Sunday, April 12, 2015

Lego Dimensions - Will it be Good?

Hellego! This week, Lego announced their upcoming Lego video game: Lego Dimensions. This game is very different than other Lego games. The game is a mix of Lego themes which is nice and it's a "toys come to life" type of game like Skylanders or Disney Infinity. The game will have collectible characters that you can buy. Is this good or bad? Let's analyse all this together.
Used by permission,® 2015 The LEGO Group
The game is launching September 27th, 2015 on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Wii U. You will need to buy the starter pack which includes the game, Batman, Wyldsyle, Gandalf, Batmobile and the buildable toy pad that allows you to place your characters on, to jump into the game. All this is set to be priced at 99$. It seems like you get a lot of content, but here's the catch.

There will be additional expansion packs you can buy with additional characters which will unlock more content in game. There are three types: Fun Pack (14,99$), Team Pack (24,99$) and Level Packs (29,99$). This comes out to a lot of money. They do seem interesting though. There is a Back To The Future Level Pack that unlocks a Back To The Future level, you get a Marty Mcfly figure, HoverBoard and Time Machine.

I have to admit it sounds interesting. But I am personnally against this idea. This will be great and fun for kids, but to get the game to work you need to pay 100$, then if you want everything that the game has to offer, you need to buy the different packs. This can easily go past 200$ invested into this single game. I am the type of person who likes to buy a game and have all the content with the game. I don't want to have to buy additional DLC or physical DLC to have everything in the game. Maby the occasional DLC for additional content, but other than that I find DLC and Physical DLC  not good.

When the game was first announced, I was really excited about it. It's awesome how Lego is going to mix the Lego worlds together into one story. I thought maybe the starter pack would be about 70$. At that price I would have probably gotten it. But at 100$, plus all the additional packs, to me I think it's too much. Think of all the Lego sets you could get with 150$ instead of investing that money on one single game. That's what I think about it. I'm not going to start telling you not to get it and it's perfectly fine if you get it. I hope you have lots of fun playing that game. But I find that is too much money for only one game.

Another aspect I have been thinking about, is if the minifigures are detachable. Because if the minifigures are detachable from their plates, well then you get much more value out of the game and packs because you can use the collectible figures in your Lego creations and sets. If they are stuck to the plate, well then their pretty much only good for putting on a shelf.

Those are my thoughts on the upcoming Lego Dimensions game. I think the story will be fantastic and I don't think you are making a mistake if you are getting it. But I am against the price of the game and all the extra packs you need to get if you want everything out of your game.

What do you think of the game? Do you think Lego is doing the right move with this game? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Friday, April 10, 2015

A Look At Lego City My City... And Other Things

Hellego! For the past week I have been very sick which is why I had not posted during Easter weekend. I did not get to stuff my face with chocolate and I missed a whole week of school. I spent a good amount of time in bed reading magazines. I read a lot of Lego magazines, rereading a lot of the past ones. But in the most recent issues, I kept noticing unlock codes for the online Lego game Lego City My City at http://www.lego.com/en-us/city/my-city.

Lego seemed to have hyped this game in the past and I never seemed to have gotten into it. I started it months back and never completed the tutorial. Now obviously, when you have the flue, playing video games is not the best activity to do, especially the big 3D games with 3rd or 1st person view with lots of camera swerving. It can make you quite dizzy and you may not have a good time. But Lego City My City seemed like a pretty casual game with not to much camera movement, so I decided to give it a try!


Right when I started, I was very impressed. I started out with a much better impression than the first time I tried it. For a web browser based game, I was very impressed by the graphics. A lot of it is a far up view of your city, but you can really zoom in and see every detail of your city. It's fun to go around your city and observe what your citizens are doing. Every minifigure has a unique action.

Top View of City

Zoomed-in onto street activity
The main goal of the game is to expand your city by doing work around your city to earn studs, which will allow you to then buy property and build buildings. The work you do around the city can be chasing a crook and locking him up, to flying an airplane to deliver packages to the airport. These are all done through mini-games.
Running after a crook
Going to tow someone's car
The whole goal behind this game is to expand and build your own unique city and completing challenges by earning studs. I am very impressed by the work Lego has done on this game. It is a very complete and packed game. It feels like I am playing something bigger than a web browser game. The only bad aspects with this game are a few sound problems I've had. Sometimes, when loading, the music would suddenly go up in intensity and go back down. I am able to run this game fine on my computer, but for certain users it can be quite hard. The game runs with Unity and when you play the game it uses close to 1.5GB of RAM. So if you have 2GB of RAM on your computer, it might not be enough to play this game. That just tells you how big of a game this is.

So go ahead, give this game a try if you have not! Lego has hyped this game in the past and I can now see why. They've put a lot of hard work into this game and it's given a great result. Tell me what you think of this game in the comments!