Lego 2K Drive Review – Stud Your Engines

Finest identified for engaged on the writer’s WWE and NBA video games, Visible Ideas has discovered itself behind the wheel of 2K’s newest licensed experiment. Lego 2K Drive is a high-octane aggressive racer stuffed with destructible brick-y environments to crash by and a kid-friendly narrative stuffed with fourth-wall-breaking enjoyable.

The sport’s finest characteristic is Bricklandia, the playful Lego panorama wherein 2K Drive is ready. 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 need to step on) is an exhilarating expertise, made higher by the rigorously animated auto-morphing potential. As you cross totally different terrain, from street to off-road and on water, gamers routinely swap between automobiles to suit the context.

Tires and water noodles body the world’s vistas and act as charming obstacles, and it’s this mix of real-world objects with Lego constructs that amplifies the pleasant toy field environment. As a budding racer dropped into this hanging open world, you deal with 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 on occasion to remind you of how mean-spirited he’s.

To even get near taking him on, you should discover Bricklandia seeking rival speedsters, every with their very own distinctive driving expertise they train in instanced Mario Kart-style races. From an precise horse to an alien in a swimsuit, they make for an enthralling ensemble and supply new vehicles and perks to play with, in addition to Brickbux, with which you should purchase new machines and components. You too can construct your personal automobiles brick-by-brick on the storage, which let me create some really cursed rides. Whereas the constructing system isn’t probably the most intuitive, it does really feel like an applicable nod to Lego’s humble brick-building origins.

Throughout Bricklandia’s assorted biomes, you additionally encounter On-The-Go Occasions, ambient missions that you would be able to drop out and in of for pockets of absurd enjoyable, similar to leaping over homes or drifting by a minefield. Conquering the factors to earn XP and assets seems like getting your license in Gran Turismo on a schoolyard sugar excessive.

Lego 2K Drive’s fixed barrage of dialogue saved me laughing all through, although the depth of some missions, just like the less-interesting wave-defense or NPC rescue expeditions, left me unable to give attention to the jokes. This was all the time disappointing, given the evident expertise of the writers and voice actors, who present an efficient satire of standard racing video games.

Bashing and smashing your means by the map is simple junk meals enjoyable, however the must-win races could be punishing because of some devastating pickups and brutal decelerate whenever you veer off observe. A number of the open-world missions require you to drive with dexterity and try deft actions whereas herding rockets or smashing by tiny robotic invaders, which may result in frustration, the place I usually felt too quick for my very own good. Whereas I relished the way it bought my coronary heart pounding, I used to be left eager for a extra low-key method to exploration.

Whereas it’s a little buggy, one other pleasant shock was Lego 2K Drive’s sofa co-op, which permits you and a companion to peel by 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 companion to verify certainly one of us bought the highest spot. Notably, this characteristic made the dreary defend and rescue missions far more palatable because of the collaborative nature of the gameplay. 

Sadly, 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. Right here, you should purchase premium forex with actual cash that may be exchanged to entry vehicles and characters beforehand locked behind a expensive Brickbux wall. In fact, 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 velocity and silliness reign supreme as you race and morph throughout its delightfully destructible setting. Regardless of some irritating mission design and a smattering of bugs, Lego 2K Drive shortly gained me over with its absurd narrative stuffed with irreverent dialogue and moreish open-world challenges. If solely the specter of microtransactions didn’t loom so massive on this kid-friendly recreation, it might make for a good smoother trip.