LEGO Franchise Video Games are fun and all, but...
Posted: January 15th, 2014, 6:02 amLEGO building blocks are the pinnacle of open-ended creativity, and despite that, their video games feels limited. I have been playing their franchise games (Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc.) off and on for some years now, but I after I complete one, the game feels reduced to a flashy $20 beer coaster. Once you reach %100 in a game, their is absolutely no replay value -- made worst by games like LEGO Batman 2 that was way too short! I'm not expecting then to play like Minecraft, but sandbox gaming is something one would expect from a LEGO game.
It also feels strange that once you get everything done in LEGO Batman 2, the goons are still running a muck with everyone in a panic. Yeah, the major bad guys have been defeated and captured, but it if feels like nothing was really accomplished. If you clear out an area of goons, they should go away, with everything cleaned up and everyone as content citizens going about their business. If the games is not going to provide anything else at %100 -- besides having Supergirl as a playable character -- than the game might as well wind down by having a city were where there is little or nothing to do.
The only exception I can think of, are the bonus level in LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4. Once you complete a bonus level, you can change the level freely. I like that! You can make your own puzzles and obstacle courses to challenge yourself and friends. They should have more of these. Its not a lot, but they would add some replay value. Hell, you could even unlock extras with them!
A neat thing to have is the ability to alter cut scenes by changing characters around, add or remove abilities/access, or enabling the silly extras (like handle bar mustaches, carrot wands, etc.) to make them really funny -- kinda like mad-libs. With some extra coding, the cut scenes can be drastically altered for the changes. For example, replacing Superman with a non-flyer (or stripping him of his fight), would have him/her fall on his/her face or comically to one doom while trying to fly off a rooftop. Kissing scenes could be really sexy (Slave Leia + Oola
), or really gross (Jar Jar + Boss Nass 
). As audio tracks tend to eat up a lot of valuable game space, this would work best with the older, silent games, as the scenes alone would speak louder then words. I do not mind the dialog of the newer games, as long as they stay as funny as LEGO City 2 (oh, my Goddess*, the parodies are awesome!). If they start adding bland dialog and awful jokes to their games, they might as well scap it all together to added more game elements to it.
Another issue I have, are the custom characters you can play. This is a great idea, but the lack of options makes them not as enjoyable. And if you are going back through all the levels to unlock all the secrets, it would be nice to play characters of your own making, then to use some stock character that can do more then what are otherwise dolled-up generic characters. That is, in Star Wars, you can choose between a Shooter (with blaster and grapple gun) or a Jedi (with lightsaber and double-jump), but you cant choose to make them an Imperial (Shooter with Stormtrooper accuses), a Bounty Hunter (Shooter with grenades and BH accuses) or a Sith (Jedi with dark force powers). Some high-end character even have signature abilities or a great mix of more common abilities. Ideally, custom characters should be limited to generic parts, with little or no special abilities at first, but as you unlock new characters, you gain new parts and abilities. The point of this is not to make game-braking characters, but make personalized characters you would like to play.
In LEGO Indiana Jones, I made Lara Croft form Tome Raider and Zed form an old campy movie from the '70's called Zardoz -- yes, that picture of Sean Connery you could see, but can *never* unsee!
Even without options, I still have fun with them, while saying silly stuff like "How do you like my big pair of .45s, boys?" or "The gun is good! Go forth and kill! Zardoz has spoken." If I had the option, I would keep them both as Jones-capable characters, but Lara would be a high-jumper (typical with females in the game) and Zed would have Thuggie access (in the movie, Zardoz was a murder cult). On the other hand, I never use them is the Potter games, as you have ten characters to choose form, but picking any one of them for a level is like a game of roulette -- they appear as a black silhouette with letters that cycles too quickly, and you forget who's who. The custom characters in Batman 2 seem to follow five basic hero/costume types, but they lack a number of abilities of the characters are trying emulate. With a superhero game, you need more option then choosing the right look to make a customized superhero!
