Publisher/Developer: Warner Bros. Interactive/Traveller’s Tales
Genre: Real-time strategy
Price: $29.99
Verdict: While it won’t satisfy hardcore RTS fans, Lego Battles is a charming game for the less serious RTS gamer and/or Lego fan
Pros: Lego charm, non-linear campaign progression, a lot of content
Cons: Pathfinding AI is poor, exploring after battles is tedious, no left-handed controls
Lego Battles is a legitimate real time strategy game; you’ve got structures to build, resources to manage, soldiers to call up to battle for you, all like a “real” RTS. This game is basically Legocraft. The main campaign mode is uniquely structured in that you have 6 different campaigns all based along various Lego themes, from pirates to spacemen and just about everything else in between. Once you beat the first act of the King campaign, you unlock more themes and the second act of the King campaign, and the game gets a great non-linear structure in this way. Some of The acts also have non-linear branching paths, so your progression in this game is very much self-defined.
The game’s graphics are very true to the Lego theme – all the units are all modeled after real Lego pieces. There are also well-done video cutscenes that precede each act that humorously set up the story, without any dialog because apparently Lego people are mutes. There’s a reason why this game is called Lego Battles and not Lego Diplomacy.
The gameplay itself is solid for an RTS if not a bit basic. There are three basic types of units – builders (spoiler alert: they build structures for you and gather resources), your various soldier types, and the hero unit. The hero unit is your most powerful and versatile unit, as they are the strongest unit, can repair structures like a builder can, heal normal units in proximity to them, and have special abilities that they can call in, like increased armor, or summoning a giant space laser to rain death upon your Lego enemies. If the Hero unit is killed, then it’s game over for you, so keeping them from getting too damaged is the key to the game, as your normal units will thrive as they get healed by the Hero. On some missions, you will have multiple Hero units, and they can heal each other, as indicated by the heart that appears over the Hero’s head when getting healed. When this occurs between a King and the Dwarf King, I just accept that apparently the Lego middle ages were a far more progressive era than they were in our times.
This is not a ‘serious’ game by any means – not in tone, nor necessarily in challenge, from all that I played – most of my strategy involved building a ton of powerful units and sending them with my Hero on a rampage of destruction that left my Lego enemies looking like Mega Blocks afterwards. The game is fun to play despite lacking a real serious level of challenge, but it’s definitely worth it for the more casual RPG fans, as the Lego license would indicate. It definitely feels like a great introduction to the RTS genre for younger types or even for serious gamers who have largely avoided the RTS genre for various reasons or just never were that much into PC gaming, for example. It’s definitely a solid playing RTS game, although it probably isn’t going to appeal too much to the hardcore RTS fan because it’s more of a simplified experience. The game is not lacking content at all though – there are 6 campaigns with multiple acts, unlockables for the free play mode, and a multiplayer mode so you can battle your friends and determine who is more awesome: pirates or spacemen. Or form a team of spacemen and pirates!
The gameplay has 3 annoying gripes that all relate to one another – one, for all the advances that we have made in science and technology, how is it that we still have RTS gams that have pathfinding issues? Seriously, you’d think someone would have figured this out by now, but alas, your Lego soldiers are blockheads both literally and figuratively – any type of tight space to get through or telling them to go around a large geological structure, and they freak out and get stupid. No matter how hard their little Lego legs may try, they just won’t walk through that mountain. Give up the dream, little caterpillar. Second, the damned trees will drive you to madness. See, trees have to be cut for resources, but often on maps you will have to attack through them to get to where you need to go (most likely to make some mayhem). So you will have to keep them equal by hatchet, axe, and saw, but your Lego warriors will often chop down the trees near where you tell them to, or will leave them in a half-chopped state and you can’t get through, getting back to annoying gripe number one. Bunch of blockheads.
The third is the exploration once you’ve completed a mission. See, on each map, there are Lego studs spread about, and you can search throughout the map for them and other hidden objects that you can then use to unlock units for the Free Play mode, for example. The problem is that this is tedious and boring as you send your units (with poor pathfinding, remember) across every corner of the map, chopping down trees (also not the most intuitive process) in order to hopefully find a little blue Lego piece, or a treasure chest or something. The completionist in me wanted to collect everything I could find, but the impatient slacker wanted to quit, and the impatient slacker won more battles than the completionist, let’s put it that way. It’s just kind of boring to be finding these pieces, and really slowed the game down when I was attempting to find them.
Also, this game gets major scorn for not being lefty-friendly. You use the d-pad to move your view around the map, and the face buttons will switch between individual units and can switch between the top and bottom screens to scroll around the map quicker. Now, I was born left-handed. That means that in order to play this game effectively, I either have to play with the stylus in my right hand, which is just unnatural, or do some crazy finger acrobatics with my left hand and the stylus in order to effectively scroll around the map. Look, I’m no programmer, but I’ll criticize anyway because I can – if you’re making a stylus-based game, you MUST have lefty-friendly controls. No ifs, ands, or buts. Let me scroll around the map with the face buttons next time, Traveller’s Tales.
So do I recommend Lego Battles? If you’re a fan of the Lego license, then definitely, as it makes fantastic use of it. As someone looking for a more casual RTS to play, definitely. As a hardcore RTS gamer, it may not be worth it unless you’re really looking for an RTS game to play on the go. Lego Battles isn’t necessarily a must-play by any means, but it would be hard to go wrong by picking this one up, especially as the Lego charm really does add something to the game that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Lego license.
Popularity: unranked [?]
