A reader reveals how Lego games have been his son’s main introduction to video games, and why he’s been happy to indulge him. What is it with Lego games and kids, or maybe just my son? My son is five-years-old and in P1 at school. He has been playing on my Wii U since he was three. We have played numerous games from Mario Kart, Smash Bros., and Yoshi’s Woolly World to Lego Jurassic World. The most fun he has had has been down to one type of game: Lego games. Strangely we have lots of Lego and he isn’t very interested in playing with it. Maybe he likes playing them due to collecting the various characters/yellow bricks/red bricks, etc. or the fact it is so simple to control the character. The one that started it all was Lego City Undercover. Some may argue that it has been the pinnacle of Lego games, which in my opinion it was, but in the eyes of a three-year-old (the beginning of it all!) this was the start of a magical association with Lego games. Now Lego City Undercover is a single-player experience and we generally took turns, just driving about, doing missions and collecting everything in sight we could.
He loved flicking between the policeman, robber, and fireman etc. I then got the first game my son could play on my PlayStation 4: Lego Marvel Super Heroes. This he thought was the bee’s knees, we could both play together. This was fine by me as it was a great title, and maybe still the best superhero game I have ever played. Collecting all those superheroes was his main objective, and he just followed me about tracking each one down. His mum soon put a stop to him playing it though, he was four-years-old at the time and she had seen the box said PEGI 7, and she got on her soapbox being in the anti-games camp. She briefly flirted with Guitar Hero but the nail in the coffin was Mario Kart on the Wii, when she couldn’t drive in a straight line with the motion controls and a four-year-old was whooping her ass. Anyway I digress, the poor wee fella was distraught at the time, but now as he’s 5½ I think he’s gotten over the running about the house pretending to be the Hulk phase so we could maybe play it again.
Since that I bought Lego Jurassic World on the Wii U, as at the time he loved dinosaurs and, well, I ‘needed’ an excuse to buy it. He couldn’t get enough of it and we blitzed the main story campaign. Well, I say blitzed, he was four so we couldn’t play for eight hours straight. We played it maybe in hour bursts over about two or three weeks, and it’s the only game he wanted to play. I then bought The Lego Movie Videogame and Lego Dimensions for the PlayStation 4, and he hasn’t had quite the same attachment to those as he has the previous three I’ve mentioned. Maybe it was due to Mario Kart, Smash Bros., and the Yoshi and Kirby games being around on the Wii U that he was playing at the time, but no doubt he’ll go back to them. Then I recently got Lego Batman 3 on the PlayStation 4, as part of Sainbury’s Nectar points double up. Well, this time he was hooked again, and has now got to an age where he can complete levels on his own, and can go off and get those yellow bricks on his own.
He loves all the characters, even though he has never heard of half of them, but I’ve enjoyed unlocking them and trying to tell them who the character is even though a few of them are beyond me. Recently I’ve picked up digital copies of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Sage and Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean for the Xbox 360, which can be played on the Xbox One, for a combined total of less than a fiver. Bizarrely, as I write this, for the last week or so we have went back to playing Jurassic Park and have over 70% of the game completed. He would not rest until we had all the amber bricks, which meant we could use every dinosaur in free play. He was over the moon we got the elusive Dilophosaurus. We’ve spent more time on it now than we did the first time we played it over a year ago. It’s just as well I can play something different at night when the kids are in bed or I’d be going mad! He also has a 2DS, so he got his first Lego game for that. So I’ll see how that pans out.
Now to try and get him back onto Lego Dimensions. By reader Westhamwhit (gamertag/PSN ID/NN ID) The reader’s feature does not necessary represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk and follow us on Twitter. Summary: (10 characters minimum)0 The posting of advertisements, profanity, or personal attacks is prohibited.Click here to review our site terms of use. Add to my listI’ve lost count at how many LEGO games are in the wild now, but you can add one more as LEGO Jurassic World has been out on store shelves since the movie launched June 12th. LEGO games are a staple franchise, covering the likes of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, Marvel Superheroes, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and Pirates of the Caribbean to name a few. TT Games seems to “Legoize” many different franchises, and the world of dinosaurs is their next entry.
Capitalizing not only on the recently released Jurassic World, they have included all the movies in the Jurassic Park series, including Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Jurassic Park III. So, how does a LEGO translation of all these movies fair? Well we’ve battled a few dinos, navigated dense forests, crossed tropical waters, and dove into dino-dung to give you our thoughts. There is no need to go over the gameplay of LEGO Jurassic World as it follows the standard LEGO formula. For those living under a rock though, I can sum it up simply: solve puzzles, break LEGO items, rebuild them into something new, and traverse puzzle sections of the game to get from point A to point B. The game does not stray far from what has made LEGO games what they are. If there was one thing that was very noticeable though is that there is less combat than that found in previous LEGO games. I found that LEGO Jurassic World is heavier on puzzle solving and telling the story of the movies than other games before it.