There is also an annoying aspect with the bonus cheats. Once you get the better stud multipliers (x6, x8 or x10), money becomes worthless! The big-ticket characters that you would otherwise have to save up for are now as dirt-cheap as a Gonk Power Droid while starting out. When a game has stud multipliers (with a total multiplication of x3,840), high-end characters and options should be extremely expensive.
*Interesting edit, censorship, or whatever? Who add this feature? SheZow?
It also feels strange that once you get everything done in LEGO Batman 2, the goons are still running a muck with everyone in a panic. Yeah, the major bad guys have been defeated and captured, but it if feels like nothing was really accomplished. If you clear out an area of goons, they should go away, with everything cleaned up and everyone as content citizens going about their business. If the games is not going to provide anything else at %100 -- besides having Supergirl as a playable character -- than the game might as well wind down by having a city were where there is little or nothing to do.
The only exception I can think of, are the bonus level in LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4. Once you complete a bonus level, you can change the level freely. I like that! You can make your own puzzles and obstacle courses to challenge yourself and friends. They should have more of these. Its not a lot, but they would add some replay value. Hell, you could even unlock extras with them!
A neat thing to have is the ability to alter cut scenes by changing characters around, add or remove abilities/access, or enabling the silly extras (like handle bar mustaches, carrot wands, etc.) to make them really funny -- kinda like mad-libs. With some extra coding, the cut scenes can be drastically altered for the changes. For example, replacing Superman with a non-flyer (or stripping him of his fight), would have him/her fall on his/her face or comically to one doom while trying to fly off a rooftop. Kissing scenes could be really sexy (Slave Leia + Oola
), or really gross (Jar Jar + Boss Nass ). As audio tracks tend to eat up a lot of valuable game space, this would work best with the older, silent games, as the scenes alone would speak louder then words. I do not mind the dialog of the newer games, as long as they stay as funny as LEGO City 2 (oh, my Goddess*, the parodies are awesome!). If they start adding bland dialog and awful jokes to their games, they might as well scap it all together to added more game elements to it.Another issue I have, are the custom characters you can play. This is a great idea, but the lack of options makes them not as enjoyable. And if you are going back through all the levels to unlock all the secrets, it would be nice to play characters of your own making, then to use some stock character that can do more then what are otherwise dolled-up generic characters. That is, in Star Wars, you can choose between a Shooter (with blaster and grapple gun) or a Jedi (with lightsaber and double-jump), but you cant choose to make them an Imperial (Shooter with Stormtrooper accuses), a Bounty Hunter (Shooter with grenades and BH accuses) or a Sith (Jedi with dark force powers). Some high-end character even have signature abilities or a great mix of more common abilities. Ideally, custom characters should be limited to generic parts, with little or no special abilities at first, but as you unlock new characters, you gain new parts and abilities. The point of this is not to make game-braking characters, but make personalized characters you would like to play.
In LEGO Indiana Jones, I made Lara Croft form Tome Raider and Zed form an old campy movie from the '70's called Zardoz -- yes, that picture of Sean Connery you could see, but can *never* unsee!
Even without options, I still have fun with them, while saying silly stuff like "How do you like my big pair of .45s, boys?" or "The gun is good! Go forth and kill! Zardoz has spoken." If I had the option, I would keep them both as Jones-capable characters, but Lara would be a high-jumper (typical with females in the game) and Zed would have Thuggie access (in the movie, Zardoz was a murder cult). On the other hand, I never use them is the Potter games, as you have ten characters to choose form, but picking any one of them for a level is like a game of roulette -- they appear as a black silhouette with letters that cycles too quickly, and you forget who's who. The custom characters in Batman 2 seem to follow five basic hero/costume types, but they lack a number of abilities of the characters are trying emulate. With a superhero game, you need more option then choosing the right look to make a customized superhero!There is also an annoying aspect with the bonus cheats. Once you get the better stud multipliers (x6, x8 or x10), money becomes worthless! The big-ticket characters that you would otherwise have to save up for are now as dirt-cheap as a Gonk Power Droid while starting out. When a game has stud multipliers (with a total multiplication of x3,840), high-end characters and options should be extremely expensive.
*Interesting edit, censorship, or whatever? Who add this feature? SheZow?
