Once again Traveller’s Tales have been hard at work and have delivered us yet another Lego game; in this instalment, it’s time to revisit Middle Earth and see what our Hobbit friend Bilbo has been up to with a gang of uninvited dwarfs and something about a dragon…
As per usual in the Lego gaming franchise, the general format hasn’t changed too much; anyone who’s even so much as glanced at a friend playing, will know exactly what to expect. You’ll smash everything in sight, solve some tame puzzles and collect more than you’ve ever collected before, especially so with the new crafting system in place. Setting the tone of the film rather nicely, you’ll find that you don’t actually come into contact with any enemies for around the first hour of quests; instead, you’ll be given a brief rundown of what the narrative entails followed by playing host to a rambunctious crowd of hungry Dwarfs.
As in true Lego fashion, you’ll find yourself playing through the film(s) most memorable and action packed scenes in only the way Traveller’s Tales know how. Breaking up the pace and not letting you get too worn out with the same task has always been their speciality. You’ll battle hordes of enemies, solve puzzles, do some sneaking and take on boss battles, all whilst taking a Warhammer to the scenery of course. You’re never left doing the same thing for an extended period of time and this translates to the free roam too. Upon completion of its approximately 6-7 hour campaign, you’re given free reign of Middle Earth to wander the plains, villages and mountains as whomever you please. It’s oddly satisfying wandering about Bree as a glowing Sauron, more so when the villagers don’t take up arms and instead (this time around) leave you about your business! I often find the post-game of Lego titles to be somewhat therapeutic, slowly and methodically working your way through the collectibles, and of course, amassing a Dwarf shaming fortune of studs can be incredibly addictive too.
On top of studs, bricks of differing colours, envelopes, minikits and equippable items, you’ll also find yourself chasing down baguettes, gems and planks of wood. Before, when crafting something at the blacksmith, you were only really required to part ways with your precious Mithril/silver bricks, now you must also pony up some crafting materials. Whilst there are also some points in the main story where you must give up your hard earned fish and rope to progress, anything they require will be lootable in the area. It’s a potentially interesting system as it could make you prioritise something over another, but in reality, when you’re destroying everything in sight; it just means scampering after something other than studs.
Due to the rather unsurprising fact that we already have had a Lego Lord of the Rings game, you’d be forgiven for asking ‘what’s different?’ It turns out, quite a lot. As it follows the first two Hobbit films, locations are inevitably revisited, but it also means that others are added. Whilst you may have had your fill of Lego Rivendell in the past, you also won’t have dipped your toes in Lake Town either. Some of the characters jump roster and bring along with them, their unique brick-hunting traits, others are mostly new. Again, the character selection screen is overfilled with the same, repeated set, with younger or older versions often filling in the blanks. I don’t mind that there are characters repeated, but it would be nice to have all repeats on the same slot and be able to cycle between them using the right thumbstick for example. When you’re pawing through the screen looking for a specific ability of a dwarf, especially when so many of them look so alike, it can be frustrating to have to look through each one until their board placement is memorized. Due to the bewilderingly similar sounding names, I ended up making my own nicknames to help locate them on the character selection screen. ‘Russian with hat’ is what I went with for the mining ability, ‘Aragorn with green shirt’ for the bow and arrow, and ‘Not quite full ginger beard’ for the largely useless (but hilariously animated) belly bounce.
Other new changes spring up over the course of the game, the ability to ‘buddy up’ with another dwarf to create more firepower, making it especially useful against bosses, or when you just want to re-enact a chaotic version of ring around the roses. Stacking is now a way for the Dwarfs to help each other reach higher places, essentially, they stand on top of one another, and someone else climbs up them. Dwarven ingenuity over simple Elvish leaping they might say, with a mead soaked beard.
Whilst most things have taken a turn for the better, there is still room for improvement however. The camera, although greatly improved from the past titles, can still get stuck; no matter how much you scream at it or shunt the right thumbstick, it will stay resolute. Another constant ache is the auto targeting with ranged characters in combat. All will seem fine and dandy until Gandalf, for all of his wisdom, will completely ignore the target and start incessantly casting spells at the nearest plant, something that came to fruition during a boss fight alongside another, rather more nature loving, wizard. My final criticism being one that had my brow furrowed throughout, the issue of the disappearing blocks. I know that it would look ridiculous to have an item you’ve smashed to smithereens instantaneously vanish from existence the moment it’s broken, but don’t scatter the (still rendered) pieces at my feet and then not let me walk freely through them. Countless times I have had to sit and wait for the pieces to disappear before continuing on and breaking the next set of objects; when studs disappear after a while, it can feel unnecessarily hampering.
In terms of presentation, a Lego game has never looked so good, the lighting is impressive, the animations appear to have been spruced up and the studs are shinier than ever. As always, it can be fun to see how they’ve made certain major enemies and locations out of Lego, shortly followed by grumbling and wishing you had Lego like this when you were young! The music and voice work are understandably stellar, especially from a series such as this, you would expect nothing less. Menus are slick and fast; changing characters is no longer a chore as the loading times have been drastically reduced across the board, making exploring and hunting for bricks, that much more seamless.
Never ones for dramatically breaking the mould, Traveller’s Tales have once again cornered the market in fully licenced, accessible fun. If you like the franchise it’s based upon, buy the game.
