I’m gnashing my teeth all over again just typing that. Passing between neighbourhoods requires one to endure a ponderous loading screen – and loss of current mission progress. Worse, many of these discrete areas are inaccessible to start, limiting the appeal of exploration even further. The sense of scope is limited, if not completely ruined. It doesn’t help that the city has been chopped into neighbourhood-sized bits, each covered in a deep white fog that obscures anything more than a few blocks away. Here exploration feels more like a chore with rewards that hardly justify the effort. The drive to explore and discover was a primary draw. In contrast, I spent almost all of my time in Lego City Undercover searching every nook and cranny of the game’s vast plastic metropolis in search of hidden delights and surprises. There’s really not much more to do than that. You’ll use binocular stands to frame and snap picture postcards of pretty vistas, find the occasional collectible token representing other Lego mini-figures, and track down super bricks so you can build a car jump here or a helicopter pad there. Sadly, there’s precious little to do outside of the lame story missions. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
Every fight plays out in almost identical fashion: a couple of button taps to throw a suspect down, another to cuff him. Mediocre melee battles with cookie cutter thugs seem to pop up every few minutes. Too often, what needs to be done is fighting.Ĭombat was perhaps the least memorable part of Lego City Undercover, and yet it’s been made one of the primary elements of the 3DS prequel. It’s just a matter of locating the objective icons on your mini-map, traveling to highlighted location, and doing whatever needs to be done there. There’s little in the way of any real puzzle solving or investigation. You’ll need to find chicken eggs and repair satellite dishes, collect radioactive Lego studs and fix power boxes. Missions are largely composed of simple fetch or fix scenarios. Article contentīut a less-than-ideal interface may be the least of this game’s problems. A more pressing concern is its lack of diverse and compelling play.