To the great surprise of no one, the Lego games are finally going there and, well, not quite back again in Lego The Hobbit. The game follows the first two films of the Hobbit movie trilogy, giving us a chance to lead Bilbo and company all the way from the comforts of Bag End to the dwarf home beneath the Lonely Mountain. It’s a fun journey to be sure, but confusing at times, and not entirely satisfying. Lego The Hobbit clings to the series’ standard combat and exploration, but, as usual, a handful of welcome twists make things a bit more interesting this time around. A few different rhythm-based challenges, an item creation system tied to resource collection, and the “find the missing piece” mini-game from February’s Lego Movie game make The Hobbit more than just a button masher, although it is still mostly just that. Thankfully, the environmental challenges and enemies are sophisticated enough to keep the action engaging. In comparison to the roster in last year’s Lego Marvel game, many of the characters in the Hobbit feel like, at best, minor variations of each other.
It certainly doesn’t help that they all sort of look alike, and it can get a little confusing to tell the dwarves apart. But you’ll need to pay attention, as each dwarf has one unique ability, like Bombur’s ability to turn into a bouncing platform or Bofur’s mining power, that needs to be applied to the narrowly scripted environmental challenges. Chip the Glasses and Crack the Plates The extended action sequences and sometimes slapstick humor of The Hobbit films make a good fit for a Lego game. Honestly, there’s always been something a little disjointed about watching Cyclops wreck the X-Mansion or Luke Skywalker destroy Yoda’s house, but seeing the Dwarves go to town demolishing absolutely everything in Bag End or Rivendell makes perfect sense. When you see them literally start smashing Bilbo’s cupboards and Elrond’s tables, it just feels right. From the plate juggling in Bilbo’s kitchen to the golden toilets in Smaug’s hoard, there are also loads of humorous little touches that keep the charm going.
Lego The Hobbit also looks beautiful. The settings are very convincing, with loads of little details and plenty of suitably moody lighting. The world is filled with fantastic creatures and monsters, and developer Traveller’s Tales has done a great job adapting the giant eagles, goblin kings, and dragons to the standard Lego models. The only real problem with the graphics is that the more realistic color palette and sheer density of some of the scenes can make it very difficult to see who you are or what you’re doing. The sometimes inconsistent camera angles don’t help things much. More than once, I just found myself just attacking and jumping at random in the hopes that I would eventually figure out where I was. To Dungeons Deep and Caverns Old The main story clocks in at about six hours, but there’s much more to do and see in the world once you’ve completed the main missions. Each mission unlocks events around the map, and you’ll be able to spend hours digging into the recipes, errands, and encounters around Middle-earth.
A campfire system lets you change the time of day to open up new events, and you can always call on a giant eagle to get you from one end of the map to the other. While most of the missions are fairly predictable, I was impressed with the Hobbit’s take on the solo sections. For Riddles in the Dark, Bilbo’s joined by a dazed goblin, for instance. There are also some tremendous set pieces where the characters are facing off against the dragon, or climbing up the body of a very active and very angry stone giant. Unfortunately, the story sort of goes by in a flash. Last year’s Lego Marvel showed what Travelers Tales can do with an original story, so The Hobbit’s abbreviated, sometimes scattered storytelling feels like a step back. There are narrative bits tying the missions together, but the whole game presumes that you already know the source material well enough to fill in the gaps yourself. (You probably do, but if you’re playing with kids it might not be clear to them.) It’s particularly troublesome to track the events between the spider attack and the dwarves’ arrival at Lake Town.
