Your request appears to be from an automated process. If this is incorrect, notify us by clicking here to be redirected.Lego has officially announced a video game adaptation of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit. The game will let you step into the square, plastic shoes of Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the Grey and 13 of their dwarf compadres as they journey to find adventure and fight the evil dragon Smaug. Dialogue from the movie provides the voices for the characters in the trailer, but the cutscenes retain the Lego tongue-in-cheek physical comedy familiar to fans of the video game franchise. See also: Lego 'Blues Brothers' Reenacts Classic Action Sequence The trailer offers the vague release date of "Coming 2014," so don't expect to get this for your kids — or, face it, for yourself — this Christmas. However, you should be slaying orcs and smacking Smeagol within the next calendar year. BONUS: 15 Cool Lego Minifigure Facts to Build Into Your BrainIt was going to take a lot to impress me after playing the last LEGO video game, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes.
Also the alarming number of plastic-brick-themed titles emerging from Travellers Tales (three in under a year) provoked me to find as many faults in LEGO: The Hobbit as possible. Yet despite my honest pessimistic intentions, it was still an enjoyable experience. While it never matched the brilliance of earlier titles - it was fun in a pint-sized package. Like our hero, Bilbo Baggins, who in this game is even smaller than his usual hobbity stature. Just like in the books (and yes, movies), Bilbo gets begrudgingly caught up in an epic quest filled with dwarves, elves, wizards, and a massive fire-breathing Benedict Cumberbatch. There are only three New Zealanders who haven’t heard of The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit movies, so we won’t go into too much depth about the story. But LEGO: The Hobbit follows the storyline of the latest two movies almost scene for scene. Which works against the game. While it’s amusing to watch little LEGO minifigs leaping about, re-enacting sequences from the movies - the novelty quickly wears off.
Indeed, seeing a small little plastic toy blaring out Sir Ian McKellen’s voice is comedic, but with lines taken directly from the movies, the end result acts like a pantomime copy of the films with some extra comedy injected along the way. It’s not surprising considering the game is based on the cinema releases, but after playing LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, which was packed full of original storylines and clever character developments, it feels a little forced. However LEGO: The Hobbit adds a lot to the mix when you actually start playing. As usual, all of the fan favourite components that make a LEGO game so brilliant are still in place: You have a massive cast of characters each with their own abilities; infinite lives to make the game fun and accessible; splitscreen multiplayer co-operative play; an addictive ingame currency of collectible bricks to unlock more content; and plenty of quirky slapstick humour that gamers both young and old will enjoy. It is also one of the prettiest LEGO games to date, matching the attention to detail as Marvel Super Heroes, but really impresses in populating the screen with hundreds of minifig bodies - a necessity considering the epic battles in Tolkien lore.
However the visuals in LEGO The Hobbit feel slightly too polished, especially in terms of the backgrounds, which lack the blocky DIY charm of what a LEGO game should be like. This blandness also transfers into the characters, which again is greatly noticeable after the genius diversity of Marvel Super Heroes. The cast is taken directly from the movies, which is a given - but as most people will know, this consists mainly of dwarves. All of which look and play almost in exactly the same manner, except one is fat and another is bald. Then there is the titular character, Bilbo who is almost identical again. It’s only the elves (there are several of them) and Gandalf the wizard who offer the more inventive, enjoyable gameplay later down the track. It’s worth the wait as firing miniature arrows and casting colourful spells is a blast in battle, especially with a friend by your side. Which is once again, where this LEGO actioner excels. Travellers Tales have created another sterling example of how to make a family-friendly platformer.
