Studio Visual Concepts has been doing the same thing for over 20 years: simulators of basketball, baseball, hockey and wrestling. Therefore, the announcement of LEGO 2K Drive from this team was unexpected, and they are also publishing the project 2K Games, which to LEGO had nothing to do with. Despite the lack of much experience, the team managed to make a bright and fun racing arcade game, which you can spend several evenings with, not without pleasure. However 2K even here she managed to spoil the raspberries with her greed.
The devil is in the details
Attempts to create racing games about little yellow men have already been made – long-time fans of construction sets remember the LEGO Racers duology . Compared to the original, the sequel was very impressive: here you have an open world, divided into several regions, and the opportunity to assemble your own vehicles from parts. After the release of the second part in 2001, the series was forgotten, but LEGO 2K Drive these distinctive features are in place: both large locations and car customization. Both, of course, are made many times better than then.
The open world of the new product is reminiscent of Forza Horizon . You also drive aimlessly, follow the road on the mini-map and regularly come across entertainment. Demolishing all the objects at high speed is even more fun here, since they are all built from LEGO figures and funnily fly into pieces: small trees, fences, pillars, and bushes. If the protagonist’s car is quite strong, then other cars (as well as planes and boats) fall apart at one touch – at such moments you feel like a child in a sandbox who wants to break everything. You can also shoot down passers-by – they just fly far away, plop down on their butts and get up as if nothing had happened.
One of the most interesting features of the game is the automatic switching of vehicles depending on the surface you are driving on. On the asphalt you drive a sports car, and as soon as you drive onto dirt or sand, the car transforms into an SUV. And if you then go to a body of water, you suddenly find yourself at the helm of a boat. The idea is not new – it was similar in The Crew 2, and older audiences will remember Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed . But neither here nor there it happened so quickly. And if in “Sonic” the model of transport remained the same, it just had wheels disappearing or an air cushion appeared, then here you can turn from a luxurious sports car into a flying saucer on wheels or something more unusual – and this happens as if with the snap of a finger.
Thanks to this, the ride doesn’t get boring, especially when as you progress you open up additional opportunities like jetpacks scattered throughout the locations. For the same reason, traditional races in which you compete with several opponents are also exciting. Somewhere you need to cut a couple of laps, somewhere you just need to get to the finish line, and almost always the races turn out to be very intense and dynamic due to frequent switching of vehicles. Here you are jostling with your opponents while sitting in a sports car, now you drive onto a jump and land on a river, drifting along the waves and trying to overtake someone at a turn – the races are not too long, but they leave a lot of vivid emotions.
Of course, there is no serious plot here – it’s full of jokes, puns and just funny dialogues. It’s a pity, without knowledge of English a lot of things will go by, but the translation wasn’t delivered.
Here, as in LEGO Racing, There are https://bingostorm-casino.co.uk/login/ various amplifiers hanging above the track: you can throw grenades in front of you, launch rockets, throw slowing webs at the enemy, and so on. The AI willingly selects these bonuses, not allowing the player to use them, and actively applies them, so these races are not a cakewalk. Although rubber bending could not be avoided, it is not too aggressive, so it does not interfere with the enjoyment of racing. Overall difficulty is adequate. I restarted some races several times – no one is safe from a rocket flying into the trunk just before the finish line.
I’m glad to see how pleasant it is to drive here. There is a quick turn button, it is possible to drift (almost endlessly!), the acceleration button is located very conveniently, and you constantly press it. You can also jump, and the further you progress through the game, the more often you use it, deftly jumping over obstacles. The game rewards those who not only rush ahead, but also approach races creatively – find shortcuts and so on. Here it’s not even necessary to drive through the gates at checkpoints – Forza Horizon punishes for this, but here there is a little more freedom.
Classes for every taste
It’s not limited to classic racing – this is only a small part of what the open world offers. In each of the four regions, only one garage is initially marked, serving as a point for quick travel. And when you start driving along the roads, you come across all sorts of entertainment, many of which start as soon as you pass through the big blue gate. Either you need to drift for as long as possible, then drive a couple of kilometers without knocking over objects, or make a long jump. There are short side missions of varying degrees of absurdity: in one you pull out weeds in a field, in another you shoot down flying saucers and save cows kidnapped by aliens.
