Lego Worlds Review – Creative & Flawed Lego Canvas

Lego Worlds Review

Lego Worlds brings the open world building of Minecraft to a more creative place. As a fan of previous Lego games I wanted to see how well an open world sandbox building game would play out in the world of Lego, and the results are pretty interesting! There are some occasional bugs and glitches, and the controls can be frustrating, making the game a bit tedious to play at times. Although not without issues, Lego Worlds is fun and creative, combining the building with a storyline, offering a ton of customization abilities.

Lego Worlds allows for both adventure and exploration in a journey from one world to the next with a single goal in mind: collecting gold bricks and studs. More studs mean more freedom to build, and more gold bricks mean higher rank, more tools, and more worlds. In order to do this, players need to interact with NPCs in each of the world’s, completing quests galore and exploring each of the worlds to find treasure chests. These quests range from making a throne for a pirate and catching trouble makers, to fighting zombies. The story takes you through various pre-built worlds where you get to meet all sorts of characters, including gingerbread men from candy land, and cavemen from the prehistoric times.

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“While certainly not without its fair share of technical issues, Lego Worlds is a masterful building game, with loads of customization capabilities, an abundance of gameplay and endless worlds.”

If we’re going to compare this open, yet linear campaign of Lego Worlds to previous Lego games, such as Lego Batman, it is definitely nice to have a bit more freedom, however the story makes this open world building game a bit restrictive. Considering that the game is modeled after the free form of Lego itself, the story makes it hard to create something whenever you want it, especially in the beginning. This is not to say that you can’t sit and explore, build, and paint for hours, because you can. The problem however is that the two parts of the game, the open building, and the linear story, just don’t seem to mesh very well. The open world building allows for unlimited and unrestricted use of the builder tools, however the story limits which tools you use, as some are unavailable until you complete certain tasks. On the flip side of this, there are often times when a task is too easy because these building tools allow a way to get around the system. For example, when chasing trouble makers, you are supposed to follow and tackle them if you can get close enough, however the landscape tool can remove lego pieces in the world, allowing you to trap the poor beasts.

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“The problem however is that the two parts of the game, the open building, and the linear story, just don’t seem to mesh very well.” 

Fear not, it is still a great game! There are so many fun aspects to Lego Worlds, and the interaction with each of the worlds is fantastic. You can climb ladders, jump around, swim and dive in the water, as well as fly helicopters, motorcycles, and even dragons! The customization available in Lego Worlds is almost unfathomable, as everything can be changed, built, fixed, painted, designed and remodeled brick by brick. The single player experience is fantastic, and the inner child in you will want to stay and play for hours. Gone are the days of crafting in Minecraft; now players can copy anything in sight, and as long as they have the studs to make the item, they can bring an unlimited amount of items, characters, and animals into their world. Even when playing through the campaign, it is flexible in its time, and there is no limit, allowing for exponential, and rather unending adventure! Even though Lego Worlds is categorically a single player experience, you have the ability to join games, and build, or destroy as you see fit. This multiplayer experience adds just that little something extra to a time-wasting machine of a game!

The controls are a bit frustrating at first, however after this initial annoyance wears off, it becomes a bit easier to use them. Of course, the controls do make some of the building, painting or destroying processes a bit of a tedious process throughout parts of the journey in Lego Worlds. The camera seems to be in disarray at times as well, swinging into a different view, obstructing a clear view of whatever you are working on. There were times where I was destroying parts of the earth to make an underground tunnel, however due to the weird camera angle switches, I would not be able to see which chunks of ground I was removing. Only after fixing the camera, and moving into the tunnel would I be able to fix everything. On top of these camera glitches, there are a few bugs that rear their annoying heads every so often, and usually end with characters becoming stuck in the landscape, or scenery. At the very least, Lego Worlds seems to have been prepared for these instances, as the Lego building tools, can usually get you out of all the sticky situations!

The AI within Lego Worlds act as they should, giving players the quests along their journey to new and exciting worlds. Most of them, in usual Lego fashion, just smile, wave and grunt as their thoughts are shown to you. Because of this, there are no voices, other than that of the narrator, who does a wonderful job introducing you the game, one small step at a time. The soundtrack is quite and peaceful in the background, nothing really more than a filler in each world. The graphics are fantastic, as they are exactly as you would expect: blocks of Lego that come in many different shapes, sizes and designs. It almost feels like watching the Lego Movie on the big screen!

While certainly not without its fair share of technical issues, Lego Worlds is a masterful building game, with loads of customization capabilities, an abundance of gameplay and endless worlds. At the end of the day, Lego Worlds is, at its core, the ultimate Lego building experience, allowing players to build, destroy and copy anything along their way to becoming a master builder! From the dirt beneath your characters feet, to the clouds in the sky, everything is exactly as it should be in the world of Lego.

***A PS4 review code was provided by the publisher***