Pros: Entertaining story, gameplay improvements, some gamepad use.Cons: Stop-and-start narrative structure, touchscreen bug.Once upon a time, developer Traveller’s Tales created the game Lego Star Wars. They then created more movie-based games, first with pantomimed vignettes, then with dialogue. Then they moved into original stories. With The Lego Movie Videogame, they have come full circle, making a Lego game out of a Lego movie done in the style of a Lego game. Lego, a company founded on putting pieces together, seems to be piecing together its own media empire.Developed by: TT GamesPublished by: WBIEGenre: Action-AdventureFor ages: 10 and upPlatform: Wii URelease Date: February 7, 2014The decidedly nonsensical story centers on a construction worker named Emmett who stumbles into a battle between good and evil, as bad guy Lord Business works on a weapon to destroy the world and a team of good guys, able to build anything out of anything (i.e. out of Legos), tries to stop him.
Soon Emmett is battling robots and building machines, traveling through the wild west and a surreal cloud world, working alongside a kick-ass woman, a cutesie kitten, an ancient mage, and several superheroes.The story is generally well told, featuring cut scenes taken from the movie (which looks to be quite funny), but as it goes on it seems to spend less and less time trying to hold together the movie’s plot threads. Characters pop up out of nowhere; an astronaut suddenly joins the party, Abraham Lincoln quietly and without explanation waits for you to repair his hovercraft, the bad guy, for some reason, seems obsessed with the oversized detritus of the human race.There also appears to be some sort of evil corporation theme, but I only know that because at one point I was able to change an advertising billboard into a protest billboard. Overall the story still makes sense, and even offers a genuinely surprising and unusual finale, but it’s clear a lot is missing in terms of concepts and narrative;
until I see the movie I’m going to have an incomplete idea of the story.The gameplay follows the formula that has made the series so endlessly popular. Once again, you control a number of different characters, each with specific abilities. Some can fire weapons or grappling hooks. Some can make high jumps. Emmett can break through fragile areas with his jackhammer and use blueprints to build objects. Some characters are “master builders” who can simply grab miscellaneous objects and swirl them together, tornado-like, into elaborate machines.Once again there’s a lot of breaking things, building things, and bashing attackers. This is one of the more challenging games in the series, by which I mean, it is sometimes mildly challenging, as when you must climb up a giant robot’s back, pull off a wheel, then switch to a different character to destroy the robot before it gets up. It’s not Donkey Kong hard, but it takes a little effort.The game also introduces a few cute mini-games.
When Emmett builds something, we see it being put together piece by piece, and occasionally players have to choose the right piece from a wheel. The astronaut accesses terminals, using a vaguely Pacman-ish interface to hack into computers. There’s also a rhythm game that pops up a couple of times, done to the movie’s cheesy, catchy song, “Everything is Awesome”. None of this is terribly challenging, but it does offer variety.Emmet travels through a several worlds, from a city to a wild west-themed town to Cuckoo Cloud, a surreal world where breaking objects cause them to explode into fireworks and where you acquire the laughably cutesy Rainbow Kitty. The biggest oddity in the game is its attempt to maintain the hub world concept that is part of the Lego formula, in which missions are launched from an open environment. Since the game’s varied locales prescribe a large, coherent hub world, the developers have created mini-hubs for different worlds.When you finish a level, instead of immediately continuing the story to the next, there is a mini-hub where you must solve some simple puzzle or wander a few steps to start up the next chapter.
It gives the story a weird, halting feel, especially when one level ends in the middle of peril and you suddenly find yourself rambling around a peaceful environment. Once you’ve played through the story, these hub worlds make more sense, as they give you extra gameplay, but it is as inelegant a solution to retaining a hub world as I can think of.The gamepad touchscreen has two useful icons, one to call up a character-switch menu, the other to instantly change to off-TV play.Unfortunately, the touchscreen is a little buggy. The character menu exits out every time there’s a cutscene or any actions outside of user control, and there’s a bug that sometimes causes both the character and off-TV icons to disappear entirely. But when it was working I preferred it to calling up the character wheel or using the hotkey to swap to whoever you are facing.While not quite perfect, The Lego Movie Video Game is one of the best games in the series, with a few twists in the gameplay, two-player co-op, a little extra challenge, and an engrossing and entertaining story.
Built on itself, the game is a meta-Lego marvel. The game based on the novelization of the making-of-the-movie documentary can’t be far behind.It’s been two decades since we’ve last seen Robin on the big screen, despite having a quartet of films featuring Batman. The Boy Wonder is making his return Friday in perhaps the most surprising superhero film, “The Lego Batman Movie,” a boisterous comedy spun off from the 2014 blockbuster “The Lego Movie,” where Will Arnett voiced a cocky, brash version of The Dark Knight. In an “Arrested Development” reunion, Michael Cera takes on the role of Robin, his second comic book-inspired role after “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” While Robin has been absent from film for 20 years, last seen in 1997’s “Batman & Robin,” you can argue that he’s a quintessential component to the Batman mythos. A light to his darkness. “This iteration of Batman that has captured everyone’s attention in the last 20 years is this brooding loner,” Cera explains.
“He’s living in this sort of self-imposed prison of his own making. And so Robin is one of the few people who infiltrates that, cracks through the icy exterior.” amNewYork spoke with Cera about the movie. A lot of actors have played Robin. What makes your version unique? Well, this Robin is a pretty unique take on it just because I think it’s a child’s version of Robin, which I haven’t seen — an orphan, living in this orphanage, who idolizes Bruce Wayne and kind of gloms onto him. Do you have a favorite portrayal of Robin? I really used to love the old “Batman” TV show with Burt Ward playing Robin. That show was just really fun. I liked it as a 5 year old. There’s something about that that’s so easily accessible and captivating for some reason. Were you relieved to play Robin without having to wear a costume? I don’t know if relief is the word I would use [laughs]. How was your reunion with Will? The truth is that actually I never had a chance to record with Will.
So all the chemistry that might be in the movie is a construct of the editing and the animation. But that’s a testament to both of those things I think. I mean, I think even if we had recorded in the same room it would be relentlessly edited because this film, the tone of this film relies so heavily on the rhythm of the movie. All of the chemistry is really a product of the animators and of [director] Chris McKay’s control of the tone. How was it working with Chris? I had such a great time working with him actually. He’s great with actors. He’s a fun and really encouraging leader. I think a great trait for anyone leading a project to have is to make the people working for that person and working toward that person’s vision, to make them feel confident. He’s really good at that. He laughed a lot. We would normally just leave the tape rolling and try a line 50 different ways and you feel like you have it, you fool around a little, whatever inspiration comes to you in the moment.
He would be very encouraging of that and laugh a lot and if you said something that maybe sparked something or a new direction, he was really good on the spot, creating gags and taking things in new directions. So that really encourages you to bring yourself to it, to try your best. You feel like you’re being appreciated. This film has some fun villain cameos. Did you have a favorite? I was pretty excited with the Gremlins showing up. I’m not even sure kids are going to get half of the references in the movie. I don’t know if this happened to you, but I know I’ve seen a movie and there’s a reference I don’t know or get, and I don’t even realize it and then years later you see the thing and you retroactively appreciate the reference. Maybe that’ll happen for kids. You’re going to be on the new “Twin Peaks.” Can you reveal anything about your role? No, not at all. I mean, I don’t know so much about it, and I signed a nondisclosure agreement, which I’m pretty sure anyone who even stepped into a transportation vehicle for that had to sign.