Since 2005, the developers at Traveller’s Tales have been mining video game gold with their Lego-themed movie spoofs. It started with Stars Wars and then expanded to Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and Lord of the Rings, with some Marvel and DC comics superheroes thrown in for fun. It was a no-brainer, then, that Warner Bros. would tap the British studio to do a tie-in for its Lego movie. Lo and behold, both hit on the same day: Feb. 7. The game’s story follows the movie’s closely, beginning with a showdown between the evil Lord Business (voiced in the film by Will Ferrell) and the blind wizard Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) over a mysterious artifact known as the Kragle. With Business dispatching his foe, the scene shifts to Emmett Brickowski, a lowly construction worker in the big city who wants nothing more than to fit in. To do so, he must “follow the instructions” of his society, which include watching the same TV shows as everyone else – including the apparently hilarious comedy “Where’s My Pants?” – and periodically singing along to the insipidly catchy song, “Everything is Awesome” with his co-workers.
Before long, Emmett meets an enigmatic girl named WyldStyle (Elizabeth Banks) who takes him on an exciting adventure where he learns to live life beyond the instruction book. They travel to new, exotic Lego lands, including the Old West, Cloud Cuckoo Land and Lord Business’ headquarters in Octan Tower. The duo pick up new partners along the way, including the quick-to-anger unicorn/cat Unikitty (Alison Brie), the ornery cyborg pirate Metalbeard (Nick Offerman) and, of course, Batman (Will Arnett) who, we learn, “only works in black… and sometimes dark grey.”All the elements are fun, and yet, there’s something slightly off about The Lego Movie Videogame. While each previous movie-themed game brought with it a fresh cartoonish sensibility that spoofed, parodied and otherwise monkeyed around with its source material, this instalment is extraordinarily straight-laced.What laughs there are come almost entirely from clips of the movie, which makes it feel like the developers didn’t have much time – or perhaps the mandate – to come up with their own take.
That would hardly be a surprise, given that this is the sixth Lego game the studio has released since the beginning of 2013. As such, if you haven’t first seen the movie, you might not get the jokes.As with previous Lego games, this one explores the locales of its source material with well-crafted levels full of puzzles that can only be overcome through a combination of the characters’ abilities. Emmett, for example, can fix broken machines with his wrench or dig up holes with his jackhammer. Wyldstyle, meanwhile, can jump to high ledges while Batman – besides just being Batman – can hit switches with his Batarang and pull items with his grapple-gun.In this way, the game fills in some of the unseen moments of the movie, such as when Emmett and crew try to build a submarine to escape from the clutches of Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) and his robot goons, or when they create a giant mech from construction vehicles.There are a few new features, including the “Master Build” ability. Just about every character can stand on glowing green circles found within each level and visualize how to use surrounding Lego pieces to build new tools or vehicles that can be used to proceed.
Emmett is one of the few who doesn’t initially have this capability, since he’s been trained to only follow instructions.On the flip side, most levels require players to find instruction pages to build required items, and Emmett is the only one who can interpret those. Doing so kicks off a mini-game where the player must guess the next piece required. Similarly, another mini-game sees Astronaut Benny (Charlie Day) hack computers through a Pac-Man-like interface.There’s further variety too – most of it well done – such as the rail-shooter sequence in the Old West where the heroes are pursued in a stage coach, or a scene where the giant Metalbeard takes on a horde of smaller enemies. If you’ve played even a few of the many previous Lego games, the feeling of been-there-done-that will be hard to escape. But these small, new additions give this latest entry some degree of differentiation.The voice acting is also fantastic and amazingly authentic. The game uses sound-alikes of the film’s respective voice actors and just about all of them are spot-on (especially whoever is doing Morgan Freeman).
It’s just too bad the stand-ins weren’t given more unique material to work with.The Lego Movie Videogame is surprisingly short, with the main storyline taking only about six hours to complete. Of course, there are plenty more hours waiting for players who want to seek out all the hidden items and puzzles through each level’s free play mode, which is unlocked when it’s completed in the main story. But even then, there are fewer collectibles and new characters to find than in previous Lego games, while the open-world hubs in between levels are also much smaller. It seems clear the developers were under significant time constraints to finish this game.Still, The Lego Movie Videogame isn’t a cheap cinematic cash-in. While it doesn’t measure up to Traveller’s Tales masterpiece, last year’s Lego City Undercover for the Wii U, and it doesn’t live up to its theme song – where “everything is awesome” – it is indeed a colourful and fun puzzler that’s sure to please fans.
But you’ll probably want to see the movie first.It's only been out for one weekend, but you've probably — like most of the world — seen "The LEGO Movie" multiple times. But did you catch all the Easter Eggs and plot points that zip by during the non-stop speedy dialogue and action? Here are some of our favorite blink-and-you-miss-it moments. And spoilers on, of course: "Eight And A Half Years Later" Right at the top of the movie, after Lord Business (Will Ferrell) and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) battle for possession of the all-powerful Kragle, we cut to a title screen that says, "Eight And A Half Years Later." While this is a nice preview of the running "very specific time frame" joke throughout the movie, it's also way more important to the plot. That's because Finn (Jadon Sand), the kid who ultimately turns out to be playing with the LEGOs in the movie is eight and a half years old. So though it's never explicitly stated, when Finn was born, The Man Upstairs locked his toys away, separated the worlds and made sure that his son would never play with them.
Given the poignant ending, this is yet another beautiful, emotional detail that adds to the richness of the film. Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman all get their time to shine in the movie, but there is one other DC Comics superhero gets his big screen debut. That would be the Flash, seen during Metal Beard's flashback to the Master Builders' initial assault on Lord Business' stronghold. He doesn't get any lines, so hopefully we'll get to see more of the speedster in the sequel. When Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Emmet (Chris Pratt) visit The Old West, you can hear a plinky, olde timey Western version of "Everything Is Awesome" playing in the bar. One of the biggest cameos in the movie has to be when the Millennium Falcon shows up unexpectedly next to our heroes' pirate ship. Though they weren't able to get Harrison Ford back as Han Solo (he's voiced by Keith Ferguson, who's done various Ford characters on "Robot Chicken"), they did manage to snag Billy Dee Williams for Lando, and Anthony Daniels for C-3P0.
It's surprising that the Warner Brothers movie managed to get Disney's talent, but the long relationship between LEGO and Lucasfilm makes the whole thing a little more understandable. And super freakin' awesome. Another big screen reunion, Channing Tatum plays Superman and Jonah Hill plays Green Lantern, reprising their partnership from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller's "21 Jump Street." The team will once again reunite on "22 Jump Street," though out of their superhero costumes. When Vitruvius runs down all the worlds Lord Business has tried to lock down, he mentions there's a bunch we don't care about. One that quickly flashes on screen is Bioncile, a LEGO line that ran from 2001-2010 with a deep, complicated back-story of its own. Though this may have been a joke at the expense of some of the brick-maker's failed toys, it's also an indication of places the story could go in the sequel. What's With All The Croissants? One of the more knowing jokes in the movie finds Emmet's "friends" talking about what makes them all different, which includes eating croissants, and loving turkey drumsticks.