The Crossover that Bricks It - LEGO: Dimensions

Hello beautiful people of the internet! And not so beautiful ones... hehe. Grab hold of your wallets folks because it's time to- uhh... Sin? What are you doing? I can't help it Ren look at them they're so cute and tiny and collectible and-! Whoaaaa, okay down girl. Put those aside now we have a blog to do! But... but... Ren... Don't get addicted to the figures while you hate the game. ...Oh god you're right... What am I saying!? We have to tell people about this monstrosity! Uh... yes, yes we do, that's why we're here. So without further ado, let's take a look at LEGO: Dimensions!

LEGO: Dimensions, released in late 2015 is the latest 'toys to life' cash cow game trying to capitalize on the popularity of Skylanders and Disney Infinity. The culprit this time being the LEGO company. Since these kinds of LEGO games began, back when the first LEGO Star Wars was released they were a fresh and comedic take on some of our favourite series. However as time has gone on, the LEGO games have been somewhat losing their luster, and fail to capture the original appeal of the first ones. We can't really say if this is because of the novelty of it all getting old or just not lending itself to a series properly, but regardless, we have a problem with this particular title for a different reason.

I wonder why the Wizard of Oz was something they wanted to use. Since when was this something you would want lego of?
What are you saying? I'd kill for those minifigures, a build of a small cottage and more little red flowers than I can count. Honest.

The basic plot sees some evil guy called Lord Vorton opening portals between a number of different world and recruiting a number of familiar villains in order to collect the Foundational Elements (read: the most iconic things from the particular series, i.e: some Ruby Slippers. Because those are totally a cornerstone of time and space.) When friends of the three characters that accompany the starter pack are sucked into vortexes because they each happen to be holding one, Batman, Wyldstyle and Gandalf jump into the portals to save them and end up in a dimension travelling wibbly-wobbly adventure across worlds. If you're sitting there thinking this plot sounds like a baddly written fanfiction from the depths of fanfic.net where all the teenagers that honestly believe they have writing prowess lurk, you're not exactly too far off the mark.

Don't get us wrong here, it's nowhere near as poorly executed as that. The main plot of the story has 'bricked it' a bit to say the least (Please tell me you're not going to be doing that throughout the whole review...) but at least the stories of the individual worlds are good enough, and the crossovers work very nicely. Take for example the Simpsons level pack which sees LEGO Movie villain President Business trying to take over Springfield. It's pretty cool to see these characters from very different universes reacting to and interacting with each other.

A sense of humour worthy only of Ren's idiocy.
(Excessive laughter)

So the crossovers are great but let's talk about level design here, and there's a hell of a lot to say. The base game and the level packs you can buy all have a couple of levels to play and a free roaming overworld to play around it. That's all well and good, but there are some things that really just piss me off! What seems to be a new feature of LEGO: Dimensions is the addition of mid-level save points. It's good to know the developers acknowledged the stupidly long time it can take to complete these levels and have planned accordingly. Well... While I admit it's a great feature to finally have implemented, I stand by the fact that it is poorly implemented. Some levels, such as the Portal 2 Level pack, have so many save points you could pop the game on for 20 minutes, do a test chamber and stop. Other Level packs, particularly the Doctor Who one, don't have any at all, despite having levels that can take over and hour and a half to complete first time round just because they're so convoluted. In fact we still haven't beaten the first level, because we don't have the time, and this game lacks a little something too much.

That little something is clarity. Now we're not saying a game needs to hold your hand the whole way through, god no. But this game manages to give you so little information it is EXTREMELY difficult to figure out what to do next sometimes. The Doctor Who level pack is especially bad for this, offering multiple different areas with multiple different time periods all of which you have to do certain things in to progress. Playing through that level is hell on Earth, and while this is the most severe case by far, other parts still keep up a fair level of confusion. I sometimes marvel how this game can be aimed at kids when even adults are having trouble dealing with it.

Unlike in previous LEGO titles, if you want to find every hidden collectible in this one you'll want to have a good income. Most collectibles will be hidden behind some kind of barrier that can only be passed by characters with certain abilities, and there are a lot of them. While this was the same in previous LEGO games, the fact that you need to spend real money instead of just studs for these collectibles just feels like extra money-grabbing. There's the ability to 'Hire a hero' for a sum of studs in certain places, but you're not always given the option and it doesn't really feel the right way to play.

Dunno what you're smiling at, you couldn't figure out how to complete your own Level Pack either.
Is he... putting the moves on her?
... I'm not even gonna... Oh for the- You pervert!

Of course we can't forget the real reason you would choose this game, which is of course the LEGO figures themselves. They're all good quality and have lovely looking stands, but when it comes to building some of the accompanying toys, it is admittedly a lot harder than it should be. Each add on box only comes with the instructions for the character figures, and the other instructions all get displayed on screen. The main problem with this comes that this makes the instruction extremely tiny and difficult to see, couple that with the fact that every figure is made up of small and very similar looking parts you'll find yourself either making mistakes or rubbing your face on your screen just to see whether you're supposed to be using the white stud or the clear one. The instructions are also much simpler than those of a traditional LEGO set, while you could argue this is because of the size of the things you're creating, it doesn't halt the fact that placing basically a single block each step takes away significantly from the feeling of something epic come together.

When you put together all this with the fact that the games is possibly the worst optimised game we've played in a long time, it's a bitter pill to swallow. Perhaps it's because we've been playing the WiiU version, but loading times between levels takes ages, and for example activating certain characters rage mode abilities makes the game load a new bigger sprite of them for just as long. AND in general the game is the glitchiest one we've seen in a long time just from playing casually. Within 30 hours of playtime the game softlocked 5 times with characters being locked in respawn-instant death loops or being locked into a boss fight forever because taking figures off the pad to remove them from a spell doesn't work, and the game has flat out just crashed at least three times.

You know you're doing something wrong when building the portal out of bricks before you really start the game is the most epic feeling you have playing it.

Though we've done our best to enjoy this game, it's been a real struggle to say the least, which in itself is a big disappointment for game with so much potential. The figures may be a wonderful thing, but for gamers with such fond memories of the LEGO Star Wars games, this one leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

It's a hard brick to swallow. Ow!
Shut it Ren!
Heheh...
Are you coming back to play with the figures again Ren?
Yep! they're more fun than the actual game anyway.
I know right? Anyway! Until next time folks!
We love you all!

Ren Score: 6/10
Sin Score: 2/10