Developed by TT Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, LEGO Worlds is available to own now on STEAM, Xbox One, Playstation 4 and will be available for the Nintendo Switch later in 2017.
In LEGO Worlds, players embark on a creative adventure to become a Master Builder and uncover hidden treasures in environments that range from fun to the fantastical, where worlds come to life with a dizzying variety of vehicles and creatures – from gingerbread men riding elephants to cavewomen scaring polar bears, to swamp police helicopters, hot air balloons and arctic snow scooters. Gamers can embark on a quest to become a Master Builder by helping other LEGO characters along the way – find a sword for an Egyptian Queen, protect a fisherman from a giant troll invasion, or build a home for a cyclops.
I have never played Minecraft. Ever. I have however played some of the LEGO games that have been coming out the past few years, including LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Batman etc. I knew that LEGO Worlds was NOT going to follow the same formula of past LEGO franchise tie-ins and instead it would be going for all-out customisation, gigantic sandbox style worlds and insane random gameplay… I don’t think I was prepared however for the extent of that drastic shift in style (again – never played Minecraft). Maybe I needed more direction, but I started to get lost after 2 hours playing LEGO Worlds with my kids (ages six and seven).
While I was personally frustrated at some of the progression slow-down, my kids could not have given less of a shit. They were in their glory playing LEGO Worlds and were happy as hell playing some same console 2-player CO-OP (you can also play 2 player online). My daughter had trapped my son in a pit she had made in the ground and proceeded to blast snakes, pigs and skeleton monsters on top him in something that looked like Indiana Jones meets Monty Python. They were having a riot just creating random buildings, changing the landscape and generating a plethora of ridiculous LEGO animals and creatures.
LEGO Worlds starts off with a spaceman (or woman) landing on a strange planet where a fantastic narrator begins to explain the “very few” rules of the game. You get various god-like tools which can be used to change the worlds you visit, build whatever you can literally imagine and complete various mini-quests in order to be awarded golden bricks which level you up and let you visit larger and newer worlds to mess around in. LEGO Worlds is literally that – a gigantic universe loaded with various planets that you can explore and customise to your heart’s desire. Ride an octopus, fight a Mixel (yes the crazy Mixels are in this thing – which is amazing), change your character to look like a half orc, skeleton wearing a Santa Hat – doesn’t matter. Just – have fun. There is no storyline other than – get gold bricks and explore every single area of every world you visit in order to unlock new creatures, buildings and bricks used to create your own stuff.
The game was available on PC before being ported to home consoles and people seemed to think that it was made for controller-play, but I had some issues with the complexities of building more intricate designs using my XBox One gamepad. While trying to build a simple set of stairs to help rescue a caveman stranded on a cliff, I accidentally sent him to the depths of LEGO Hell and had to tunnel him out of some weird abyss that I had put this moron in. The tasks may be easy for the most part, but executing them can be a sharp learning curve if you aren’t used to sandbox titles like Minecraft which require building/adjusting the landscape all the time. I also didn’t like how the Y button was mapped to riding animals/vehicles but if held longer, opens the tool menu so you can equip the various build tools. Having the same button do drastically different things can be a pain when you’re trying to evade a troll or shark that is about to kill you because you accidentally threw a spider or chicken at its face.
The different worlds you explore all look unique and gorgeous on the Xbox One, hell the graphics are incredible and I think the best that a LEGO game has ever been to date. Diving into the various planets and roaming the strange worlds is breathtaking, but be prepared to scan the shit out of EVERYTHING you encounter for the first few hours, otherwise you won’t be able to build that stuff on a whim until you first see it, or accomplish a mini-quest with that character. I got super pissed off getting stuck on some odd lava planet two hours into playing and couldn’t figure out what the hell I was doing before letting my kids just do ridiculous shit after I was fed up trying to find gold bricks.
LEGO Worlds is truly one of the most open games I’ve ever played in the sense that if you’re willing to put in a ton of time into exploring this beautiful universe, you can end up building whatever your heart desires. It’s also incredibly complex at the same time considering your tool menu has around 10 different items that you’ll need to do these things (one for paint, one for landscape shifting, one for building things brick by brick, one for generating objects/characters you discover and more). So while I was a bit taken back by the incredible depth of customisation features and thought it would frustrate my children — they didn’t care. Not one bit. LEGO Worlds feels like you have a never-ending bucket of LEGO bricks and toys that was comprised of EVERYTHING EVER. Gorillas, yetis, bugs, buildings, dragons, candy houses, cars, skeleton fire breathing horses – doesn’t matter – EVERYTHING. If you are in the mood to unleash your children and see what kind of insane scenarios they can conjure up or you have the patience to build incredible worlds yourself then LEGO Worlds is that title.
Rating: [star rating=”4″]