LEGO is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Its construction- and destruction-based entertainment remains a lasting form of joy for children and adults alike. For many readers, as well as myself, LEGO sets and LEGO video games made up an enjoyable block of your childhood. There’s something special about the tactile feeling of pressing bricks together, something satisfying about that specific click it makes. And there’s no greater joy than stepping back after finishing construction, whether it was guided by the instruction booklet or simply improvised throughout the process and looking at your creations. While many LEGO video games have been created, a majority of them choose not to focus on this building as their center point. LEGO Bricktales sets its sights on recreating that feeling piece by piece while guiding you on an adventure across many diverse locales.
Unfortunately, the game entirely falls apart, and its very foundation is incredibly weak. The game itself has you walking through largely forgettable landscapes at a snail’s pace, frequently stopping and being gatekept by either an important item you have yet to receive, an upgrade you have yet to obtain, or a puzzle that you have to solve. These items that you obtain throughout your adventure serve one purpose alone: to press a single button in certain locations to move between otherwise inaccessible areas of the map. For example, the first item that you obtain is a whip, which allows you to grapple onto trees and leap up or down ledges. That’s all that it does, however, and you don’t even feel like you’re the one using it. The upgrades are given to your robotic companion and are supposedly Alien in origin. However, they are the only upgrades that you are actually able to use on the go. It’s not as if that’s any consolation, however: the first upgrade you obtain provides you with the ability to slam into the ground, destroying specific bricks in a shockingly small radius. Upon using this move, you are forced to a standstill and are required to wait until the unsatisfying animation concludes before moving again.
The puzzles are the game’s main gimmick, providing you with a separate space to build out objects and solve puzzles by maneuvering and building with an assortment of bricks. This sounds like a novel concept, both in audio design and as an idea. However, the controls of this portion of the game are frustratingly difficult and frequently result in headaches. These segments are forced onto the player at nearly every turn, halting progress until they are completed only to stop you again moments later. The tutorial area lasted for around 45 minutes due to how much the game tries to hold your hand in regard to its requirements while providing some of the most slippery and unintuitive controls that I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing. The combination results in a scenario where you have to complete precise tasks with extremely imprecise controls. The resulting frustration leads to uncreative solutions as you do your best to meet requirements and move on to the next forced puzzle. The game itself called me out for doing so after I built a bridge using as few bricks as possible, which still took an unreasonably long time to do, asking me if I felt like doing something a bit more creative. Suffice it to say, I did not feel the need to redo what I had done.
The game’s premise is also extremely spontaneous and all over the place. Your character, who you are not able to customize before the game begins, receives a letter from their grandfather. Apparently, they’re somewhat of a scientist, as they invite you to their laboratory… in the middle of their theme park. Ignoring these warning signs of a Lego horror movie in the making, you enter into their basement only for them to accidentally knock a hammer off of a ledge, hitting a washing machine… that somehow completely disrupts and destroys the room’s main power source, trapping your grandfather on a ledge. After you activate the emergency power, the exact same washing machine from before spontaneously spits out a robot, who becomes your partner for the rest of the game. Their name is Rusty, and your grandfather built them to explore space and then sent them up there on what was presumably a one-way trip, considering how surprised your character’s grandfather is to see them again. This robot provides you the ability to build, which you immediately use to build a set of stairs to make your way to the next of the tutorial missions. Ah, yes, every Lego person’s one weakness: jumping. The game itself states in its building sections that a Lego person can walk up any incline up to one brick higher than the one they are standing, but somehow that doesn’t apply to the world you’re actually exploring.
After repairing the power and manually building a bridge for your Grandfather, (apparently the power was only to build a bridge, meaning there is no feasible way he got over there in the first place), you head outside, and your Grandfather conveniently remembers that if he doesn’t clean up his theme park, the entire land will be seized by the Mayor. …maybe that should’ve been more of a concern? Rusty creates a machine that should speed up the repair process, but it requires something more powerful than electricity: Happiness Crystals. Apparently, these are formed whenever someone feels happy, yet Grandpa over here has never heard of them. Considering how backhanded his compliments are and how little attention he shows you in favor of Rusty, that seems about right. To find these crystals, you use the invention your Grandfather invited you over to look at: portals. That’s right, somehow, he had both the time and intellect to invent instant travel between vast distances, yet he forgets that you’re his own grandchild, complimenting you by saying that you could be related to him based on how smart you are. Rusty volunteers to grab the crystals, which your Grandfather happily agrees to, and then YOU are (for some reason) required to go with him despite nobody volunteering you for the task or even asking you to do so.
From there on, you go to different places with Rusty, experiencing disasters and helping the people who were involved, who are somehow completely unharmed and in no real danger. For example, in the Jungle that makes up the first world, you only take three steps before a plane crashes into a mountain right in front of you. Fortunately, there were only three people onboard, and the closest person, a woman only known as the Excitable Archeologist, landed safely on a platform in a tree that she could easily get down from. However, YOU are required to go up to HER, which you can’t do without solving a puzzle.
Overall, the game is presented in an extremely slow and sluggish manner, with no real means of speeding up or precise control, and without any driving force to the story. Your character is a non-entity who wasn’t even asked to go on an adventure. They’re such a non-entity that until I opened the pause menu to leave the game for good, I wasn’t even aware that you could change their appearance. Considering the ugly design, as well as the fact that your character is male by default, I can’t understand why this wasn’t made apparent up front. The way that this customization is hidden is alienating to players who want to try and either put themselves into the game or to become attached to the character.
For most other companies, I would try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But this is LEGO, a company who has not only the money to spend, but also has already succeeded in the past. How little care was put into the design of this game, even in its most creative aspects, is a rather telling sign that they had little to no hand in the creation of this game. For a company literally built on creativity to fund something that makes it nearly impossible to create in the first place, let alone go above and beyond, is very concerning. Considering how much LEGO has decided to play with its formula in recent years, to negative effect each time, this is a bad trend by the company to change a winning formula for the sake of promoting a big change.
I would not recommend this game (for the Switch), and to anyone who does decide to buy it, I recommend purchasing it for a platform that offers precise controls: you don’t want any additional handicaps.
For more information, visit: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/lego-bricktales-switch/
Related: Reviews by Aaron Grossmann
Gaming is a passion that I, like many other people, hold near and dear to my heart. As an aspiring Game Writer and general Storyteller, I enjoy looking into the vast worlds and deep stories of every game I can. Then again, sometimes bad guys just need a good pummeling, and I am more than happy to provide!
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