The LEGO Movie Videogame
Year: 2014
Rating: E10+
Time Played: ~10 hours
Growing up with Legos, I definitely enjoyed The LEGO Movie (2014) when it came to theaters. Sure, it may have just been a knock-off of The Matrix (1999), but there were enough humorous bits and meta references for me to enjoy myself. Considering how Lego had been adapting several film franchises into Lego-themed video games for quite a few years prior to this movie’s release, it just made sense that they would then turn their first arrival on the big screen into a Lego video game as well.
Of course, by now the “Lego video game” had become somewhat of a tired formula. Even if I could play through the events of the movie, the almost mind-numbing action wasn’t much different from any of the other Lego video games I had already played. It’s no wonder that I felt burned out from these games after playing through this one. You definitely get the same experience, but that predictability can only last for so long without key changes to improve (or modify) the gameplay. And maybe the fact that this game felt so self-indulgent was one reason it didn’t stick with me as well as, say, Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars.
And while it was a little disappointing to not have the original voice actors from the movie during the actual gameplay, it was nice to have cut scenes from the film to string together the levels. Then again, the voice actors they hired to provide the voices for these characters often did a good enough job that I could hardly tell the difference between the two. Unfortunately, while superb voice acting and actual movie clips were nice, they weren’t improvements to the core gameplay mechanic.
Somewhat self-indulgent but consistent Lego video game gameplay, I give The LEGO Movie Videogame 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
