Lego Bricktales - Review
When Lego Bricktales was first announced, I said to myself that its just like Bridge Constructor, but with Lego and then I found out it was the same developers, which made sense. Does this transition to a 3d world and some familiar bricks make this construction project a breeze or is it one dimension to much for the developers?
Lego Bricktales is different game from their past works, but you can clearly see some similarities to the approach the devs took here, but there are some big concessions. The first is that there is a story, and yes some of the Bridge Constructor games have had a narrative thread, they were added later. Here the story is front and centre to the experience, your grandfather has sent you a letter asking you to come visit him, at his lab/broken down amusement park and being the dutiful grandchild, you do. Upon arriving you are quickly throw into the rebuilding process when an invention explodes and causes the lab to fall apart, once you restore power, you can see what the invention was meant to do. Upon its successful activation, a robot that your grandfather created and then shot into space appears, having been upgraded by some unnamed alien species they met whilst being out there. Once you are all back outside, the full reason for your visit is revealed, the park is so rundown that it is about to be closed, but with a quick plan established, you are off through the portal device to collect happiness crystals, in order to restore the park to its finest.
Each of the portals that you jump into lands you within a themed world, jungle, desert, medieval and so on and each one is filled with new characters to meet, things to collect and of course, things to be built. Helping out the people is the main objective, as doing so will reward you with the desired happiness crystal, but providing the help is where the puzzles come into play. Some of them are simple, like getting someone out of a tree, others require you to work invisible switches to find a path out of a ruin. Some of the puzzles are only solvable by building something with Lego, more on that in a bit, but there are also countless animals to find, with someone in each world after 20 of a specific type, which is a good incentive to explore the worlds. The other reason to explore is to find that worlds currency of question, be it bananas in the jungle or ice creams in the desert, which you can then exchange for outfits in a spectral shop.
Building is of course the main draw and there are some good things here and some bad, but let us focus on the good first, the challenges themselves. The game has a decent balance of simple puzzles and more complicated ones, with the simple being, well as a simple as building a bridge and the more complicated having you need to construct statues and so on. The objectives are clearly laid out in each building zone, make sure it doesn’t fall apart and so on, some of them will be easier said than done though, as the pieces you place may break away once you start to test them out. The games earlier puzzles will be over pretty quickly but as you progress through the worlds, they will start to level more complicated requests and they will test your skills, but the satisfaction of completing them is pretty great.
Now though, there is the bad to talk about, first up the controls are a nightmare and while they do work, they are so finicky that you will often find yourself over shooting your desired position. The build space is done with in a 3d space, which makes sense, but the game uses a virtual cursor to have you interact with it, now on a PC that likely makes a lot of sense, but on a console it does not. The problem is that the cursors position is relative to the cameras position, so if you rotate the camera, move it in closer or further away, the position of the cursor changes, which will snap your piece away from where it was. If that was the only issue, I could make do with it, but sadly there are more issues, the worst one being the camera itself, it is a broken and useless camera, both in building and the world. In building you can rotate the camera around and zoom in, but the focal point is fixed to a point in the middle of the build zone, and the camera can’t move away from it, so if you want to focus on a different area, you have to move the camera into an awkward position to do so. When you are exploring the worlds, the right stick does nothing, there is no camera control and yet, if you pause the game an option in the menu is to look at the world with a moveable camera, it is beyond stupid.
Another issue to be aware of is that the game will offer you no assistance, so if you get stuck on a build and you can’t work it out, then you are going to remain there until you do. The first time this became an issue for me, was when I was attempting to make a perch for a bird, but it had to remain perfectly balanced and not break, whilst also accepting a large bird piece on it. The game does offer you multiple build saves in each puzzle, which means you can just start fresh if you get stuck, but it still doesn’t off any suggestions or hints as to what you can do to progress. The game does of course not have a single solution for each build puzzle, you can do build however you want, as long as you achieve the goal, but when you get stuck on a puzzle for an hour, maybe something should be done to help you out.
Looking at the games presentation, there is no denying it looks like Lego, the characters move like they are Lego, the world is completely made from Lego and even the effects are Lego in nature. It is honestly a more Lego looking game that Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, as it embraces everything Lego, even the restrictions, much like the Lego Movies. Sadly your character has no personality, not counting your ability to dress them up, so conversations are had between your robot sidekick and whomever else is there. This doesn’t help with the investment into the worlds, because your actions are dictated by the game, with it agreeing for you, when talking does take place though its mostly through speech bubbles and gibberish speak, which feels right for the game. The worlds that you can explore are detailed in so many ways, which makes the lack of camera in game a real slap in the face, but their overall size is a bit weird. Each zone is large, with multiple parts making up their whole, but some of the playable space on them is so small, it’s more of a why bother scenario. With the games audial presentation, the music is a great blend of calming tunes and area specific melodies, however when you are stuck listening to the same tunes on repeat whilst building, it can get old quite quickly.
Lego Bricktales is a game I wanted to love, but I really only like it and there are a few reasons as to why, there are the less-than-ideal camera controls, the movement when building and the lack of assistance when you get stuck on a puzzle. When you solve a problem, in any way that you can, the satisfaction is immense and a good reason to push forward, but those hurdles are hard to overlook. If you are a fan of the developers previous work, there is a lot of familiar here and if you like a steep challenge, you will find it, but for younger gamers this might be one Lego game to let pass on by.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Thunderful Games
The Pros
+Everything about the design is pure Lego and one of the best videogame representations of how it works
+Successfully solving a puzzle, no matter how you got there, is so satisfying…
The Cons
-… but should you get stuck on a puzzle, you are on your own the game will not help
-Controls during the building process are a nightmare to learn and will always get in the way
