Lego Worlds isn’t the Minecraft clone, I thought it would be, it’s much better in my personal opinion. While the two may share some common features, Lego Worlds is in a completely different world, no pun intended. With its short tutorial spanning across 3 worlds to teach you the basics, I’d say it gets right to the point and then lets you be on your way to have some fun. You’re friends and family can even join you in classic couch co-op split screen or over Xbox Live.
Lego Worlds
Developer: Traveller’s Tales, TT Games Publishing
Price: $29.99
Platform: platform reviewed – Xbox One, MonsterVine was supplied a copy for review purposes.
To be successful you’ll need the necessary tools, all of which are provided during the tutorial. The first is the Discovery tool, which allows scanning of almost any plant, creature, or object to be permanently stored so that you can later put it into any other world. Second, is the Build Tool, which allows just building structures, piece by piece. Next is the Landscape Tool, giving the player the ability to raise or lower landscapes, even enabling the player to change the size of the grid to which they want to excavate. After this is the Paint Tool, it in fact does just that, allowing the player to paint any object or the entire world any color they choose, by simply selecting the grid size and spraying the item you want to paint. The last of these tools is the Copy Tool, and you guessed it, it copies any object in the world allowing duplicates to be placed in the world, great for creating towns and cities without having to build every structure individually. All of these tools are an essential part of the game and without them you can’t have any hope of exploring and customizing the worlds to your liking. The tools can be found in your UI wheel, that can be brought up by holding the Y button, allowing you to select whichever tool you may need. These tools offer endless possibilities. I have yet to acquire the vast amount of golden bricks needed to create my own world from scratch but I have made some major changes to an already built world, to be nothing but a large lava landscape with some surrounding desert which is then in turn surrounded by water, with vast amounts of pirates and sharks filling the sea, ready to attack at the first thing that moves.
The game lacks a story, in favor of a more free open world experience unlike any other Lego game before it. The simplest explanation? You’re an intergalactic astronaut that simply wants to explore the stars. The sheer number of worlds to discover and explore is almost endless. These worlds range from small islands to large expanding landscapes, complete with life above and below ground. The game has no linear story line, but offers the player the ability to create their own stories. The aspect of travelling to new large worlds is the key to this game, to discover and customize every world as you see fit. The sea is even alive with creatures. Did I mention these worlds all have themes? There are pirate worlds, swamp worlds, and even completely underwater worlds for the player to discover. On top of all that you may even find a world that has a mixed theme. Within my first couple hours playing I discovered a world that was half pirate and half swamp, the ensuing battles between enemy NPC skeletons and zombies is some truly entertaining stuff. You’ll quickly discover you’re not alone on these worlds, as there will be many enemies, from your typical pirate skeletons to zombies and anything in between. You might also come across some more friendlier NPC characters that you might be able to help complete a task for, for those ever important golden bricks. These involve finding certain items to give to the NPC that requested them or simply digging a hole for them. Across these worlds you’ll also discover plenty of means of transporting yourself across the landscapes or into the depths of the seas. My personal favorites are the underwater vehicles, which allow for the exploration of the depths without having to constantly come back to the surface for air, and yes you can drown.
Golden bricks are an essential part of Lego Worlds, without them you can only go but so far. These bricks as mentioned earlier can be obtained by helping NPCs with a task. But that’s not the only way to obtain them, they can be found throughout worlds in chests, buried underground, there’s even little green creatures that will randomly pop up with them, which you must chase down and tackle to obtain their golden bricks. Without golden bricks, you’ll never be able to travel to the more distant larger worlds.
The Final Word
Lego Worlds is a great game for killing time or just to have a nice relaxing Sunday afternoon activity to do with the kids. The game truly delivers on it’s open world building and customization by offering the player free-reign to do almost whatever they please. The only issue I could find in my own experience is dropped frames making the search for golden bricks that much longer. And the insanely high amount of golden bricks (100) it takes to be allowed to create your own world is a bit of a turn-off. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoy myself while playing it alone or with my kids.
MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