Not all mini-games are created equal. There are some very tedious sequences involving protecting generators from hordes of exploding monsters, but the most tedious missions are the ones in which the area is attacked by skeletons or other monsters, and you have to collect panicking townspeople and take them to safety. Fortunately, there are few downright boring missions in the game, and even repetitive missions can be fun – like, for example, chasing criminals in a police car with the ability to fire missiles.
Although exploring the open world can be distracting at times, from time to time the game literally forces you to do it. After the next story race, you may be asked to reach such and such a level, and only after that the next races will open. This kind of grind seems very inappropriate, since these levels do not really bring anything – they exist only to prolong the short “story”.
On the other hand, you will be able to unlock many prizes, including useful trophies. For completing races you get new vehicles – they not only have a unique design, but also have different characteristics. Some go faster, but handle a little worse, some withstand more explosions in fierce races. Some cars and boats have exclusive passive perks – with one, the web you throw will be more effective, and with another, you will spend acceleration more slowly.
Crazy hands
But first of all, you hunt not so much for cars, but for parts. In your local garage (also available in the main menu) you can create your dream car almost from scratch. First you choose the type of transport, then you decide what its bottom looks like, and after that you start designing anything. There are a huge number of parts of various sizes: you can create walls, spoilers, hood decorations and other elements, sculpting everything – as long as one part has a spike and another has a recess. If you want to remove a brick, you don’t need to disassemble the entire structure – you select the desired part of the building and delete it with one button.
When you complete the main work, you pay attention to everything else: you paint the car in different colors, if possible, rotate or tilt individual elements like the spoiler and wings. There’s even a rudimentary programming mode where you specify when the headlights should come on: when turning, braking, collision, etc. There are plenty of convenient settings: simultaneous selection of several bricks, and the ability to create mirror copies of structures if you have stuck something beautiful on the left side and want to repeat it on the right.
Although sometimes you have to fight with the camera to get a detail in the right place, overall the creative mode is great and will captivate even those who don’t usually spend time on such things. Well, driving cars you created with your own hands gives you a pleasant feeling every time. It’s a pity that you can’t share inventions yet – the developers promise to add this feature, but it’s unknown whether it will appear in LEGO 2K Drive a separate hub with user creations, or will it be something simpler.
Unfortunately, this would not be a game from 2K Games, if microtransactions hadn’t been added to it. It would seem that at least the project, designed mainly for children, would be left alone, but no. For participating in races and mini-games you receive local currency, and you can spend it in a local store, where new models of cars are sold for a lot of money – both created specifically for the game, and inspired by existing designers. You can also buy parts designed for creative mode, and they cost half as much. To get more currency, it is suggested to spend real money – one machine will cost about $5.
Currency, of course, can be saved, but even for completing the campaign they don’t give you enough money so that you can safely buy everything in a row – suddenly something cooler appears later? In such a situation, multiplayer would save, but there are two problems. Firstly, I couldn’t find anyone in the online championships a day after the release. Secondly, although people get caught in regular races, the prizes for participation are not very impressive – in the first race I took fourth place and received two bucks. You can forget about a car for 10,000! There is no balance in multiplayer – everyone drives cars that they bought or made in the story campaign.
LEGO 2K Drive is a fun arcade racing game and a worthy successor to a forgotten series LEGO Racers. The open world is fun to drive around, the competitions are intense and varied, and there are plenty of fun mini-games, although some of them are tiring. And the opportunity to design your own cars will encourage you to spend a few evenings in the local garage. The presence of grinding in the story campaign is annoying, but what’s most upsetting is microtransactions, which you don’t want to see in such projects. I hope the amount of currency you receive in the game will increase, although with such a publisher you can’t count on it.
Pros: various regions are filled with entertainment from classic races to all kinds of mini-games; fun races with aggressive opponents and different tracks; convenient control; a rich car editor that allows you to create your own cars from many parts; bright world and funny dialogues.
Cons: inappropriate grinding in the story campaign; several boring mini-games that are also repetitive; microtransactions in a game aimed at children.
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