Another year, another Lego game. This time Traveller’s Tales ridiculously productive team of developers are taking on dinosaurs, rather than superheroes or goblins, with Lego: Jurassic World. Featuring five missions for each of the franchise’s four films (yes, even the rubbish second one), plus a couple of hefty hub worlds to explore, the game promises several more hours of enjoyable plastic destruction. Plus ankylosaurs. I recently got my hands on the game at a preview event.
Obviously we weren’t allowed to see any content inspired by the upcoming Jurassic World (so no tameable raptor packs going on a bike trip with Chris Pratt, unfortunately), so the developer demonstrated a level inspired by the original film. Set just before everything on the resort island of Isla Nublar goes to pot, the level let us take control of Dr. Ellie Satler and Dr. Harding. The two scientists are trying to work out the cause of illness for a stricken Triceratops, and in traditional Lego fashion, to do so requires making use of each character’s particular skills.
Satler is a palaeontologist, and thus naturally suited (?) to diving into the huge piles of Lego dinosaur dung scattered across each level. Hidden within are various treasures, in this case the scraps of food that have caused our lumbering dino friend’s current lower-gut trauma. Harding, meanwhile, can search for and follow scent trails leading to further clues, and packs a tranquiliser gun for solving ranged puzzles, and presumably dealing with onrushing enemies.
Once our heroes have discovered the offending objects – turns out the triceratops has a taste for ice cream and apples – Harding and Satler head off back to base, grateful dino buddy in tow. It’s only a matter of time before they bump into a puzzle perfectly designed for a lumbering ten-tonne monstrosity, so it’s time to switch over to control the triceratops. Which is a lot of fun. The camera shakes and the controller rumbles as you charge about smashing things apart, knocking over trees to form bridges and cracking open metal containers to get at the collectibles within.
Traveller’s Tales have hit upon another jackpot here; the only thing kids love more than superheroes is dinosaurs, and the developers are promising a roster of twenty beasts taken from all four films in the franchise. You can even build your own hideous hybrids – dinosaurs have their own version of the familiar Lego game character customisation system, where you can mix and match various dino-parts in order to create your ideal beast. Stick a triceratops head onto a T-Rex body, for example, and you’ll get a towering monster that can headbutt trees until they fall over. Terrifying. Apparently you can even fill out enclosures on the hub map with your abominable creations, meaning that you’ll run into them while exploring in free-play mode.
Other playable levels included a nice homage to the famous T-Rex scene in the original Jurassic Park, re-imagined in the inimitable Lego style. Tiny Lego Jeff Goldblum tries to distract the beast with a giant bone on a spring while you attempt to rescue the two irritating kids from a wrecked car. Lego games aren’t exactly known for their visual splendour (not that they need to be), but the level captures the atmospheric, stormy feel of the original scene nicely, with some neat lightning and rain effects.
Interestingly, none of the three levels I played through contained the usual assortment of goons to beat up. The focus was much more on the puzzle-solving and exploration side of things, with detours for the occasional set-piece. That makes sense for the franchise, you rarely saw Alan Grant zooming around on a jetbike or fist-fighting velociraptors after all, but it’s certainly a big change of pace from something like Lego Batman 3, which was basically wall-to-wall action. Not that there should be a shortage of things to do. The game will contain two huge hubs in the form of Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna, the two main island resorts from the franchise, with big open areas to explore, secrets to find and dinosaur enclosures to fill.
The general play here feels very much like by-the-numbers Lego puzzle-solving, but the dinosaur theme does go some way to livening things up. I get the feeling that the story missions we were shown are perhaps not the most interesting part of the game – that will presumably be messing around with the playable dinosaurs, filling dino enclosures and exploring the hub world – but they’re still full of that trademark Lego charm. I can’t deny that trademark mix of exploring, puzzle-solving and smashing stuff up is still fun.
My main issue is that Lego Batman 3 felt like the apex of the Lego game, and after playing through that game’s madcap pantomime, Lego Jurassic World feels just a little bland and unremarkable. That said, a lot of the more exciting features Traveller’s Tales teased weren’t shown off in the build I saw, so there’s still time for them to prove me wrong. Until then, I have to leave you with the same boring caveat games journalists have been using in reference to the Lego franchise for years – if you like the series, you’ll like this one, but it’s not going to radically change that familiar formula.
Most Anticipated Feature: Creating your own monstrous dinosaur hybrid and throwing it onto the island sounds like fun.
