Best recognized for engaged on the writer’s WWE and NBA video games, Visual Concepts has discovered itself behind the wheel of 2K’s newest licensed experiment. Lego 2K Drive is a excessive-octane aggressive racer filled with destructible brick-y environments to crash via and a child-pleasant narrative filled with fourth-wall-breaking enjoyable.
The recreation’s finest characteristic is Bricklandia, the playful Lego panorama wherein 2K Drive is about. It’s a world begging to be dismantled by the brunt of your screeching tires and customized boat masts. Accelerating throughout the open-world playmat ({that a} human would by no means wish to step on) is an exhilarating expertise, made higher by the fastidiously animated auto-morphing capability. As you cross totally different terrain, from street to off-street and on water, gamers routinely swap between autos to suit the context.
Tires and water noodles body the world’s vistas and act as charming obstacles, and it’s this mix of actual-world objects with Lego constructs that amplifies the pleasant toy field environment. As a budding racer dropped into this placing open world, you sort out an onslaught of revheads, claiming their flags to ascend to the respect of Sky Cup Champion. Mohawked egomaniac Shadow Z serves as your rival on this endeavor, popping up now and again to remind you of how imply-spirited he’s.
To even get near taking him on, you will need to discover Bricklandia in quest of rival speedsters, every with their very own distinctive driving abilities they train in instanced Mario Kart-style races. From an precise horse to an alien in a swimsuit, they make for a captivating ensemble and supply new automobiles and perks to play with, in addition to Brickbux, with which you should buy new machines and elements. You also can construct your individual autos brick-by-brick on the storage, which let me create some actually cursed rides. While the constructing system isn’t essentially the most intuitive, it does really feel like an acceptable nod to Lego’s humble brick-constructing origins.
Across Bricklandia’s various biomes, you additionally encounter On-The-Go Events, ambient missions that you would be able to drop out and in of for pockets of absurd enjoyable, akin to leaping over homes or drifting via a minefield. Conquering the standards to earn XP and sources seems like getting your license in Gran Turismo on a schoolyard sugar excessive.
Lego 2K Drive’s fixed barrage of dialogue saved me guffawing all through, although the depth of some missions, just like the much less-fascinating wave-protection or NPC rescue expeditions, left me unable to concentrate on the jokes. This was all the time disappointing, given the evident expertise of the writers and voice actors, who present an efficient satire of typical racing video games.
Bashing and smashing your approach via the map is simple junk meals enjoyable, however the should-win races will be punishing as a consequence of some devastating pickups and brutal decelerate if you veer off monitor. Some of the open-world missions require you to drive with dexterity and try deft actions whereas herding rockets or smashing via tiny robotic invaders, which may result in frustration, the place I usually felt too quick for my very own good. While I relished the way it received my coronary heart pounding, I used to be left eager for a extra low-key strategy to exploration.
While it’s a little buggy, one other pleasant shock was Lego 2K Drive’s sofa co-op, which permits you and a associate to peel via the open world collectively, pooling XP as you go. I discovered myself getting in the best way of bombs or smashing into targets for my associate to verify one in all us received the highest spot. Notably, this characteristic made the dreary defend and rescue missions way more palatable because of the collaborative nature of the gameplay.
Unfortunately, the elephant within the room, or on this case, a monkey, is the sport’s storefront, Unkie’s Emporium, launched in the course of the tutorial by its eponymous primate mechanic. Here, you should purchase premium forex with actual cash that may be exchanged to entry automobiles and characters beforehand locked behind a pricey Brickbux wall. Of course, you can earn all this stuff by grinding, however the temptation lingers, which is troubling for a recreation so clearly geared towards youthful audiences.
Lego 2K Drive builds an extremely inviting world the place pace and silliness reign supreme as you race and morph throughout its delightfully destructible setting. Despite some irritating mission design and a smattering of bugs, Lego 2K Drive rapidly gained me over with its absurd narrative filled with irreverent dialogue and moreish open-world challenges. If solely the specter of microtransactions didn’t loom so massive on this child-pleasant recreation, it will make for a fair smoother journey.
Discussion about this post