LEGO® City Undercover

Even for only an hour so far, this game helped me communicate with my autistic child with focus, direction, and spatial awareness. -Button commands are clear (Xbone controller) -Objectives are marked clearly -Controls are intuitive I'm only reviewing this for parents in a similar situation.

[h2]Overall: 10/10[/h2] [h3]Story:[/h3] The story ended up being a very pleasant surprises for me. Unlike most LEGO games, which are essentially just quirky retellings of your favorite films, this game tells a completely original story with its own cast of characters, so you don't need any prior history with the IP to understand the plot. That might initially make you side-eye or second guess this title since a big part of most LEGO game's selling point is the fan-service aspect, as it did for me, but it honestly didn't take long for me to realize that it absolutely captures that same spirit despite lacking an "official collaboration." The writing is incredibly self-aware and embraces the signature LEGO style of humor by constantly poking fun at itself through an endless stream of obvious pop culture references and parodies that landed for me more often than not. It's the kind of humor you'd expect to find, where it works just as well for younger players as it does for older ones who recognize the films and TV shows being referenced. Because so much of the narrative revolves around parody, it's obviously not the most original story in terms of its overarching plot, and there were definitely a few aspects I wasn't particularly fond of, (like Frank Honey's constant attempts at eccentric comedic relief) but even so, I felt like the majority of the dialogue/character interactions were genuinely endearing more than they were cringeworthy or obnoxious. The pacing also deserves credit for keeping things moving at a consistently enjoyable pace. The open world nature of the game gives you the ability to go through the story at your own speed, allowing you to take extended breaks cleaning up collectibles and such, but the straightforward and tight writing of each chapter makes sure that there's no filler and that it never tries to be more than it needs to be. [h3]Gameplay:[/h3] I'll be the first to say that this isn't a hard game. there's really not anything about it that "challenges" you, but I still firmly believe that the gameplay is another one of the biggest strengths because of how it constantly finds ways to keep things feeling fresh. At its core, it's still the familiar blend of light combat, platforming, puzzle solving, and LEGO's trademark object-building mechanics, but what really elevates it above most traditional LEGO games is the overall variety. Instead of simply handing you new gadgets without reason, you gradually unlock a collection of disguises (each with their own unique abilities) that are humorously justified within the story. Whether it's investigating crime scenes as a police officer, cracking safes as a robber, clearing obstacles with a miner's dynamite, etc. the gameplay does a great job of shaking things up often enough without feeling jarring or overwhelming. Although the underlying gameplay loop can easily be boiled down to "just use the correct disguise to solve an environmental puzzle" for a lot of the content here, I still felt like the seamless swapping between disguises and sheer variety of specialties they offer kept both the puzzles and objectives from becoming too repetitive since the game is always introducing new mechanics, vehicles, and set pieces to complement them. The combat itself is probably the weakest aspect since it's fairly simple and doesn't evolve much beyond basic punches, counters, and grabs. One mechanic I did appreciate, though, is that enemies aren't defeated just by knocking them down. Instead, you have to physically handcuff them after stunning them, which added a bit more personality to encounters and gave fights a fitting police-themed twist. Other than that, yeah, it's not groundbreaking by any stretch of the imagination. [h3]World:[/h3] Other than being an original IP, the open world is easily the main reason this whole game stands apart from most other LEGO titles. Instead of using the city as little more than a hub between missions, the entire experience is built around exploring LEGO City at your own pace. Furthermore, the map is surprisingly large and divided into a wide variety of distinct districts, each of which has its own personality/visual identity, so traveling across the city rarely feels repetitive despite spending dozens of hours there. What also makes the open world so enjoyable is how rewarding exploration feels. Since the previously mentioned disguises each come with unique abilities, they allow you to access new, typically unreachable areas to uncover new collectibles, puzzles, and secrets. As opposed to revealing everything immediately, the gameplay constantly gives you reasons to revisit older locations and reveals the otherwise hidden depth of the map. Driving across town is enjoyable in its own right thanks to the amount of variety of environments and the abundance of things to discover along the way. Even though you'll inevitably spend plenty of time backtracking while cleaning up collectibles if you go for the 100%, Lego City's charm and constant sense of discovery keeps that from feeling like too much of a chore since exploring it is just as entertaining as playing through the story itself. [h3]Visuals:[/h3] The visuals are probably the weakest aspect of the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad. My biggest complaint is easily the technical limitations. For whatever reason, the game is locked to 60fps, which obviously doesn't ruin the experience, but it still feels like a strange restriction for a PC port. It gets even more disappointing with ultrawide support, because while the game technically fills the entire screen instead of adding black bars to the sides, it does so by stretching both the image and the HUD rather than rendering the correct aspect ratio. Outside of those issues though, I think the visuals have held up well enough. Considering this port alone is coming up on ten years old and was always intended to have a stylized LEGO aesthetic rather than chase realism, the graphics still do a perfectly respectable job of bringing the world to life. Character models are expressive, the environments are colorful and full of personality, and everything is clean and easy to read during gameplay. It's never going to impress anyone looking for cutting-edge graphical fidelity, but no one is playing a LEGO game for hyper-realistic visuals. [h3]Music/Sound Design:[/h3] The music is pretty serviceable and genuinely fits the game's themes and overall tone very well, but I'm honestly just not the biggest fan of the OST. It does a great job of complementing/reinforcing the game's cliche buddy-cop atmosphere, but over the course of my roughly 23-hour playthrough, I felt that the soundtrack became a little repetitive, and eventually more exhausting than enjoyable. That's largely down to my personal preference, though. I've never been big into funk music, nor do I have any nostalgia for the classic cop shows that inspired most of the soundtrack, so it simply wasn't something that resonated with me. Even so, I can't really criticize it just because it's not my taste, since it very effectively does exactly what it sets out to do. The sound design, on the other hand, is great across the board. The voice acting deserves a special mention because before playing this, I hadn't touched a LEGO game since the era where characters communicated exclusively through grunts or physical comedy, so I wasn't sure how well the transition to full voice acting would land. Thankfully, there wasn't a single character that broke my immersion or felt unbelievable to the world. While there are definitely a few slightly polarizing personalities, like Frank Honey as I mentioned earlier, they never detract from the gameplay enough to become an actual issue. Beyond that, the bustling ambience of LEGO City, the satisfying plastic clacks of breaking LEGO bricks, and all of the smaller environmental and gameplay sound effects subtly come together to make the world feel really alive.