Lego City Undercover may sound familiar to those who have had a history playing previous entries of the Lego series. Originally released in 2013 for the Wii U, Undercover broke ground in the series by introducing an open world experience like that of Grand Theft Auto. Spring of 2017 sees the game remastered for this current generation of systems. Players will be able to explore the surprisingly big Lego City and stopping criminals along the way. The game establishes a silly and light-hearted atmosphere from the very second the game is started is never steers away from that. While the inspiration from Grand Theft Auto is obvious, Undercover does enough with adding its own elements that it doesn’t feel like a rip-off of the series just with Legos added.
The game’s story revolves around Chase McCain, a former cop of Lego City who is returning to resolve unfinished business with former foe, Rex Fury. Upon Chase’s return, he is reintroduced to his new wacky colleagues at the police station. These characters help Chase along the way to capturing Rex Fury and ending this newest onslaught of criminal mischief that he has his hands on. One of the more entertaining and memorable characters from the game is Frank Honey. Honey is filled with incredibly funny dialogue and never becomes unfunny or to the point of being annoying. Every character surrounding Honey is fully aware of how incompetent he is with his job; however, they accept him for the wonderful character he is. The story doesn’t dive into anything thought provoking, nor would anyone except something as such from a Lego game. Chase simply goes to and from the different crimes scenes while stopping the criminals who are responsible. The game does a good job of taking a concept that seems dull on paper and making it something that players will have a difficult time putting down. The scenarios in which the crimes are being committed are all unique and require Chase to learn a new skill that will help him complete his assignment.
While the game is a good deal of fun and does have some surprisingly humorous moments, it does have an issue with handholding the player too much. The game doesn’t give players the opportunity to learn what the controls are and let them loose into the world. Each time an action must be done, the game always reminds you of what button needs to be pushed to perform the move. The game is also not difficult by any means. While having a game be as difficult and do it yourself as something like Dark Souls isn’t the goal of any of the Lego games, it would have been nice to have faced a significant challenge. At no point in the game did it feel like Chase’s task would become too much for the player and they may have to try again.
The controls function properly and there isn’t much to say other than everything revolving around that works fine. The camera can be an issue from time to time but doesn’t become anything too distracting while playing the game.
All in all, Lego City Undercover is a good deal of fun that players from all ages will be able to enjoy. While the game is nothing challenging or revolutionary, it is nice to see a game as kid-friendly as Lego take tribute from a series that meant for adults. The overworld is large enough to where players will always have something new to discover while going after the criminals led by Rex Fury. Undercover might be too easy of a challenge but that doesn’t take away from the overall wonderful experience players will have going through this delightful world.