The game also ends where the second movie ends, which left me wanting more – and not in a good way. Lego The Hobbit won’t surprise fans of the Lego series, but the new gameplay systems add just enough complexity to keep things interesting. New events and mining opportunities make exploration of the open world almost as fun as the main missions. The storytelling presumes you already know the source material by heart, which means things are sometimes a bit disjointed, and the game, like the movies it’s based on, ends at an awkward place. But like almost all the Lego games, this is a journey worth taking.As much as Lego The Hobbit was inevitable - as well the last words Bilbo would ever want to hear while being flown around by those eagles - it does rather beg the question: "Wait, now?" We're only two thirds of the way through the unnecessarily bloated film trilogy, leaving a gap the size of Smaug's corpse in the story, with a concluding DLC pack nothing more than a rumour at present.
For now, though, we have the initial parts, "Too Many Dwarves" and "Holy Crap, What an Awesome Dragon": two blockbusters, now with endlessly more blocks to bust and enough irreverence to make that barrel ride look like the Silmarillion as read by Orson Welles. If you've played any of the Lego Whatever games before, that about sums it up. They don't change a vast amount between licenses and this one is no exception. Two-player co-op that's perfect for parents and kids, running through a slapstick version of the first two movies, swapping characters to use different skills and smashing everything that can be smashed for both items and the delicious jangling sound of thousands of Lego studs going into the pot. Levels are linear and recreate moments from the movies, unlocking for free play once completed, with plenty more to do on a sprawling world map full of additional characters, quests and other goodies to make 100% completion a solid challenge for any player. Like Lego The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit uses the actual voices from the movie, with the growling seriousness of the characters, to great advantage.
It's a whole universe of pratfalls and visual gags: building a giant key to open a door only to have the dwarves use it as a battering ram, leaving armoured orcs in their comedy boxer shorts with a good hit and stuffing Bombur with food to turn him into a bouncy trampoline. It doesn't work quite as well as last time, but only because The Hobbit is already a much goofier adventure than The Lord of the Rings. Making fun of something with its tongue in its cheek is always harder than spoofing the serious, especially when restricted to visual gags and clips of the original dialogue. (There is additional voice work too, which immediately stands out as "wrong", especially the narration - but it's restricted to characters like the traders who hand out quests on the world map.) It's as entertaining as ever, though - up to a point. The main problem is that the party here doesn't have the same distinctiveness that other Lego games offer. Which dwarf has the bow? Who can crack things open? Why are any of them afraid of the dark?
The longest part of most puzzles is simply flitting between everyone, trying to find the one with the skill for the next lock. The group does, however, get more interplay than usual, with a big selection of characters to reinforce the team dynamic and shared actions like directly teaming up for buddy-attacks against bosses like the Goblin King or making towers of dwarves with staves so that another character can climb to higher ledges and unlock a path for the rest. If you haven't seen the movies, you're going to be completely lost by the abridged story, but that seems pretty unlikely. As usual, some scenes barely pay lip-service to the original - the game's idea of being hunted by wolves, for instance, is to have them all sitting in a clearing while Radagast heals things - but the best are really impressive. An early highlight is the storm giant battle, which begins blandly with the party split on two levels of a cliff having to trade puzzle solutions to clear blockages, but then ends with everyone running around platforms carved into the giants themselves as they battle it out.
Other big moments are at least always cute, like the riddle contest with Gollum now involving Bilbo and a confused goblin (because there always has to be a second player) building the answers. Individual levels can easily hit a few scenes at once, seemingly ending only to keep going instead of taking a break. Usually that's fine, though a few do outstay their welcome, including the always-awful combat arenas and bigger scenes like the escape from Goblin Town. Unfortunately, the main addition this time is also by far the most tedious bit of the game. It's long been a complaint of the Lego series that they don't allow for any building, and Lego The Hobbit changes that - a bit, in much the same way that giving sunscreen to a man dying of thirst in the desert is technically doing him a favour. There are now crafting platforms around the world, both in the linear story levels and the open world. By bringing them materials from mining, smashing things and fighting - which can often involve just grinding and trying not to yawn hard enough to create a black hole - they provide extra stuff that is shielded by a second layer of terrible mini-game, in the form of watching the thing being built piece by piece and occasionally having to point to the next component to use.