‘Lego 2K Drive’ lets you build your dream race car, brick by brick

It took only a few minutes for Lego 2K Drive to sink its hooks into me. The second I left the highway, my sports activities coupe transformed into an off-road buggy. Simply earlier than hitting some water, the automobile’s Lego bricks swiftly contorted themselves right into a speedboat. These satisfying transformations are one thing you will see a ton of as you discover a number of open areas and compete in races that play out throughout ever-changing terrain.

This arcade racer is the primary Lego recreation from Visible Ideas, a developer that has in any other case targeted on and WWE video games over the previous couple of years. The studio hasn’t hit the identical heights of humor and wit as TT’s Lego video games (to be honest, Visible Ideas does not have ), however 2K Drive remains to be full of surprises and intelligent concepts.

It is a enjoyable mix of and Mario Kart. Zooming via the open areas is usually a blast and shedding bricks out of your automobile whenever you take harm is a neat contact (smashing breakable objects will restore your well being and enhance your enhance meter). So, it is a disgrace that the precise races can get fairly irritating.

Visible Ideas has tuned races to make them really feel as shut and thrilling as potential, for higher and worse. Regardless of your automobile loadout, each different competitor within the race storms forward of you as quickly as the sunshine goes inexperienced. At first, discovering a solution to overtake your race-specific rival and different Lego drivers to win is thrilling, however the recreation shortly exhibits its hand. You possibly can by no means construct up an excessive amount of of a lead. For those who spin off the observe at a good nook, enemies will kindly decelerate a bit of for you. The works each methods, nevertheless it makes races in the end really feel overly contrived. Greater than as soon as, I used to be on the verge of victory just for an opponent to storm previous me on the final second.

There are some Mario Kart-style powerups you may seize throughout races and within the open world. On the floor, the powerups appear so as to add one other dimension to races, although any enemy automotive I destroyed was shortly again within the thick of the motion. They will work in opposition to you too. In a single race, I used to be about to take the checkered flag when an enemy launched a spider internet to obscure my imaginative and prescient and sluggish me down.

Successful races is important to progress via the story, and it is annoying that there is no fast restart possibility whenever you aren’t victorious. It’s a must to return to the open world earlier than you may attempt a race once more.

These quibbles apart, the sport is a lot fulfilling. There is a ton to do after beating the marketing campaign, even in the event you do not care about on-line races. There are dozens upon dozens of challenges, aspect missions and collectibles to find. You may end up smashing alien robots to guard some towers or scooting round a small city to choose up residents and defend them from skeleton attackers. There are fetch quests galore too. The story missions and challenges can change into an excessive amount of of a grind — it’s important to attain a sure expertise degree to unlock some races — however there was simply sufficient selection to maintain a smile on my face.

Essentially the most thrilling side of Lego 2K Drive for a lot of gamers would be the automobile builder. You need to use digital Lego bricks to construct just about something you need, together with replicas of pre-made vehicles you unlock and even toy autos you have in-built actual life. The one automotive I made is a monstrosity, however a minimum of it really works, in contrast to lots of the janky autos I’ve seen in .

Maybe unsurprisingly, the sport nudges you within the path of microtransactions for the pre-made vehicles. You may slowly earn foreign money, nevertheless it’ll take you fairly some time to unlock autos from the store free of charge. After enjoying for seven hours, I nonetheless did not have sufficient Brickbux for a automotive. Because it occurs, you may pay actual money to unlock vehicles and drivers sooner, in addition to extra forms of bricks to your customized builds.

Lego 2K Drive is nearly an incredible recreation. Many of the proper items are in place and youthful gamers might get extra of a kick out of it than extra skilled players. Hopefully, Visible Ideas can tweak the race AI and different minor flaws to make it actually sing. Within the meantime, I am going to nonetheless be trying to find rainbow bricks in Large Butte County.

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