Of course, some of how you feel about Lego: The Hobbit will depend on how you feel about the movies, but it’s not the be all and end all. On this count, Lego: The Hobbit, won’t disappoint. This has always been the source of the Lego game’s staying power, particularly if you play it with the family in the brilliant split-screen co-op mode. To do so you’ll not only have to scour the map and complete all those side-quests, but go back and reconquer levels in freeplay mode, using characters you couldn’t access first time around. It all helps to boost the longevity of the game, as will the usual Lego obsessions with collecting every special kit and every character and getting a 100% rate on every level. You’ll need to find the required stuff and bring it back to the characters concerned, though in some cases you can cut down on your journey by trading materials with the traders you’ll find dotted around. These mostly have you finding or crafting items for the characters hanging around Hobbiton, Rivendell, Laketown etc. When you finish the set, there’s a pay-off in using it or watching it in action.Īll this gathering and crafting also ties in with a feature of the open world setting: optional side-quests. It’s hardly Mensa-candidate stuff but it’s a perfect fit for Lego, working in well with the whole construction theme. Choose slowly or incorrectly and that bonus disappears. In the latter case you go into a mini-game, where the set is part-built, but building pauses every so often while you choose the next part. The gathered materials can then be deposited at a nearby crafting station, where they’re transformed into useful objects or complex Lego sets. Here, smashed scenery releases not just normal Lego studs but various materials, which certain dwarves can also mine from specific areas of rock. Perhaps most importantly, Lego: The Hobbit throws in a new crafting feature, which combines the blueprints of Lego: LOTR, the brick collecting of Lego City: Undercover and the spot-the-piece subgame of The Lego Movie game. Dwarves also have a new double-up ability in combat, which becomes essential when taking on the game’s bigger foes, and can even swing in tandem if need be. Three of the dwarves hold pole arms that double as a makeshift ladder, and the game allows you to stack all three up to reach higher ground. There’s also more emphasis on characters working together. With thirteen dwarves, Bilbo, Gandalf and a range of other heroes flitting in and out of the game, there’s been a real effort made to give each character some distinctive capability, whether it’s a sling or a bow and arrow to fire at target switches, a grapple to swing across chasms or drag down the scenery, or – in chubby Bombur’s case – a unique approach to makeshift trampolines. Yet Lego: The Hobbit isn’t content to retread the same old ground. If you’ve played any Lego game since Lego Star Wars, then you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the basics work. The gameplay covers all the usual stuff: smashing up the scenery to collect Lego studs, reassembling chunks of smashed scenery into new shapes, unlocking different characters, and using their varying abilities to get past every obstacle in your path. Middle Earth – or at least those parts of it dealt with during The Hobbit – becomes an open-world map, linking together a series of chapters that take you through the events of An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. Nor does the content exactly defy expectations. The only real surprise is that we get it now, with the last film still to come (we can expect ‘There and Back Again’ to be covered by a DLC pack when the movie is released). Given the success of Lego: LOTR and the first two parts of Peter Jackson’s three movie adaptation, this is hardly an unexpected game. Just as last year’s Lego Marvel Super Heroes built on and reworked 2012’s Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, so Lego: The Hobbit finds fresh ideas with which to add to the same year’s Lego: Lord of the Rings. True, you’ll find some miserable souls complaining that the games are formulaic and repetitive – that they’re really all the same once you look beneath the movie skin – but they’re the ones missing out.Įach Lego game might not differ much from the last one, or even the one before that, but there’s always some slant, some new innovation or twist, that lends the game a different feel. So many games based on so many familiar characters and movies, and still the TT Games Lego series has yet to jump the shark. Available on Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4 (reviewed), Wii U, PC
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