“Lego: Star Wars 2” was the first console game I ever owned. I played it on my brand new silver Nintendo Gamecube Christmas morning years ago and have been a fan of the lego game series ever since. They continued to make great games through the “Lego: Indiana Jones” series, but then things started to get weird.

“Lego: Lord of the Rings” was fun for a little while, but then they started to go their own way with the games and things started to slip.

What is interesting about the “Lego Movie” video game is that it falls into two separate category of games without even looking into the genre. On the one hand, it is a game brought into existence for the sole purpose of making more money off of the movie of the same name which are almost always genuinely awful. However, it is also a lego game, which typically do a very good job of parodying the movie in question and add fun cute interactions with Lego’s and the world of the movie.

The gameplay is strange for a Lego game. For people unfamiliar with the Lego formula, you control a little plastic toy as it smashes his or her surroundings in search of money and secrets. You come across various obstacles that require different characters to get past, one has a wrench that he uses to fix broken machines by smashing them viciously and another is agile, a third can shoot projectile weapons.

Your environment is full of smash-able objects and people with secrets inside of all of them, and each level has multiple objectives. The game attempts to implement the touch screen but in a really clumsy way, and an option to just use the circle pad is more useful so I never used it. The game also has a lot of mini-game type levels that are surprisingly difficult to get through if you are trying to complete multiple objectives. They are really short and usually are just about avoiding obstacles. These short levels are incredibly unsatisfying and take away from the Lego game experience that I was hoping for. Missing a secret means you have to just start again from the top and keep trying over and over until you finally get it right.

The story is where this game dances on the fence. While movie games traditionally suffer from being attached to the original plot-line and being unable to explore what else the world has to offer, Lego games have always done a good job of telling the story and keeping the player interested.

I have not seen the “Lego Movie,” so I can not judge whether or not the game is an accurate portrayal of the movie’s plot, but even going into this without knowing a thing about the movie I can see the confining plot all around the game. The game just wants you to assume who people are and what things like ‘master builders’ are.

It is not a difficult concept and you probably should not play the “Lego Movie Video Game” without seeing the movie first but unfortunately I feel like the game suffers for trying to be like the movie. The other problem is that the game uses scenes ripped directly from the movie, which takes away from the charm of lego telling the story through pantomiming.

While the sound design of this game is perfectly fine, I feel like its worth noting that the song “Everything is Awesome” is a bit too prevalent in this game.

This game is by far the emptiest lego game in terms of comedy and content and is completely worth passing up.

2/5