LEGO Worlds

LEGO Worlds has really captured my attention these days. It's a wonderful combination of exploration, building, questing, all tied together with the wholesome nuttiness of Telltale Games LEGO series. As you proceed through the different procedurally generated worlds, you not only gain an increasing collection of abilities to help you become a "Master Builder", but you also acquire a catalog of items that come from all across the LEGO universe. Everything in the game is made of LEGOs, from motorcycles and cars to spaceships, planes, boats, and even the scenery, animals, and of course, the minifigs that populate the landscape. The first tool you unlock is the Discovery Tool, which allows you to scan any a LEGO creation and add it to your library. Once scanned and unlocked by spending the studs you've acquired as the in-game currency, you can create as many of these scanned objects as you'd like. You can even build things manually, and then scan them and add them to your library.

So, how does it play? Remarkably well, better than I expected. I had been interested in it when I first saw it, but wrote off the purchase as too expensive for what seemed like more like a kids game at the time. And while Worlds definitely has a childish edge to it, there's a depth to it that you don't usually find in a kids game. I watched some YouTube playthrough videos with my boys, and then found that the price was half of what it had been before.

Truth be told what sold me was seeing the "Classic Space" DLC, which featured the bricks and builds of the space LEGO sets of my childhood. Getting the opportunity to actually jump in and fly the Space Cruiser, which was my first big LEGO set, if memory serves, was amazing, and easily worth the price of the game.

In the end, the game is definitely worth the price, even without the Classic Space DLC. It's a deep game with legs, and I've put a lot of hours in since I bought it just a few days ago. The procedurally generated worlds keep things fresh as you bounce around, though I think that eventually, I'm going to run out of quests. They do a good job of spacing them out, forcing you to skip quests that you don't have the materials for, and I think in the end, I'm going to be searching for a handful of items to complete the last few quests.

There have been a handful of negatives. When I first started playing, would get a message at the start that no save data could be created. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, since I my character seemed to be loading correctly, and all of my discoveries were still there. It wasn't until we started a second save file for the boys that we got a message saying that the first save file was corrupted and needed to be rebuilt. My first playthrough, the game would start me at the first tutorial world every time, and all the worlds I'd been too were gone. Once the corrupted file was repaired, the game would start where I left off, and all the worlds that I had been to previously (well, all the ones I had been to since the repair) would still be there. This is apparently a long-standing issue with the game, but since it happened to me right off the bat, I assumed that it was just how the game played.

There are also some interface issues. Almost everything happens through a utility wheel interface, where you hold down the Triangle button, and a wheel pops up with your different tools. You can also quick-press Triangle to get your last used tool. A lot of times, I must move my thumb slightly when I make my selection, because it will select the wrong tool, and I'll have to back out and pick the correct one.

You can access all of the builds you've discovered through the Discovery Tool, which is also what you use to place those discoveries back out in the world. There are just a few categories that everything is divided into, so when you have discovered a couple hundred things (I'm at over three hundred, and there are world-types that I'm still uncovering), it can be a little hard to flip through to find the one you want. Fortunately, if you're trying to complete a quest, the discovery catalog will open to the item you need to complete the quest, if you've already discovered it. If there are multiple items, it will open to them in turn as you open the catalog. They also shake slightly to make them stand out. You can search through the catalog by typing into a search bar, but it seems to work by exact name match.

The in-world interface seems to be a standard TellTale Games LEGO game interface, from what I can tell, and it works pretty well. The camera behaves itself for the most part, though there were a couple of sequences where I couldn't see what was happening because the camera panned outside a wall while I was inside. The only annoyance I've had with the interface really is that occasionally my character will just stop moving, as if I had let up on the stick. It's a little jarring, and has caused me to yell at my minifig more than once, "Keep moving!"

The real test for this game will be how much fun it is to play once I've completed all the quests, and discovered all the builds. Now that the worlds are permanent and not ethereal, I could go back and build houses and castles and what not to my hearts content. Unfortunately, there's not much way to play with others. You can connect with one other player, either locally or via the network. But if I build anything cool, I'll be sure to take a screen shot and post it to the blog.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to spending more hours exploring LEGO Worlds. If anything, it's a relaxing, welcome escape from the more action-packed games that are in my queue right now. But it's always rewarding to find a deep game, and Worlds has plenty of depth.

Hit a wall with LEGO Worlds last night. I hit 80 gold bricks, which unlocked “HUGE” worlds to play on, and I was excited to get to one and check it out. However, the worlds are so huge that the engine can’t keep up. Huge chunks were simply not rendered, and I had to sit there and wait for them to get drawn in. Really a poor show for the title, and makes me want to stop playing it, even though I am nine bricks shy of 100, which I believe will make me master builder. So, maybe I’ll get those nine gold bricks, and then call it a day.