The Hobbit LEGO video game release, reviews and a few cheat codes for some extra fun April 11, 2014 1:45 am by Demosthenes - Those who have been waiting for LEGO The Hobbit, rejoice. It’s out (except on the Wii U — those folks will apparently have to wait until April 22). The games allows players to adventure within key locations from the (first two) of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films, including Lake-town, Dale, Erebor, Bag End, Goblin-town, Mirkwood, Rivendell and the High Pass over the Misty Mountains. From the product blurb: Fans will assume the roles of their favorite characters, including Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, and the Dwarves of Erebor: Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, Óin, Glóin, Dwalin, Balin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori and Ori, each possessing a unique and hilarious ability. One of the main new features of the game allows players to utilize the Dwarves’ combined abilities such as buddy fighting, two-player attack, staff climb, mace swing and belly bounce to help them fight Orcs and fouler things or to progress through the game.
IGN has a review of the game out already, and by-and-large they like what they see. 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. Read the complete review here. Cheat codes for added fun and amusement Fancy drafting the Witch-king, Sauron, or even Peter Jackson into your team? These unlock codes that Gamefront unearthed will do it for you right away without having to . Unlike most in the modern age of gaming, the Lego titles keep cheating alive. These codes might not give invincibility or anything super cool (You’ll have to find the Red Bricks for that) they do provide for instant access to some of Middle-Earth’s most iconic characters.
See the unlock codes and how to use them here. As mentioned, the game is available now for all announced systems — Nintendo 3DS, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, and Xbox One — except for Wii U which will have an April 22 release. Posted in Gaming, Headlines, Hobbit Movie, LEGO, Merchandise, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Video games on April 11, 2014 byThe Lego Movie Videogame Platform: PlayStation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U, Windows PC, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS Publisher: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment Release: February 7, 2014 The Lego Movie Videogame sticks to many of the series’ tried-and-true tropes. You’re going to spend a lot of time running around contained levels brimming with interesting objects that you need to bash order to free their constituent pieces, all the while keeping an eye out for key items that will help you solve clever contextual puzzles that usually involve building something new.
But in a manner similar to last year’s surprisingly bold Lego City Undercover for Wii U, it doesn’t rely as heavily on pop culture licenses as it does on the appeal of Lego itself, on millions of people’s unabashed adoration of the colourful, 55-year-old plastic building blocks that have – remarkably – become the top selling toy in the world and one of Denmark’s largest exports. More importantly, much like the film upon which it is based – a story about a Lego minifigure construction worker discovering his imagination and using it to defeat a mastermind bent on imposing a sort of fascist order on the entire Lego universe – The Lego Movie Videogame acts as both an explanation and a strong justification for our love of a toy that embodies childlike imagination. The first thing franchise fans will likely notice upon jumping into the game is that everything is made of Lego. Previous Lego games cheated a bit. Just about everything had a plastic sheen, and many objects were clearly architected with a variety of authentic Lego elements, but most things – trees, buildings, the ground – clearly weren’t constructed with the Danish building blocks.
That’s not the case in this game, which does its best to stay true to the film’s stop-motion style and these-are-real-toys-and-proud-of-it vibe. Every building looks like one of those complex $200 modular Lego city sets kids covet at the Lego Store. Lamp posts, couches, vehicles – all are constructed with authentic Lego elements. Music coming out of boom boxes takes on the form of 1×1 flat tiles with pictures of musical notes adhered to them. The illusions of running water, fiery explosions, and smoke are all achieved with rapidly moving bricks. The closest the game comes to fudging anything is the ground in some areas. TT Games puts down Lego base plates – those big flat studded plates that serve as the foundation for most Lego sets – but the studs sometimes appear flattened, an illusion of depth created by shadows drawn away from two-dimensional painted studs. Aside from that, the Lego world crafted here is pretty much 100 per cent legit. Which means you can build anything you see in the game (assuming you have the proper bricks).
And that, as The Lego Movie’s catchy theme song merrily insists, is awesome. Level design feels a little different than in previous Lego games, too. Sure, you’ll break things apart and build new stuff out of the smashed pieces, and solve little contextual puzzles through a mix of exploration and trial and error play. And it’s still a great couch co-op experience, with sequences in which a pair of players can play off each other’s unique abilities, taking turns clearing paths that let the other progress. However, the levels tend to be a fair bit shorter and more dynamic. Instead of the marathon levels of Lego games past that could balloon to 90-minutes or more, these levels are shorter and punchier, set in some wonderfully fantastical locales from them film (the cloud realm is a feast for the eyes), and often include more cinematic, action-oriented scenarios that involve things like driving vehicles and sliding along hills. Better yet, there are new activities designed to play off Lego as a toy.
Master builder characters like Wyldstyle (the girl with the purple streaks in her hair) can pull bricks from the environment and build ad-hoc structures — like catapults and clown cars — from their imagination. Others, like construction worker Emmet, require the sort of instructions that come with Lego sets, and a big part of the game revolves around finding these pages — they’re printed on flat tile bricks — and using them to create necessary objects. When you have enough, you get to play a little timed mini-game that involves picking out proper Lego elements scattered around a wheel. These are nice additions to the game. More importantly, they highlight the narrative theme of contrasting free thinkers and those who insist on thoughtlessly doing everything by the book, and in doing so tie some of the clever messages found within the static film to the interactive world of the game. Rules, according to both the game and movie, are like Lego creations: They’re made to be broken.
It’s a safe bet that kids are going to come away from the game thinking about how they play with their real-world Lego, re-examining what they see in their sets’ instruction booklets and wondering what they might be able to do with their imaginations instead. Adults, meanwhile, can just sit back enjoy the game’s lightly subversive vibe and terrific sense of humour, which, like the movie, mixes low-brow jokes with biting commentary. Few games have such potential to make kids and grown-ups giggle in equal measure. One word of caution: If you decide to play the game before watching the critically acclaimed film from which it takes its name, you do so at your own peril. TT Games’ adventure follows the movie’s plot pretty closely and pulls more than a dozen lengthy narrative cut scenes straight from the big screen (not to mention the A-list Hollywood talents who lent their voices to the film). It’s a terrific treat for anyone who’s seen and enjoyed the movie, but it serves as a giant spoiler for anyone who hasn’t.