PTR: Lego City Undercover (WiiU) Preview

So if anybody forgot, this is the segment where I will preview an upcoming game I am excited for, then review the game after it's come out and compare that to the preview.  The first for this segment is Lego City Undercover!

Now, the title may be a bit misleading.  A lego game?  What are you, 5?  Hear me out.  This game is looking incredible so far.  The main theme of the game is that you're a legendary cop who comes back after a long break, and goes undercover to eliminate Rex Fury, a wanted fugitive, from the inside.  The game boasts a humongous open world, free to explore, with little details and plenty of things to do.  This is by far the biggest attractive quality about this game.  Open world games these days take themselves REALLY seriously, and it's hard to find one that doesn't revolve around gang wars, grittyness and shooting innocent civilians.  Simply put, Lego City looks like GTA IV for kids.  Or, in a way, Saints Row 2 for kids, but maybe not that ridiculous.

Now THIS is an open world

Hopefully I've somewhat caught your attention, as this is no typical lego game.  Levels are anything but linear and the world seems to be chalk full of side missions, collectibles and other replayable factors that the mainstream lego games are known for.  Combine that into a thriving city and it sounds like a recipe made in heaven.  The game also features a large variety of vehicles; from car, to boat, to helicopter, to rocket powered snow plow.  These all look like a blast to control and the game features building points where if you see a bunch of lego blocks on the ground, you can rebuild it into a vehicle pad and spawn any vehicle you want.  It also features a subway that acts as quick transportation around the world.  Add in parkour using context-sensitive button presses (the same button doing different things depending on the object near it), and you've got a developer that knows what they're doing and are not just making some cheap open world.  Every kid has wanted to make a lego city at one point, so of course they aren't going to screw this up.

Wow factor mentioned

The hilarious writing and charm of the lego games also shines in the trailers I've seen.  Movie references, cheesy but great one liners, and witty comebacks make each dialogue fresh and funny, keeping a nice theme of fun present throughout the entire game.  Even just from trailers I can already pick out characters I like and ones I know Im gunna enjoy meeting and interacting with.  The combat also looks smooth and the chase scenes looks like a ton of fun.  The graphics are also looking top-notch, showing vision glare for far away buildings giving the game huge depth (literally), character models, while simplistic legos, are animated beautifully and fit what they're saying perfectly.  A lot of things are made from legos in the game so it really feels like a living, breathing lego set.  Seeing Chase Mccain (the main hero and the one you play as) tightrope from skyscraper to skyscraper really gave me a bit of that wow factor.

Puzzles using the gamepad look very interesting

Am I worried about anything with this game?  Well, just a little.  From some of the E3 footage from last year I saw a lot of pop-ins from buildings and such, so I hope the world runs smoothly and loads quickly.  Granted this footage is from last year when they first announced the game, so I bet they'd have changed it by now.  My only other real concerns is that the open world either: 1.Wont be as big as I hope 2.Won't have many small details to keep you exploring.  But still, this game looks pretty much fail-proof to me.

Travelers Tales in developing this game, and they have been in charge of every lego game prior to this one.  While this may sound discouraging, the game has been getting very positive acclaims from all journalists who've gotten to play the demos, and they were also saying that Travelers Tales has been able to bust out of their shell with this game, and finally get the freedom they've been wanting to do in a lego game.  This gets me very excited.  So overall the game seems to feature a huge open world packed with details and fun stuff to do and fun vehicles to drive, a great story with likable characters and dialogue, great graphics with a nice aesthetic and overall presentation, as well as a developer treating this as their final breakthrough to make something they're really excited to make.  Will it be as good as I say it is?  Check back for the review in about a month or two to find out!

Next post will be:  WOM: COD-The Bane Of My Existence