Special bricks have been a part of the LEGO games since the beginning, but LEGO Marvel Super Heroes puts in a new twist. Instead of Red Bricks, you’ll need to find 11 Deadpool Bricks around the universe. Each brick is found in one of the 11 special bonus Deadpool missions after you complete the main story, and 4 are already unlocked for you. After you find a brick, you can buy it from Deadpool. The bricks can be used to activate special abilities! To find Deadpool to buy the bricks, go to his room on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Use the elevator to go down to the main area, and then go into the hallway that leads to the Control Room. Go left into another hallway and Deadpool’s room is to the right. It has a neon sign. This brick is already unlocked. Use it to get the “Studs Score Multiplier x2” ability. This will double the worth of studs. It costs 1,000,000 studs. This brick is found in the Daily Bugle level in NYC. Use someone with telekinesis to arrange the trophies in the office to get it.
This one gives you the “Studs Score Multiplier x4” ability. Buy it for 2,000,000 studs. Find this brick in the Feeling Frisky level at Fisk Tower, after you’ve already completed the mission. You need to have found 50 Gold Bricks to get in. Make sure you have characters available with Telekinesis and Heat Beam to get the brick. Use the beam to get through the golden door, then grab the brick with Telekinesis behind the Kingpin painting. This one unlocks the “Studs Score Multiplier x6” ability and costs 3,000,000 studs. This brick is for the “Studs Score Multiplier x8” effect, and you can find it in the Reptilian Ruckus level in the Reptile House. You need 125 Gold Bricks to enter the level. You need a character with Electricity and one who is Magnetic. To get the brick, charge the transformer and then open up a metal container. This brick costs 4,000,000 studs. This is the best stud multiplier brick, which gives the skill “Studs Score Multiplier x10”. You can find it in Stark Tower.
The brick is in the Piñata at the Post-Credits Victory Party. Use someone with telekinesis to get it. This one costs 5,000,000 studs. The Disguises brick gives each character a mask. It’s already unlocked, so buy it for 300,000 studs from Deadpool. This brick will give you the Gold Brick Detector, and it is helpful for finding all the Gold Bricks. Grab it in the Nuff Said level at Marvel HQ. To get it, complete the Deadpool painting puzzle. It costs 200,000 studs to purchase. This one is the Minikit Detector, and it will help you find all the Minikits around the universe. To find this brick, go to the Put Up Your Dukes level at the Fogwell Gym. You will need to activate the control panel that is next to Captain America to get it. It costs 200,000 studs. This brick is found in Bro-Tunheim level at the docks. It gives you the effect Mini-Characters, which makes everyone become tiny! You can only get this brick after you have found 200 Gold Bricks. To get the brick, you need to use the Heat Beam on the ice and then quickly grab the brick.
This effect costs 100,000 studs. This brick will give you the ability to pick up ghost studs. Get it from the A Shock Withdrawal level in the Federal Bank. Use a character with fire abilities to get it next to the bank truck. This brick is 100,000 studs to purchase. This one is found in the Stranger Danger level in the Sanctum Sanctorum. It will let you use the fast build skill for when you are putting together LEGOs. Bring a character with telekinesis and assemble all the crates to unlock it. It costs 100,000 studs to buy. This brick gives you the Attract Studs skill, which makes all the studs nearby fly into you. Find it in the Stunt Show Surprise level in the Circus Tent. Use a magnetic character to get the brick out of the cage. It costs 600,000 studs to buy from Deadpool. Get this brick in The Thrill of the Chess level at The Raft. You need to use Venom to find it. This brick gives you the Character Token Detector, so you can find nearby tokens. It costs 800,000 studs.
This brick is unlocked from the beginning, and you can buy it for 100,000 studs. When you use it, it will put a hat on whatever character you are playing as. This one is also already unlocked, and it costs 100,000 studs. If you turn it on, your character will get an extra heart added to their health. Nora has been writing for over a decade and playing video games for even longer. She has a special penchant for JRPGs, horror games, and Steam sales.When J. R. R. Tolkien dared to imagine an epic tale of a small, unassuming Hobbit getting roped into a realm wide struggle between the forces of light and darkness, a creature who would become the central figure in an unlikely fellowship charged with a task that would decide the fate of Middle Earth, I wonder if he ever sat back and imagined it all…in the form of Lego bricks.After all, Lego didn’t exist until after the 1930’s, and if it did, our friend Tolkien would have been far to busy constructing scale models of Middle Earth out of Lego pieces to spend much time writing fantasy books.
