Hi guys! Earlier during the evening of yesterday I've finished LEGO® CITY Undercover with a 100% score!
LEGO® CITY Undercover is one of the many LEGO® games that is part of the "TT franchise", referring to all the LEGO® games (since approx. 2005) that were developed in partnership between The LEGO® Company and TT Games.
To me personally, CITY Undercover has been the most fun all-around out of the TT franchise (so not including the original LEGO® games prior to 2005) that I have played to date. This includes the main story, world map, puzzles, abilities, humor, special assignments, gameplay, selection of unlockables, red bricks - the "volume", if you will. Spoiler HTML code
While the TT franchise has been mainly about LEGO® games in combination with an IP, it was interesting to see how they pulled off an original and fresh game design from scrap, that still kept the charm of this franchise's gameplay (so no, I do not count Bionicle Heroes to this rule). While most people would compare this game closely to the Grand Theft Auto franchise, I can understand the general idea of "why", but I don't think that the reason why people play GTA is on the same level as CITY Undercover.
Going back to the game being designed from scrap - I was especially delighted with how the game was designed around Chase McCain himself, with him performing in seven strong occupations (Police, Robber, Miner, Astronaut, Farmer, Fireman, Construction). Giving all seven occupations their own significant roles in the main story, unlockables and existence in the world map makes the "CITY part" of this game feel alive and fleshed out.
Talking about the world map of CITY Undercover... it is big. The suggested retail price of CITY Undercover is about twice the retail price of other LEGO® TT Games, this game is only for the Wii U, and you can clearly see that in return. One disadvantage of most multiplatform games is that they have to fit for "all". CITY Undercover takes a while to load the entire world map, but after that; *bam*! After loading the entire world map, dense loading screens are hard to find - most likely only to happen during Special Assignments and the important Police Office.
The volume of land you can walk on, feels almost three times the size of that of Manhattan in Marvel Super Heroes (which already set a significant bar for its time). The entire city of CITY Undercover is divided in a -lot- of districts, all given their own respectful significance in this game. That was a particular thing to note about Manhattan *and* Gotham City (Batman 2); because of their limited allowed size, everything felt cramped a bit too much to give that compact feel.
Given Chase McCain is just a regular minifigure without real superpowers like in the DC or Marvel games; this fact really did this game a lot of justice. You really had to scale buildings to reach puzzles instead of flying to the top and be "done", all abilities are in balance and all are frequently used, Red Bricks are used to a very good effect, vehicles are prevented from becoming superfluous and are a great help, and so on.
I'd love to talk more about this particular game in-depth, but damn this blogpost is already way longer than I want to...
Fun fact: this is really the first LEGO® TT Game that required me to play with a guide to 100% it. It's not only because this game is *that* big, but also because it lacks a bit of a fancy map layout to aid you with getting that 100%...
Actually, this was *the* particular game that got me interested to try out this franchise as a whole. At the time when
I was aware of this game, I didn't own a Wii U yet - and eventually I came across Batman 2 on the PC.
Next to CITY Undercover and Batman 2, within this franchise itself (so again, not including the original LEGO® games prior to 2005), I have also played Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel's Avengers, Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Jurassic World, Worlds and CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins. While I may have not finished Avengers and The Chase Begins with a 100% score yet, both are still on my list to finish.
I have to admit I haven't touched Worlds that much as I'd like to, but I think that's because the game is still relatively new and in beta - but as far as I have seen what they're planning to do, I am invested with the possibilities that the game has to offer in the future.
After Batman 2, it was intended to keep a dedicated blogpost for each following game as recurring - however, when
I was about to write about Marvel Super Heroes, I pushed the release of said blogpost back, and eventually it went into a loop of delays until it got neglected entirely. As you can see with this blogpost in particular, I'm trying to bring these back - and Lux knows why.
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!
No comments:
Post a Comment