Lego Universe

Whenever I mention the word LEGO I imagine myself stacking blocks of all types and colors and building robots and cars. Nothing compares to the excitement you get after you've built your own castle or race track and this is what makes childhood memories so enjoyable. Reviewing the early days of my youth I can clearly remember asking my parents if they wanted to join in and help me make sense of the enormous amount of blocks scattered all across my bedroom floor.

Thank God I'm all grown up now and I no longer get to play with plastic blocks anymore. Wrong! As it turns out, NetDevil took the LEGO brand and extended it to such a degree, that now every child in the world can play with these magical blocks (even my inner child).

Creating a MMO (massively multiplayer online) LEGO is no easy task. I guess it's like crossing a butterfly with with a giraffe; it's just not going to fly. Still, considering that we are talking about LEGO parts, anything and everything is possible.

Story Unlike other LEGO trademarks, this online adventure comes with a unique approach. You don't get to play neither as Indiana Jones or Batman, this time around you will be faced with a new mission altogether.

Long story short, the essence of imagination has been corrupted and it is up to you to purify it again. Nothing fancy thus far, except that four factions have been divided, each of them with a unique set of abilities, so that they can fight the power of the Maelstorm (corrupted imagination) in their own fashion.

I admit, there's no significant drama to the story, probably because it's an online RPG and I guess it should be more about building your character and the gameplay experience rather than splitting hairs on the story at hand.

Gameplay It's safe to say that there's nothing out there like Lego Universe. It comes as a shocker to find a MMORPG for ages varying from eight to eighty. The funny part is that I can actually imagine a small boy playing along side his grandfather, both exploring, fighting LEGO monsters and completing quests.

Controls are highly intuitive and most of the time you'll find yourself just clicking your way from one quest to another. Sure, there are no special combo moves (except for double clicking or double tapping the space bar) and not fancy bullet time animations, but braking your enemies into LEGO pieces and watching them fall apart, still brings tears or joy to my eyes.

From the second you start the game you will be greeted with the all too accustomed LEGO humor, ranging from clumsy minifigures to innocent animations that will surely bring a smile to the corner of your lips. Even the tutorial is there to amuse you and teach you basic controls that are so simple, even a child could do it (oh wait, it is for children).

From where I'm sitting, you can look at the gameplay experience from two difference perspectives. From a child's point of you, you will be dazzled by smooth and polished graphics, lots of funny and unique pets and straightforward quests. There's nothing in here that can confuse kids, except maybe the way you collect and store items.

From personal experience I've found that collecting and using blocks (of all shapes and sizes), so that you can build your own little world for others to visit, can prove to be a difficult challenge. The inventory is poorly organized and you will have to keep scrolling through a huge list so that you can stumble upon the blocks you're looking for. It would have been so much simpler if you had a quick search feature, to allow you to look only for blocks of a certain size or shape.

From the perspective of and experienced gamer (I humbly include myself), the game is nothing short of a fun experience, but only to the point when you stop daydreaming about reliving your childhood and get down to basic facts. Wide variety of customizable stats, crafted weapons, an extensively long skill tree or even class professions are lacking, at the very least. The RPG characteristics have been stripped down to the bone, turning the game more into an action/adventure experience.

On the other hand, having the best of intentions at heart (breeding the butterfly with a giraffe, remember?), LEGO Universe is probably a successful accomplishment when it comes to introducing children to the online community. In fact, it's so successful that even grownups will join them without hesitation.

Quests have been designed to undertake the same humorist approach. I vividly remember one such event where I stumbled upon a scared minifigure hiding in the bushes, asking me shamefully (doh) if I can find him a pair of pants. Needless to say, being pants-less in the bushes is funny no matter who you are, and after I stopped laughing I went and bought the poor sap a pair of decent pants thus completing a so called quest.

Back to the gameplay experience, it's sad that despite that you can compete in various events such as car racing, target shooting or foot racing, you cannot bring those mini-game items back to the original environment. It would have been so nice to be able to build your own vehicle and drive it all around the world, this way you wouldn't have had to walk back and forth long distances just so that you can report the completion of a quest.

To keep the game lined up to the story, instead of using mana you'll be collecting imagination points. These can easily be obtained from smashing anything that can be brought to pieces, from enemies to the ever so innocent park bench. Using these points you'll gain the ability to perform quick building, modular building and custom building. Confused?

Quick building is where you automatically assemble a structure by interacting with it. You can find these all across the map (trampolines, turrets etc.) and make use of them for a short amount of time. Modular building is where you put on your thinking hat and start matching pieces together trying to create rockets (used to move from one word to another) or cars for racing events.

Remember what I said about using building blocks to create anything you want and then having people over to visit your creation? Well, that's called custom building and it can only be performed on a piece of land that is your own. It's amazing, because it allows you the freedom to piece together any and all blocks that you want, thus entertain your imagination.

A major downside to the game (to any online RPG game) is that it's buggy. I don't mean serious bugs that compel you to exit the game and uninstall it in a heartbeat, I mean bugs that are there to irritate you every once in a while. For instance, a pet that just won't dig for a treasure no matter what you do or having to watch your character freeze into position for a few seconds as you move (read float) around.

One other bug that really made me lose my wig was triggered by minimizing the game down to the taskbar and then closing it by using the Close Window button (on Windows 7). As a result, not only that I lost the entire profile, but there was no way to retrieve it back again. Reinstalling the game proved to be unsuccessful in retrieving my otherwise lost profile and thus I had to start from scratch once more. “Frustrating” is only a word, the actual experience is even more than unpleasant, so try to avoid this small bug or you'll end up loosing countless hours of gameplay (don't say I didn't warn you).

If you can get passed all the small hiccups (it's not like children will ever notice them), Lego Universe has a lot to offer.

Graphics and Audio The basis for a good game has always been about graphics that in this case it ranges from great to awesome (said the child inside me). There are no evident glitches and everything seems to point out that LEGO has brought the same quality from single player games to the online experience.

As for the audio, the orchestral music certainly does the trick and what's even more amazing is that its loop intervals are really long. You won't hear the same notes repeating over and over again any time soon and in fact, the music will change and adapt to the environment you're in. If you're on a pirate ship, you'll probably get the urge to sing a drinking song (better stick to the soundtrack) and if you're exploring some dark and creepy forest, the music will chance accordingly as well. In any case, the point is that you won't easily get bored of listening the soundtrack.

Conclusion While the online community is basically dominated by really complex and powerful role playing games, Lego Universe comes as a breath of fresh air, pulling everyone into a relaxed and humorist environment that can resurface the inner child of any hard core gamer. This quality is particularity appreciated by children as well and I'm happy to say that even the younger generation can be a part of the ever growing online community.

This kid-friendly approach is a nice touch, especially when it's complemented by smooth graphics and nonviolent gameplay. It's safe to say that Lego Universe has skilfully reached the targeted demographic (kids) by effectively combining good old fashion Lego fun and role playing elements.

Still, considering that you're in the land of Lego parts, I would have imagined that free building vehicles is technically self implied. It saddens me that you still can't put together your own car and drive it around, showing it off to your friends. The game still comes with obvious limitations when it comes to using the built structures and unfortunately you're only allowed to experiment within a confined area.

One other thing that bothers me is that it comes with a rather spicy price ($39.99) and this is just so that you can get the game. You still have to pay a monthly fee of $9.99 so that you can keep playing it. I'm not entirely convinced that the game is worth the investment, but then again, parents will do anything to see their children happy, right?

Lego Universe

key review info