BRICK ROLLED
LEGO CITY UNDERCOVER is Wii-ly good
Lego City Undercover feels like an anomaly. It only came out in 2013, but that feels like a lifetime ago. A modern version of the game would crowbar in Hollywood talent to voice Chase McCain, the wisecracking celebrity cop who feels like a warning from the past about the rise of Chris Pratt.
More telling, however, is the fact your in-game interface is based on the Wii U, something that feels slightly tragic and amusing at the same time: the controller equivalent of drinking mercury to cure syphilis. And although it often feels like you’re being forced to solve crimes with a dead man’s Etch A Sketch, it rarely detracts from this smart, often surprising open world experience.
The inherent Nintendosity extends to the way it bombards you with ideas. It might have been enough to drive around a fully realized Lego world, smashing things up and rebuilding them, but the game throws in grapple guns, disguises, and gamboling traversal. It’s also funny, in a way that feels like it has some substance beyond the winks and quips. Handing tutorial work to your idiot sidekick Frank Honey is a bright way of imparting crucial info, and there’s a disarming amount of UK comedy talent here, too: Adam Buxton and Peter Serefinowicz both turn up to play bit parts.
It doesn’t always work – sometimes it feels like you’re pulled into endless expositional cutscenes, but that’s because there’s a story here: another thing that sets this apart from other TT games that bring that honed brand of irreverent humor to established properties.