Luckily for his fans, he never got that chance. However, Lego toys are alive and popular today, and over the years we’ve seen more then a few of our beloved books, cartoons and movies transformed into colorful plastic and assimilated into the ever growing Legoverse. In video games alone we’ve witnessed a wave of Lego adaptations, most recently by the talent of Traveller’s Tales, the developers best known for their successful Lego parodies of the Batman, Harry Potter and Star Wars series. As was inevitable, Tolkien’s widely successful novel The Lord of the Rings got the same Lego treatment, with the entire trilogy remade into building block form; but what concerned me was whether a story with such a serious, dramatic tone would transition well into the often goofy Lego franchise as other games have in the past. Star Wars and Harry Potter, for example, are in many ways naturally light hearted, both intended originally for younger audiences, but the story of Frodo’s perilous sojourn into the heart of Mordor to destroy the one ring inspires a much darker subject matter.
Leave it to Traveller’s Tales though to alleviate my worries, as they expertly weave Lego charm and Tolkien literature into a web of fun and nostalgia that hits the right notes in all the right places. In the fashion of most Lego titles, the environmental design is a mixture of realistic models and Lego pieces, the latter making up most of the characters, usable items and interactive objects, while the former makes up the visual aesthetic. It looks good, the two different styles mesh well together, and the frame rate remains consistent despite all the object and character animations. All of those objects by the way, from crops to barrels, drop studs when broken – studs being the typical Lego currency used to unlock new characters. Be prepared to destroy everything in your path if your aim is to collect all 80 playable figurines, because you’ll have to be “a stud” to catch em ‘all! After a brief, playable introduction to the gameplay, where Elrond, Elendil and his son battle and defeat Lord Sauron and his army, your adventure begins in the small village of Hobbiton, aka The Shire.
The main map of Lego The Lord of the Rings is open world, new areas being added as you complete each story quest. Whether you head for the first story marker or begin your hunt for collectibles and side quests, the way you choose to play is entirely up to you. Either way, there’s a ton of content to explore, and you’ll find map stones in each section that, when activated, will highlight points of interest with banners and question marks on the map for you to discover. Some of these discoveries are tough to get at though, and will require you to solve puzzles using your party member’s individual skills, or to make use of special items you’ve crafted from the blacksmith. These items require recipes to be made, and are fashioned from blocks of Mithril, both of which can be found in the main world and in the story levels respectively. In fact, each main quest concludes with a completion screen that tracks what you’ve collected, like Mithril and recipes. It also tracks “red bricks”, which when found unlock special options in the menu, like invincibility and stud multipliers.
Once a level is finished, you’ll also unlock it’s free play mode, which not only let’s you replay it, but let’s you enjoy it again with the other characters you’ve unlocked and the tools you’ve crafted, revealing secret areas and collectibles you previously couldn’t access. It’s not surprising that Lego LOTR is pretty darn long, and that’s excluding all the extra stuff you can do. The main storyline itself encompasses the entire three volumes of LOTR all in one game, and does a masterful job of recreating each moment in an accurate yet quirky Lego fashion. Kids will get a kick out of the characters clownish antics like Merry and Pippin wearing mustache glasses during the iconic fellowship dialogue; while us older fans will enjoy reliving the magic through entertaining cut scenes, enjoyable battles against mobs of easy enemies and familiar problem solving gameplay. It helps that for the second time in a Lego video game, the characters actually talk instead of the usual shrugs, smirks and gibberish;
and the voice work is pulled directly from the movies, as is the beautiful soundtrack. It’s surprising how similar to the films the game is. I caught myself more then once with the urge to rewatch the movies. I’m really impressed with how much fun my son and I are having with this title. The drop in and out, split screen multiplayer is up to the usual Lego standards, and completing the game with a companion makes collecting studs a lot more interesting and a lot less tiring. Many of the story quests will actually split missions into two separate events on the same screen, such as the hobbits avoiding a ring wraith while Gandalf battles Sarumon in the tower of Isengard. Each player controls one of the protagonists, and can hop to other party members at any given time to gain use of their unique abilities. Getting killed doesn’t mean game over though, since your Lego mates will respawn immediately; the only penalty being a portion of your studs. A lot of the puzzles mirror actual events in the books and movies, like when the fellowship makes it’s failed attempt to traverse the snowy walls of the Misty Mountains.
Your larger characters like Aragorn and Legolas actually have to carry the hobbits and Gimli through the snow, their small stature making solo traversal impossible. These little details are what makes Lego LOTR such a fun experience. All is not perfect in the land of Middle Earth though. Occasionally during fights or chase scenes, the camera behaved a little screwy, and I have to admit, the speed in which the camera turns is frustratingly slow. Also, the stud trail used to find the next quest or map markers resets itself often for no good reason, and I’ve experienced a quest or two that couldn’t continue due to a bug of some sort, not triggering the event or cut scene needed to advance. In any game, the good points will always be accompanied by some bad ones, but fortunately for Lego LOTR, there isn’t very much to be worried about. Overall, this is my favorite Lego game to date. Traveller’s Tales never fails to impress with the way they handle these valuable licenses.