14 DAY TRIAL // I can still remember playing with LEGO as a child? the endless hours of sucking and chewing on the little colorful plastic pieces were great while my teeth were growing. As time passed, and I grew even further, I started playing with LEGO using my hands rather than my mouth, spending hours and hours for making elaborate things only to have them turn like a horribly disfigured, dead and then brought back to life in a Frankenstein way version of what was actually on the box. And then there were the little men whose heads and arms you could pull out?
Of course, now we have grown up, and have moved to more complex toys, such as computers, however that doesn't mean we can't play with LEGO anymore.
Curiosity, expectations and the wait
This program caught my eye, the word LEGO stirring up all kind of memories in me, many of them mentioned above. Downloading it was pretty fast and uneventful, and the installer ran of the mill typical OS X, except for the license agreement which had a very dubious font. Regardless, it was downloaded and installed quickly enough and I was eager to mess around with virtual LEGO.
Unfortunately, my excitement eventually dwindled and then died out completely as the program launched, started looking for pieces on the net and then doing all sorts of things that took the better part of ten minutes. Why it needs so much time to get going I cannot imagine, but, needless to say, by the time it actually launched I had already carried out several conversations and had time to make a cup of tea.
Virtual LEGO
Once the program is up and running, you can choose one of the starter sets, or go with a black one. I chose the car starter set and jumped right in.
In under a minute I was checking to see if there was any documentation that came along with the program? there isn't. Now, don't think that this program is that difficult to read, but when you are wondering things like how do I pan and dolly the camera, you need some form of written support. Fortunately, there is a popup help that seems to come at the most appropriate of times and inform you on how various things need to be done.
Once I had a decent idea of what did what, I started working on a car. Working with virtual LEGO is surprisingly easy most of the time, and particularly annoying sometimes. Usually, the pieces are automatically placed in the right place, however, every once in a while, they will refuse, and you will have to turn the camera around quite a bit before the magic happens.
You have an infinite number of pieces available, and many to choose from, so there is a lot you can do. However, the virtual environment makes things difficult at times. The more complex, non block bricks are often hard to understand in terms of shape, what it does, and where you could stick it. Some of those car components or train components look as foreign as their real life counterparts. Also annoying is the use of a non standard interface which takes some getting used to and which you have to do all on your own because there is no documentation.
Virtual limitations?
Amusingly enough, this program has some of the silliest limitations imaginable. For one thing, you cannot give any piece any color. While in a 3D environment, you could simply use a color picker and assign that color to any brick, in this program you can't. The eyedropper and paint bucket tools are a farce, and do not work at all like you would expect them to.
Another fun one is how you cannot pose the little LEGO men. You can use the hinge tool on them, but it will only make them revolve around the vertical axis, similar to how you use the keys to rotate them during the placing stage. In fact, this is what the hinge tool does, it acts as an after placement rotation tool, but it is labeled as something totally different.
The Good
Good for playing with LEGO in a virtual environment is that you can have as many pieces as you want and they never get lost under the carpet.
The Bad
Nowhere near as easy to use as actual LEGO. The program itself has some strange limitation and design choices.
The Truth
This program is definitely not a replacement for LEGO when it comes to children. However, for those who are already grown, this is the idea that gives the opportunity to mess around with kids toys, while actually playing with big men toys.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
