The popular line of LEGO toys have always been about building, creativity, and discovery.  The LEGO video games, while great, have kind of evolved into games about silly takes on movies and TV shows, and don’t offer much in the way of creativity and imagination.  Sure they’ve branched out more into the toy realm with games like LEGO Dimensions.  And for a while, a couple of the LEGO movie games had simple and limited level editing tools.  But they were rather clunky so that’s why you probably don’t see them anymore.  But now there is a game focused on building and creativity with LEGO Worlds.  It’s available on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

Many have said that LEGO Worlds is like LEGO Minecraft, but after playing it, I’d have to say it’s more like the Toy Box from the Disney Infinity games.  To me, Dragon Quest Builders was more like Minecraft, while this is like the Toy Box with LEGO game controls.  Your goal is to become a Master Builder by collecting gold bricks, and you do this by taking on quests from the LEGO people in each world.

The first couple of worlds you start out in act as a tutorial, showing you all the items and how to use them.  Most of the items you get are like guns that shoot out or suck in LEGOs.  You’ll get a copy gun that you can use to copy LEGO structures and place them anywhere you want.  If you get a structure from an existing LEGO toy set, they’ll even tell you what series it’s from, like LEGO City or LEGO Pirates.  Other building tools include a gun that places or takes away large areas of bricks, a tool for raising and lowering the terrain, a gun for painting the environment, and you can even build block by block, piece by piece if you want more accuracy in your creations.  They do a great job of showing you how to use the tools in the game, and even I could figure it out, so you know it has to be easy.  Building LEGOs in this game kind of reminded me of how you do it in Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

Once you pass the tutorials, you are free to do whatever you want.  You can travel to more worlds to take on quests for gold bricks, or just have fun building things.  The worlds you visit will be randomly generated, but they’ll have a theme, like a land made of candy or a junkyard.  The more gold bricks you have, the more worlds you can visit.  In each world are LEGO people for you to talk to, and some have quests for you to perform.  They may want you to get them a certain item, build a certain structure, or paint something for them.  When you finish the task, they may give you LEGO studs (currency), items, or precious gold bricks!  Sometimes you must chase down monsters that are holding these items, or they may even have special building bricks, too!  You can play all these parts with one player, two player local, or even online!

LEGO Worlds does have a few problems, though.  Most of the tasks you must do are fetch quests, and they can get tiresome after a while.  And a lot of times you never know what your reward will be, so it can be frustrating to finish a long quest only to get studs rather than a gold brick.  Some of the goals are a bit unclear, too, and sometimes text bubbles are hidden behind blocks, so you can’t even read what they want you to do!  Finally, sometimes loading random worlds can take FOREVER!  But even with those problems, this is still a fun and creative little LEGO game that fans of Disney Infinity’s Toy Box will enjoy.

Kid Factor:

LEGO Worlds is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Cartoon Violence.  You can punch, kick, and shoot enemies that break apart when defeated, so it’s no more violent than any other LEGO game.  Reading skill is needed for the text, and while the building tools are easy to use, very young gamers may still need help with the more precise controls.  Parental supervision is recommended for the online features and in-game store, but it seems the makers of this game have tried to make it as family-friendly as possible.  Since you can play with two players, it’s a great title for the whole family and can even be considered somewhat educational with the focus on creativity.

Tags: Game Reviews