And I thought World's Unite was a crazy crossover! Yep, I've spent some time on it now. So... my first impressions. Well, it's a Lego game, with all that that implies. Which means you probibly already know if you'll enjoy the gameplay or not. Compared to Lego City, the combat is a step back, back to button mashing as opposed to using throws and counters. But then there are a lot of characters with different combat styles, and abilities to use in combat, that was maybe inevitable. While the combat might be a little weaker, I'd say the humor is much better. The usual Lego humour is there, but this time rather than being buoyed up with parody jokes, most of the humour is simply from these characters from different worlds interacting. A gameplay addition, which surprised me, was the use of the Figure Board in the game. I dunno how other collectible games work, but I assumed you put the figures on the board to choose who is in game and that was that. Nope. Moving the Minifigs around the board is crucial to gameplay and puzzle solving, so make sure it's close. Tricky, as the USB cable isn't that long. Also, I found that too many minifigs makes such puzzles harder as you have to move ones around to make space. I ended up leaving the vehicles off the Figure Board unless I actually needed them for a puzzle.n You could have up to seven minifig in a level, but I'd recommend only four of five to keep spaces. Gameplay is divided into levels (a la most Lego games, but now with the addition of save points) and Adventure Worlds. Both are based on the different franchises available in the game. Another thing that surprised me is that levels already exist for franchises that have separate 'Level packs'. Which means with a level pack you have two levels for that franchise. One main story, one extra. The Adventure worlds are open world areas of each franchise, with lots of hidden secrets and mini-games around. In size they are maybe twice the size of a city district in Lego City, maybe a bit bigger, I haven't spent much time on them. However, they are locked unless you own a mini-fig from that franchise. Which leads me to the bad part of the game, the pay-wall. The game is fully playable with just the three main characters (Batman, Wyldstyle and Gandalf) but in order to get all the secrets, hidden minikits etc etc, you need to buy more figures with different abilities. At first, this actually didn't appear too bad. The initial obstacles had a massive list of characters (or vehicles, each one of which has three modes) with the ability to bypass to chose from. So it looked as if you'd need to buy some characters, but had a lot of freedom to choose who. But then there were some obstacles that could only be bypassed by a few characters, or even just one in some cases. And there are so many abilities... Buying a fun-pack (a characters plus vehicle) in the UK is about £13. A team pack (i.e. two fun packs) is £25. And a level pack (one character, two vehicles and a level) is £30. Which is very expensive. However, factoring in Adventure Worlds makes it a little tricky to work out value for money. As a rule of thumb, the first pack you buy for a franchise (excluding the three you start with) is worth it. After that, you're paying too much. And how much do you need to buy to access all worlds and have all the abilities? Well... You'd need the Base Set, all the level packs, and at least one pack from each franchise not covered by the base set and the level packs. PLUS, another 5/6 fun packs to have all the different abilities (depending on what abilities some vehicles have which you can't look up easily in-game). Which works out at approximately... £430. And it's about £715 to buy every set. That is a *bleep*ing lot of money.... Considering most lego games are £40....... I do wanna recommend this game. It's fun, it's funny, it's big.... But... at the prices they're asking, I can't, I really can't.
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