanwhile, the soundtrack makes heavy use of the film’s central song, “Everything Is Awesome”, but otherwise seems to stick with cheerful synthesized tunes that work well enough, but can seem out of place when put side-by-side film clips of the same scenes that use different music.

I feel like I’m being overly harsh about the presentation here – the game does look and sound great for a LEGO game, but I think that interspersing clips of the films in between the gameplay makes for an odd sorta’ Uncanny Valley situation here.

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Is Everything Awesome?

The gameplay here once again makes use of the standard Traveller’s Tales LEGO game formula, though this time around the Open-World elements are scaled back somewhat from other recent LEGO games. There are still smaller open areas throughout the game, but these seem like less of a focus, with the game instead seeming to focus on setpiece scenes to match the movie’s plot. Some of these can be quite fun, and break up the monotony of the gameplay pretty well. However, interspersing these with the Open World stuff can make for some odd moments of dissonance, such as one point early on where you’re in a chase scene literally called Escape From Bricksburg, and then once you succeed and escape Bricksburg, you find yourself walking around an open area between missions in… well, Bricksberg, again.

There are other fun little bits of creativity here and there as well, such as finding instruction book pages to build a specific structure, or Master Builders scanning nearby objects to look for parts to build some cool contraption. Again, these elements help to keep things interesting and varied.

Overall, I do think that LEGO Movie does itself a disservice by constantly pushing for players to directly compare the contents of the game to the film, and the downgrading of the Open World elements is a bit disappointing. However, this is still an enjoyable entry in the Traveller’s Tales LEGO franchise, and fans of LEGOs and especially the film will likely find this game to be well worth playing.

tl;dr – The LEGO Movie Videogame on Wii U takes Traveller’s Tales’ family-friendly LEGO game formula and uses it to create a videogame based on The LEGO Movie. This is a solid LEGO game, but I feel like it does itself a disservice by constantly inviting comparisons to the film, when doing so would undoubtedly lead to the game coming up short by comparison. Still, if you did enjoy the film, or LEGO in general, I think you’ll find this game to be a satisfying romp.

Grade: B-

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