A bit disappointing. Not badly put together but clearly needed a ton more work, and 2K's involvement seemingly ruined just about everything it could have. I'm just glad licensed stuff wasn't in the game or else it'd truly feel like soulless LEGO.
Kinda nice that they made Rocket Racer an unlockable minifigure, but it'd be nicer if he were in a better game. This game starts out fairly promising in its campaign but after just a bit it becomes pretty apparent that you're going to be spending more time doing inane minigames than actually racing. Otherwise you're just driving a bland and barely interactable map or three, and the environments don't even really stick out from each other much outside of the desert mesa area.
The game pads itself with the aforementioned minigame "challenges", as you're locked out of progressing until you complete some amount of them to level up to a multiple of 10 and unlock a new difficulty level. I don't really mind the progression much but the problem lies in how gaining XP mostly comes from doing dull quests or spamming challenges that barely give you any, or otherwise just redoing races at different difficulty levels. With how few races there are in each area it becomes repetitive fast. Unfortunately the 'sandbox' nature of the game is extremely limited too due to how few interaction verbs racing games tend to have as a general genre and format thing. The most interactivity you really get here is in building, which is fun but often feels incomplete due to how the game handles acquiring pieces...
Everyone's probably brought up microtransactions before when talking about this game and I'll try not to retread ground. What I was most relieved about regarding that was that you can just download other people's creations (many of which are very fun and better than the official stuff!) to bypass ever needing to use premium currency. The game also gives you enough of the currency for free to pick out maybe 4ish cars in a minimal run of the campaign, so at the very least that's nice for people who aren't planning to 100% the game and play it seriously for a long while. For those who do, though, it's absolutely fucked. The game isn't pay to win but absolutely should not have locked 'brick packs' behind paywalls.
The customization leaves a bit to be desired because of the brick packs, but even more disappointing than that was the fact that you can't customize minifigures at all. You can only pick from the ones the game gives you to you with no mixing or matching. I was personally also saddened by how seemingly all of the options are human minifigures plus a couple robots or zombies -- nothing really out of that realm.
On the plus side, this game was fun to play for a free weekend with someone else in co-op. The co-op in general tends to work well besides rubberbanding making it so that almost every race ends in one player in 1st place and the other in exactly 4th (no higher or lower). It's bizarre but doesn't ruin things. Fucking around in the open world and getting things done at the same time as your co-op partner is also pretty flow-inducing, so despite not liking the 'challenges' much I applaud the game for that. The cars in general also tend to control pretty well, maybe slightly lighter than I'd have liked but definitely intuitive. I do wish the game made all of its environments slightly bigger, though, as it felt like hitting walls due to everything being too narrow and compact for the (sometimes massive) models flying through them was a consistent issue.
Miscellaneous comments time: the comedy tended to be fairly one-note and eyerolly at times. The robot companion, S.T.U.D., is an absolute asshole and is incredibly annoying to hear during gameplay. They're weirdly mean to the player in a way that made me wonder if it'd make kids feel shitty while playing (and not in a charming Mr. Resetti sort of way, more of a repetitive 'you suck' whenever you just play as is). Uhhh the skyboxes looked great. Also really really enjoyed the fourth island, the horror themed one. Made me wish the rest of the game had as strong theming per area a la LEGO Island 2 or even the original LEGO Racers. Last thing that comes to mind is that the powerups are horrible and don't seem to have been tested properly. The green shell equivalent is nearly useless because it slows down over time and defies gravity, and the red shell equivalent does not at all balance a race the way a red shell does as it requires you to actively be locking onto a racer in front of you. If there's a breakaway from a rival in first place, you're not going to hit them with what should have been an equalizer.
On the whole, not a great game! Not a particularly bad one either, but the disappointment was real after not having a LEGO Racers type game in, well, decades. Almost 25 years even. At least I paid nothing for it, though. Wouldn't advise anyone to pay more than a very very low sale price for the experience the game gives.
Kinda nice that they made Rocket Racer an unlockable minifigure, but it'd be nicer if he were in a better game. This game starts out fairly promising in its campaign but after just a bit it becomes pretty apparent that you're going to be spending more time doing inane minigames than actually racing. Otherwise you're just driving a bland and barely interactable map or three, and the environments don't even really stick out from each other much outside of the desert mesa area.
The game pads itself with the aforementioned minigame "challenges", as you're locked out of progressing until you complete some amount of them to level up to a multiple of 10 and unlock a new difficulty level. I don't really mind the progression much but the problem lies in how gaining XP mostly comes from doing dull quests or spamming challenges that barely give you any, or otherwise just redoing races at different difficulty levels. With how few races there are in each area it becomes repetitive fast. Unfortunately the 'sandbox' nature of the game is extremely limited too due to how few interaction verbs racing games tend to have as a general genre and format thing. The most interactivity you really get here is in building, which is fun but often feels incomplete due to how the game handles acquiring pieces...
Everyone's probably brought up microtransactions before when talking about this game and I'll try not to retread ground. What I was most relieved about regarding that was that you can just download other people's creations (many of which are very fun and better than the official stuff!) to bypass ever needing to use premium currency. The game also gives you enough of the currency for free to pick out maybe 4ish cars in a minimal run of the campaign, so at the very least that's nice for people who aren't planning to 100% the game and play it seriously for a long while. For those who do, though, it's absolutely fucked. The game isn't pay to win but absolutely should not have locked 'brick packs' behind paywalls.
The customization leaves a bit to be desired because of the brick packs, but even more disappointing than that was the fact that you can't customize minifigures at all. You can only pick from the ones the game gives you to you with no mixing or matching. I was personally also saddened by how seemingly all of the options are human minifigures plus a couple robots or zombies -- nothing really out of that realm.
On the plus side, this game was fun to play for a free weekend with someone else in co-op. The co-op in general tends to work well besides rubberbanding making it so that almost every race ends in one player in 1st place and the other in exactly 4th (no higher or lower). It's bizarre but doesn't ruin things. Fucking around in the open world and getting things done at the same time as your co-op partner is also pretty flow-inducing, so despite not liking the 'challenges' much I applaud the game for that. The cars in general also tend to control pretty well, maybe slightly lighter than I'd have liked but definitely intuitive. I do wish the game made all of its environments slightly bigger, though, as it felt like hitting walls due to everything being too narrow and compact for the (sometimes massive) models flying through them was a consistent issue.
Miscellaneous comments time: the comedy tended to be fairly one-note and eyerolly at times. The robot companion, S.T.U.D., is an absolute asshole and is incredibly annoying to hear during gameplay. They're weirdly mean to the player in a way that made me wonder if it'd make kids feel shitty while playing (and not in a charming Mr. Resetti sort of way, more of a repetitive 'you suck' whenever you just play as is). Uhhh the skyboxes looked great. Also really really enjoyed the fourth island, the horror themed one. Made me wish the rest of the game had as strong theming per area a la LEGO Island 2 or even the original LEGO Racers. Last thing that comes to mind is that the powerups are horrible and don't seem to have been tested properly. The green shell equivalent is nearly useless because it slows down over time and defies gravity, and the red shell equivalent does not at all balance a race the way a red shell does as it requires you to actively be locking onto a racer in front of you. If there's a breakaway from a rival in first place, you're not going to hit them with what should have been an equalizer.
On the whole, not a great game! Not a particularly bad one either, but the disappointment was real after not having a LEGO Racers type game in, well, decades. Almost 25 years even. At least I paid nothing for it, though. Wouldn't advise anyone to pay more than a very very low sale price for the experience the game gives.
chandler
8 months ago