Review – Lego Dimensions

Skylanders and Disney Infinity have been bleeding out poor parent’s pockets for the last few years with not only new game discs to buy, but characters, power discs and whatever else these massive companies can churn out, so it was only a matter of time before Warner Bros got on board. The difference is by partnering with the world’s largest toy company Lego, combining franchises like The Simpsons, DC Comics, The Wizard Of Oz, Scooby Doo, Doctor Who, Portal 2 (and many many more to come!) they have clearly taken their time and come up with not only the best strategy for your hard earned dollars, but also best game of this genre to keep you entertained for hours with both physical building and game playing entertainment.

This is a difficult game to review, so I am going to do the best that I can. For starters if you don’t understand how these games work, you have physical toys that you place on a portal and they appear in-game, on screen. The starter pack for Lego Dimensions requires you to build the entire portal out of the Lego bricks provided (a task which will take an hour or two, depending if you do it alone or with children) and then if that wasn’t enough, you also have to assemble the characters and their accompanying vehicles. You can opt to load the game up and start assembling the characters and portal in small pieces while you play, but personally I did it all at the start and found it was much easier to dive straight into the game.

In the starter pack you get Wildstyle from the Lego Movie, Gandalf from Lord of The Rings and Batman from the Lego Movie. It is a great balance of personalities and franchises that fortunately is enough to complete the entire game and levels included. However if you do want to access all areas, you can purchase additional characters who can only access certain characters. I reviewed this game with the addition of Homer Simpson, Wonder Woman and Cyborg (did you really expect anything different from me?) This also granted me access to the Simpsons level and to Springfield, the entire area is littered with hilariously typical Simpsons grade humour (most impressively Homer stating “This is not shameless promotion, it’s co-branding!”) Something about seeing Wonder Woman take down the Joker Bot at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant was just mind blowing. The banter between franchises and characters is worth this game alone, so make sure you switch around characters to hear their interactions (Wonder Woman telling Homer Simpson she heard he has a crush on her, Wildstyle organising a coffee date with Wonder Woman to gossip about Superman and their relationship) It really is one of the game’s best selling points.

As far as gameplay goes, it is pretty typical Lego game fare here, go here, smash these Lego bricks, press these buttons, pull that grapple to kill that character. The strength is not its gameplay, but its consistent mash up of franchises and their interactivity that is going to peak your interest. We have only seen the first few waves of franchise announcements and WB have promised more to come, so expect this game to stick around for the long haul and for many more Lego brick adventures in the foreseeable future. I hear your question, what does this mean for the other Lego games? Good question! We were fortunate enough to play Lego Avengers at EB Games Expo this year, and definitely stands alone as a game that can exist outside of this franchise.

Overall Lego Dimensions is the game that we all want to play, it is the embodiment of what Lego represents and by throwing in a wide mix of loved franchises that both kids and adults love, they have ensured a game that has universal appeal and will continue to grow for years to come. If you love Lego games, you will love this, if any of these franchises appeal to you, you will love this game. Honestly it would be really hard to not love this game, there is so much attention to detail and love given to every aspect of it.

Lego Dimensions gets a cool 5 out 5 from me, and is one of my MUST HAVE games for 2015.