LEGO City Undercover for the Wii U, despite a heap of technical issues, brought a ton of charm to the platform. The fully voice acted experience was not without its camp and cheese factor, but ultimately it provided a fun open world experience for fans who were longing for a new Wii U game to play. Enter the portable version, titled The Chase Begins for the Nintendo 3DS. It tells the story of super-cop Chase McCain before he was, in fact, a super-cop. As a companion to the Wii U version, it had the opportunity to augment the console package, and possibly push the brand into new territory. Instead, it's a step down in nearly every way. You are logged out. LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins (3DS)Developer: TT FusionPublisher: NintendoReleased: April 21, 2013 (NA) / April 26, 2013 (EU)MSRP: $29.99 Set two years ahead of the Wii U experience, hero Chase McCain is still just a rookie cop, and is just getting started on the force. You'll also notice a few other familiar faces, like Officer (not yet Chief) Dunby, and of course, Chase's arch-nemesis, Rex Fury.
In this sense, it serves as a companion piece to the core game, and not simply a portable remake. The Chase Begins suffers from much slower initial pacing compared to its older Wii U brother, as the tutorial is roughly 30-60 minutes in length, and has Chase performing mundane tasks like rescuing animals or delivering donuts to demonstrate the game's controls. But it really doesn't need any sort of tutorial as gameplay is as simple as they come, considering all Chase can really do is run, jump, punch, and occasionally interact with the environment with his various costumes. Getting around is really easy too, as the 3DS substitutes the Wii U's GamePad map for the bottom screen, so the map is always readily available for easy objective identification. At first glance, everything seems normal. Missions now take place primarily in the city, and are less jarring of a transition than the Wii U version's structure, which constantly segments the narrative within tiny playgrounds.
Objectives themselves are extremely simple, and most of them provide a simple platforming frame to get from point A to B. Essentially, they're inoffensive at worst. But once you start getting into the thick of things, you'll start noticing the major compromises that were made to essentially push this round prequel peg through the square portable hole. The most notable sacrifice is the lack of full voice acting during the vast majority of the game. That's right -- outside of the occasional cutscene, there's no voice acting whatsoever -- instead, the dialog is presented in text form, which degrades the comical tone of the Wii U version in a major way. To add to the disappointment, the script is a lot less witty this time around, and looks extremely cheap when juxtaposed to the higher budget Wii U writing quality. During my playtime, I also noticed multiple disappearing NPCs and other graphical hiccups, alongside of a major disappointment: horrendous draw distance. To be blunt, your view of the otherwise beautiful LEGO City is pretty horrible, and full of grey clouds that block out pretty much anything that's not a few feet in front of you.
The 3D effect is fairly subtle, but The Chase Begins' colors are vibrant, despite the technical limitations within. The long load times from the Wii U version are also back, but with a vengeance! I'm talking load times that will trump even the earliest of PSOne Classics, sometimes dipping into the two minute mark. In addition to serving as an overall nuisance, it also makes going into buildings and loading new areas a chore -- and when load times impede exploration, you know it's really bad. Considering how other 3DS developers have done more visually with their titles, it's a bit odd to see a game like LEGO City suffer on the 3DS, especially given the aforementioned aesthetic sacrifices. If you're a diehard LEGO fan, odds are you'll get some form of enjoyment out of The Chase Begins. For everyone else, you're better off skipping it entirely, or picking up the superior Wii U version of the game. It's one thing to pare down an experience on a portable: it's another to sacrifice its integrity in the process.
LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins reviewed by Chris CarterMEDIOCREAn exercise in apathy, neither solid nor liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit "meh," really.How we score: The Destructoid Reviews GuideHere are my Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins tips to find all the collectables and complete the game. But first, a couple of ingenious suggestions from my kids -- now how did they get better than me at this video gaming lark? After all I have more experience, knowledge and strategies than they do. Surely it can't all be down to faster reaction times?I took the time to watch them play Lego City Undercover: The Chase Begins on their 3DS XL while we toured New Zealand last month -- being able to download it while we were out there made for some ideal on-the-go entertainment. What I noticed was that they played the game very differently from me.While I worked through the various fetch quests, fights and collecting tasks they were much more haphazard. In many ways they didn't play by "the rules" at all, certainly not how I imagine the game developers expected the game to be played.
Rather than following the suggested route, or using the provided vehicles, they often went their own way or made up their own challenges. Things like seeing how far they could drive without bumping other cars or running red lights or endlessly practicing skids in each of the vehicles.This approach had its downsides, I've even seen the game crash while they played and it's never done that for me, but it also yielded benefits. They stumble upon functionality that I remained oblivious to even after completing the game. Their lackadaisical approach to progression meant that they experimented with buttons, touch-screen and environment, and discovered some nice little ways to play.As you can see in my separate tips video, there are two of these that I thought would be worth sharing, before running down my more systematically discovered tips forLego City Undercover: The Chase Begins.Car Surfing Tip: A few days into playing the kids realised that you could stand on cars as well as get into them.
This led to not a few hours touring the city on the roof of various automobiles, and quickly turned into a competition about who could get atop the biggest truck.Watching them play like this, letting the game drive them round the streets of Auburn I noticed they would keep a finger poised over the scanner button. They had realised that this was not only a fun way to get around but also the best way to find all the side quests.You see, if you get into a car to hunt down the various collectibles the scanner option disappears, you have to get out to use it -- and this means you can't see when it is flashing to tell you there is something nearby to discover. Riding on top of a car this problem goes away as you tour the world while still have the scanner icon visible. Camera Control: I'm often berating my youngest for returning my 3DS XL covered in sticky finger prints. On Lego City Undercover you don't have to touch the lower screen so I had respectfully asked them to keep their grubby paws off.
So, when I received the handheld back with the lower screen covered in goo I started on a bit of a rant. "But Dad, you need to touch the bottom screen to control the camera" was their stereo response. After a bit of investigating I too discovered that while the Left and Right triggers will pan your view left and right you can also hold a (preferably clean) finger on the lower screen to gain full control of where you are looking - both horizontally and vertically, just like you do with dual stick controls.This is not only a useful way to see what's going on but also means you can scan around to find the best routes onto high buildings for those hard-to-reach collectables. They also discovered that you don't have to hold your 3DS up like a berk when using your scanner, the Circle Pad also lets you look around the environment.So now you've had the kid's Lego City Undercover wisdom, here's my accumulated tips and tricks for the Wii U and 3DS game:Red Bricks First: Aim to collect and unlock the Red Bricks that offer stud and collectable multipliers first as this enables you to ramp up your collecting and purchasing of other items.
Smashing: If you're stuck, trying smashing up everything around you -- more often than not, you'll discover an object to build.Police Station: Don't forget that you need to return to the Police Station to unlock bonuses and extras you have collected. With the open world nature of the game it is easy to avoid going back to the game hub for a long time, this just slows your progress down.Vehicle Flipping: If you flip your vehicle over you can shake the Wii U Gamepad to get yourself back to normal. On the 3DS if you get stuck just hold down A until you over-rev and get repositioned back on track.Be Diverted: In Lego City Undercover more than any Lego video game it pays to go wondering. Don't be too objective-focused otherwise you will miss intricacies of the game.Save Up: It is worth destroying everything in sight for those all important studs and bricks. Also, don't be in a rush to spend your studs or bricks. Take particular care of which super builds you complete first, some are important and part of the main quests while others are optional (like the ramps).