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.3DS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One Awaiting 2 more reviews Mixed or average reviews- based on 10 Ratings More Details and Credits » users found this helpful LEGO The Hobbit - Launch Trailer LEGO The Hobbit - Buddy Up Trailer Classic Lego gameplay with some crafty new twists As funny and charming as ever Side-quests boost long-term interest
Family friendly co-op play Puzzle solutions made too obvious Third film will be DLC Available on Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4 (reviewed), Wii U, PCSo many games based on so many familiar characters and movies, and still the TT Games Lego series has yet to jump the shark. True, you’ll find some miserable souls complaining that the games are formulaic and repetitive – that they’re really all the same once you look beneath the movie skin – but they’re the ones missing out.Each Lego game might not differ much from the last one, or even the one before that, but there’s always some slant, some new innovation or twist, that lends the game a different feel. Just as last year’s Lego Marvel Super Heroes built on and reworked 2012’s Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, so Lego: The Hobbit finds fresh ideas with which to add to the same year’s Lego: Lord of the Rings. Given the success of Lego: LOTR and the first two parts of Peter Jackson’s three movie adaptation, this is hardly an unexpected game.
The only real surprise is that we get it now, with the last film still to come (we can expect ‘There and Back Again’ to be covered by a DLC pack when the movie is released). Nor does the content exactly defy expectations.Middle Earth – or at least those parts of it dealt with during The Hobbit – becomes an open-world map, linking together a series of chapters that take you through the events of An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug.The gameplay covers all the usual stuff: smashing up the scenery to collect Lego studs, reassembling chunks of smashed scenery into new shapes, unlocking different characters, and using their varying abilities to get past every obstacle in your path. If you’ve played any Lego game since Lego Star Wars, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the basics work.Yet Lego: The Hobbit isn’t content to retread the same old ground. With thirteen dwarves, Bilbo, Gandalf and a range of other heroes flitting in and out of the game, there’s been a real effort made to give each character some distinctive capability, whether it’s a sling or a bow and arrow to fire at target switches, a grapple to swing across chasms or drag down the scenery, or – in chubby Bombur’s case – a unique approach to makeshift trampolines.
There’s also more emphasis on characters working together. Three of the dwarves hold pole arms that double as a makeshift ladder, and the game allows you to stack all three up to reach higher ground. Dwarves also have a new double-up ability in combat, which becomes essential when taking on the game’s bigger foes, and can even swing in tandem if need be.Perhaps most importantly, Lego: The Hobbit throws in a new crafting feature, which combines the blueprints of Lego: LOTR, the brick collecting of Lego City: Undercover and the spot-the-piece subgame of The Lego Movie game. Here, smashed scenery releases not just normal Lego studs but various materials, which certain dwarves can also mine from specific areas of rock. The gathered materials can then be deposited at a nearby crafting station, where they’re transformed into useful objects or complex Lego sets.In the latter case you go into a mini-game, where the set is part-built, but building pauses every so often while you choose the next part.
Choose quickly and you earn bonus gold. Choose slowly or incorrectly and that bonus disappears. It’s hardly Mensa-candidate stuff but it’s a perfect fit for Lego, working in well with the whole construction theme. When you finish the set, there’s a pay-off in using it or watching it in action.All this gathering and crafting also ties in with a feature of the open world setting: optional side-quests. These mostly have you finding or crafting items for the characters hanging around Hobbiton, Rivendell, Laketown etc. You’ll need to find the required stuff and bring it back to the characters concerned, though in some cases you can cut down on your journey by trading materials with the traders you’ll find dotted around.It all helps to boost the longevity of the game, as will the usual Lego obsessions with collecting every special kit and every character and getting a 100% rate on every level. To do so you’ll not only have to scour the map and complete all those side-quests, but go back and reconquer levels in freeplay mode, using characters you couldn’t access first time around.
This has always been the source of the Lego game’s staying power, particularly if you play it with the family in the brilliant split-screen co-op mode. On this count, Lego: The Hobbit, won’t disappoint.Of course, some of how you feel about Lego: The Hobbit will depend on how you feel about the movies, but it’s not the be all and end all. To our mind, TT Games has done a really nice job of taking the rather earnest, melodramatic dialogue from the movies, then undercutting it with very silly sight gags.You don’t actually need to love every minute of the films to find it funny and endearing. In fact, you could argue that the game does a better job than the films in distinguishing between the thirteen dwarves – the exaggerated characterisations actually help – and many of the sequences that felt over-extended in cinematic form work surprisingly well in game form. Even the first film's notorious dinner party/washing-up sequence is transformed into a bizarre rhythm action set-piece.
How can you not like that?There are some valid complaints. Often the game makes it so blindingly obvious what you have to do next that any sense that you’re solving puzzles disappears. It might seem necessary for a game aimed at a family audience, but Lego: The Hobbit sometimes goes overboard and spoils the fun.While this can be a very pretty game on PS4, with some fabulous dynamic lighting, it hardly puts the console’s power to devastating use. Just as the early Xbox 360/PS3 Lego titles merely added gloss to the PS2 and Xbox versions, so it looks like we’ll have to wait before we get a truly next-gen Lego title.But then the Lego games have never been about the visuals or the technical accomplishments – though bugs and bad camera angles seem to be becoming less and less of an issue. They’ve always been about charm, wit, great, family-friendly co-op gameplay and paying an affectionate but cheeky tribute to your favourite blockbuster films.Lego: The Hobbit is no different. It’s as easy as that.