There are challenges and puzzles that will test older gamers, and plenty of action for casual and younger audiences. While some of the maps aren’t very well planned out, often leading to random running around until you see the way forward, LEGO The Hobbit is still accessible and fun. However for those who already own LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, or the recently released LEGO The Movie - there is nothing special on offer here, except perhaps for die-hard fans of the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings.The Force Awakens finally gets a video game adaptation, but does this latest Lego game manage to construct any new ideas? It’s now over a decade since the release of Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. A recreation of the three prequel movies with Lego minifigures and models, at the time it was expected to be only a minor release – a novelty that would only appeal to small children. Today it’s one of the most successful, and prolific, video game franchises in the world. But surprisingly it’s been five years since the last Lego Star Wars title, and since the other Lego movie games haven’t changed much in that time the responsibility for refreshing the formula now falls to the movie franchise that started it all…
What’s also surprising is that this is the first console game to be based on The Force Awakens. Star Wars: Battlefront does feature the desert planet of Jakku, but 20 years before the events of the movie and with none of the familiar characters or vehicles. In fact, EA hasn’t confirmed any sequel trilogy games at all yet, even though presumably some of their forthcoming titles will be set in that time period. That no doubt explains why Warner Bros. has been allowed such a surprising amount of access to the movie’s cast, with almost everyone reprising their roles and recording new dialogue – even Harrison Ford. We’ll get to the new features in a moment, but in terms of the basic gameplay and structure this is still pretty much the same as it was back in 2005. Your little minifigures run around shooting, punching, or lightsabering hapless Stormtroopers, as you complete various Lego-based puzzles against fixed camera backdrops. Ideally you’ll do so with a friend, as offline co-op has always been one of the games’ key appeals – especially given how approachable they are for non-gamers.
It always feels odd to defend an overused formula but, like James Bond or superhero films, some work so well they become like comfort food, where only a small deviation or gimmick is needed to keep your interest. In this case one of the major new gimmicks is, of all things, a cover-based shooting system. Obviously it’s not exactly Gears Of War, but anyone with a gun can get behind cover and then pop out to aim at enemies. It’s simplistic – if your aim’s that bad you can just press the left trigger to auto-target – but it works perfectly well as a sort of ‘my first third person shooter’ for kids or less experienced adults. The other big new feature is the ability to build more than one object out of a single pile of Lego, by going up to it and breaking it down to its component parts again. This helps to sell the idea that you’re playing with real Lego and gives something for the bad guys to aim at, rather than just ineffectually shooting at you all the time. Although the boast of more advanced artificial intelligence doesn’t really amount to anything else other than Stormtroopers occasionally calling in reinforcements.
Vehicle sections, so often a low point of Lego games, have also undergone a rethink and now often take place in small open world areas. The ones where one person is piloting and the other is manning the guns are particularly good, if both players know what they’re doing. The other positive is the game’s sense of humour, which is obviously not a new feature but still a key attraction. The physical comedy is aimed at the particularly young, but there’s plenty to amuse adults too, including gags about everything from Stormtroopers’ aiming to Harrison Ford breaking his leg and what Kylo Ren’s bedroom looks like. Rather than overfamiliarity, the two major knocks against Lego The Force Awakens are not really its fault at all. The first is that with only one film to work with (the other Lego Star Wars games have always adapted three films at a time or multiple cartoon episodes) the plot is stretched out to breaking point. The game realises this and adds in extra stories taken from the expanded universe, such as how Han and Chewie caught the rathtars or rescuing Admiral Ackbar.
These are amongst the best bits in the game but they’re very short and take a frustrating amount of time to unlock. The other problem is that we still enjoyed Lego Dimensions more, despite its gameplay being arguably simpler (although it does have much better boss battles). But its mixing of properties does much more to give an illusion of variety than the shallow new gimmicks of Lego The Force Awakens. To be honest, we’d be much more interested in seeing Star Wars added to Lego Dimensions than another standalone game – and that may well happen next year, now that Disney Infinity is no more. In fact, you can’t help thinking that The Force Awakens would’ve been much better suited to one of the new style of larger Lego Dimensions expansions. The upcoming one for the new Ghostbusters has six levels and seems to be fairly substantial, which appears to be a much better fit for a single film adaptation. But those decisions are, we’re sure, well outside of the developer’s control and this is still one of the best standalone Lego games of recent years, just a notch below Lego Marvel Super Heroes (not to be confused with the inferior Lego Marvel’s Avengers) and on par with Lego Batman 3.