Today is an especially exciting day for me as I'm introducing a guest blogger...my other half...A Husband, A Dad & More! He is a true & very authentic AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) & an avid gamer. Find & follow him on Twitter.
Here is his (honest and passionate) review of the newest game released by The Lego Group and Traveler's Tales.
To
be clear I want to start off by saying that Lego Dimensions is a fun
family game. Just go online and read all the wonderful reviews and you
will see why this game is highly recommended. I just
want to point out some of the things that I believe TTGames got wrong
and if implemented could have made this an even better game.
My point of view:
Here
is a little background on me. I have always been a fan of Lego. I got
my first set back in 1980-something and have been collecting sets ever
since. From the digital standpoint I have played mostly all the Lego
Video games including Lego Universe. Back then I always thought they
should sell toys from the game. One of the biggest draws to Lego
Universe was my ability to make things on their properties but I always
wanted to export this into Digital Designer and purchase it. I even
wrote to Lego at one point suggesting that they start selling sets with
Lego Universe codes so we can play with the sets both in real life and
in the game. I found a way to multiply myself (who says cloning doesn't exist ☺) by having two sons and
now we are a whole Lego loving family.
Voice casting got it totally wrong in some spots:
Enter
Lego Dimensions. When I first saw the trailer about Lego Dimensions I
was super excited. The possibilities were endless in my mind. I
imagined all the great themes that Lego made throughout the years and thought the possibilities were endless--predicting that this game was going to be epic! As the months went by and the trailers released, I grew even more excited. They announced Portal 2, Back to the
Future, Ghostbusters and other franchises that blew my mind. All this
in one video game.
Before
the game came out I had campaigned on Twitter for TTGames to address a
couple of concerns I had. I begged as nicely as I could (☺) that Lego
Dimensions would voice the original cast of Chima and Ninjago. I didn’t
think this was an outrageous request since Lego owns the rights to
these shows. Another reason I was hopeful was because as we grew closer
to the game release they revealed that some of the original voices of
The Lego Movie, Back to the Future, Portal and others were returning.
Tweets:
We have some absolutely amazing voice actors on @LEGODimensions. Check out who's involved here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avEGqe4Crbo … #breaktherules
They also teased that other voices will return:
There are even more voices and actors that we haven't revealed. We sense lots of fandom squeals once discovered.
Armed
with this information I was really hoping they would fix this flaw but
unfortunately they did not. The voices were so far from the original
characters it made it impossible for me to enjoy the cut scenes because I
didn’t believe the people talking were them. I know that this is a
production of Warner Brothers but ultimately it is still Lego. How hard
is it to get their cast? I can understand Chima since they stopped
filming, but Ninjago? They are still filming. Now every time I hear
Jay talk I can’t shake the feeling that he is an imposter and it takes
away from the overall game experience.
Character disconnection:
From
the moment the story unfolded in the first level I felt
disappointment. The game pack starts off with three characters, Batman,
Gandolf, and Wyldstyle but offers a wide variety of others from the 14
various themes that are included. I was super excited to see how Homer
would interact with them and when I put him on the portal it was as if he
didn’t exist. The characters almost never interacted with him and it
felt like he didn’t belong. In fact for some characters like Eris from
Chima and Owen from Jurassic World you wouldn’t even have a clue where
they came from because it is never mentioned in the game.
This
may seem trivial to most but just imagine how much better this could
have been if there was more interaction. For example, I put Homer on
the toy pad for the first time and there is a mini move of Homer sitting
around at his power plant pressing a bunch of buttons trying to look
busy when a portal opens up. He tries to run away but eventually gets
sucked in. He then appears in the level with the other characters and
he asks what he is doing there. Then the others say some canned responses
like "you got sucked in" and "we are fighting to save all the dimensions".
Introductions are made (all while still fighting) and the story
continues. Each character can have their own unique introduction that
will help tie the story together and give incentive to the consumer to
go out and buy them all.
Another
thing that would be even better is if they found a way to include the
other characters in the cut scenes. A good example of this it the
Skylanders series by Activision. From the moment you place a new
character on the screen they come to life on the screen and are included
in every cut scene as long as there are in play. I realize this is a
bit harder to do because their cut scenes are mostly game play instead
of CGI movies but it really helps to feel like every toy is just as
special as the next. In Lego Dimensions, there are clear favorites.
Exclusion of game worlds in story:
Lego
Dimensions does a good job of including many of the 14 themes into
their character story but I was sad to see that two of them were left
out. They were instead substituted with unrelated levels relevant to
the story but not the themed worlds. Their inclusions only consisted of
themed mini kits. Again this goes with the theme that some characters
are just not as important as others.
Expansion levels are too small:
The
expansion levels go too quickly. In some instances they seem rushed
and skip a lot of content to retell a story in a short amount of time. I
only hope that this will be expanded in the days to come but I am
skeptical. After all, this is the same company that brought us The Lego
Hobbit with two of the three movies story and never finishing the saga.
Conclusion:
Again
I will state that I still enjoyed this game. But I feel there is loads of room for improvement. My hopes are that the developers will
somehow stumble upon this review and maybe rethink how they can improve
this and/or future Lego Dimension games.
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