Sure, you’ll fight an enemy here and there, but there is much less combat than that found in LEGO games like Marvel Superheroes, Batman or any of the Star Wars games. Each movie’s story plays out very well, highlighting key points in each narrative while keeping the gameplay moving along. There is a lot of humour in this game, including how previous death scenes in the movies are handled. For example, the pivotal scene in the original Jurassic Park where one of the characters is eaten by the T-Rex as he hides in the bathroom; in the game he does get eaten, but he is shown brushing the teeth of the T-Rex instead of being gruesomely swallowed. It’s these humorous touches to key points of the movies that will keep you chuckling. You’ll get through each chapter (movie) in about 2-3 hours, and this includes a little side hunting for some collectibles. Multiply this by 4 and you have about 8 to 12 hours of initial gameplay. I say initial as there is a whole lot of stuff to collect in order to 100% complete this game.
From all the characters and vehicles to the standard gold and red bricks, mini-kits, and of course dinosaurs. You can also do other stuff too, such as saving workers in “peril”, or healing dinosaurs throughout the hub. Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are already opened for gameplay, but you need to finish Jurassic Park to play through The Lost World then through Jurassic Park III. Part of the addictiveness is opening up as many characters as possible and coming back to each level to access areas you couldn’t before. As much as I enjoyed this aspect I found something new that overshadowed it, and it was playing as some of the dinosaurs in the game. You can play as some of the famed movies dinos as part of specific levels, but you can also hunt for amber stones and open up other dinosaurs for play later. You’ll get to relive that famed scene from the original Jurassic Park movie where the T-Rex fights off a pack of Velociraptors in the park’s visitor center or take on the role of a Triceratops and help Ellie and one of her friends get back to safety as a storm hits the island.
Playing as a dino is fun, and adds a bit more to the game’s overall experience. Being a father of two kids, one of the things that I was impressed with, and one that is not linked to gameplay, are the loading screens. Yes, I said loading screens. Here you’ll find Mr. DNA (from Jurassic Park and Jurassic World) pointing out that there is something to learn on screen. Look closely and you’ll find facts about dinosaurs that kids can read and discover. My son is in a “dino-phase” right now given the release of Jurassic World, and he was reading these facts out loud and finding some of them interesting. Yes, it’s a small feature but something I appreciated. Along with the good, I did find some frustration in the game. First off is the in-game hub. Although it looks pretty cool, it can be a ‘pain-in-the-butt’ to navigate. There is no ease of use and you have to literally click on everything to see where you may end up, and even then it’s generally not where you want to go, and you’ll spend wasted time trying to get to one specific point.
Given that the target audience is kids, this will prove to be frustrating for them if they want to go back to specific areas on a regular basis. “Sure, it doesn’t stray from the original formula brought forth from so many other LEGO games, but seeing the Jurassic Park franchise come to life in LEGO form is quite entertaining.” The other complaint I have, which I have found in LEGO games as a whole since I started playing them, is the control and the invisible walls. In regards to the control, it always feels floaty and is not nearly as accurate as it could be. Sure, this complaint maybe part of the diehard gamer in me, but man, the way your character feels when jumping from a platform or across an obstacle just doesn’t feel right. I missed my target or died more than a few times due to this. It has been this way for so long though I feel that they just continue to use the same programming. As for the invisible walls, I find that there could be so much more to explore, and then when I go over to an area that seems to be inviting me, BAM, I hit a wall and just run in place.
It can be a bit frustrating when you want to go somewhere in the level that seems part of the actual level, but you can’t. Given that LEGO Dimensions is just around the corner, I don’t know if this issue will ever be rectified. If there is one thing that I was really amazed at with LEGO Jurassic World, it is how TT Games have transformed the movie-based content into LEGO game content. The visuals are pretty solid. From the environments you traverse in, the vehicles you get to drive, to the dinosaurs that roam the land, it is pretty impressive. There is ample use of lighting and special effects too, from the way light shines though the Velociraptor transport bin at the start of the game to the way water drops hit the camera as you run through a level during the rain. I don’t think to many people will find a reason to complain here as the game runs pretty smooth and looks great on the current-gen consoles. As for the sound, it is generally a positive experience.
TT Games uses audio right from the movies, but the first three movies sound levels seem to be hit or miss. It’s almost as if some of the recording was poor quality at times. Of course the fourth movie, Jurassic World, has no such difficulties given it is currently in theaters. Regardless of any issues though, to hear Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neil, Richard Attenborough, Tea Leoni, William H. Macy and others from the original movies is a treat, and to hear the current actors such as Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard and B.D. Wong (who was in the first and current movie) is just as great. As for the dinosaurs, they have their own sounds and manage to convey the feeling of the great beasts that once roared and rumbled across the land. Once you hear the roar of a T-Rex or the thump of Triceratops as it walks across the ground, you’ll know what I mean. Of course we can’t forget the music, as John Williams score is front and center and the music as whole adds to the game. LEGO Jurassic World is a fairly solid game through and through.