Like previous entries in the series, you've got two modes here, the main story and free-play. Free-play allows you to choose from any character you've unlocked by collecting the gazillions of studs scattered around the game world. Story mode meanwhile, takes the big set pieces from each film and plonks you right in the middle.
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| Like in the second movie, the barrel sequence is preposterous fun |
Scenes from the movies play out in a typically irreverent manner, with straight-face dialogue taken straight from the films undercut with that familiar LEGO brand of slapstick goofiness. The fight with the trolls from An Unexpected Journey sees you furiously creating catapults out of scattered junk, while Bilbo's riddle face-off with Gollum requires you to quickly build the answers. The fight and build philosophy is solid enough, but it quickly becomes repetitive, especially in long levels like the tedious escape from Goblin Town. There's the occasional change in formula; the barrel-riding river run, a helter-skelter dash with a constantly shifting perspective that keeps you on the move, is a lot more fun, but those more interesting set pieces are too rare.
Combat is fairly common, which is a shame because it remains a bit of a mess. There's so much going on, especially in the big battle scenes, that it's almost impossible to really judge what you’re doing, so manic button-mashing becomes the order of the day. The game attempts variety by having each character wield their own speciality weapon, but once you've tonked one orc around the head you've tonked them all.
Puzzles and exploration are more solid. The LEGO series has always done free-form messing about pretty well, and The Hobbit is no exception. There is an absolute tonne of stuff to find and do here. You'll see caves or secret areas early on that you won't be able to complete until you've unlocked some of the hundreds of characters available for free play mode. Completionists be warned – anyone planning to 100% this game might never be seen or heard from again. It's that packed full of things to do.
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| Does LEGO Legolas have more charisma than Orlando Bloom? |
Unfortunately a lot of the side-missions you find end up being little more than fetch quests, given to you by NPCs whose lacklustre voice-acting sits awkwardly next to the movie dialogue. These missions provide little in the way of challenge or fun, and are essentially filler. It's more fun wandering around the open world areas looking for stuff to do than being told to go find fifty carrots.
One other new addition is the strange little building game you get when using the new crafting platforms to create a mission-specific item. You have to match the correct LEGO component to a model of the item you're constructing, and the quicker you guess the correct piece the more currency you earn. I suppose it's an attempt to capture the real-life satisfaction of building something and slotting it together, but there's no challenge in it, nor any real reason to have it in there considering it's only a slower-paced and more tedious version of how crafting works in the rest of the game.
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| The characters pop nicely against some pretty backgrounds, with the dwarven gold pile a particularly nice example |
Oh, and in case you're wondering, LEGO Smaug's a pretty cool dragon, just like in the movie. Until he sods off to Laketown and the game abruptly ends. Okay, to be fair that's basically what happened in the second film. Still, this game is called LEGO The Hobbit. That fade to black seems even more awkward here, because right now this is an incomplete story. We're apparently getting the last part of the story as DLC when the film hits cinemas, but that's a long way off. Will the game keep your attention that long? I'm not sure.
LEGO THE HOBBIT VERDICT
LEGO The Hobbit has plenty of charm and plenty of content, but it’s hard not to feel like the series is lacking some of the verve that it once had. The new additions don’t really do much to freshen things up, and some, like the strange and dull building minigame, feel out of place and even detract from the experience. They feel a little half-hearted, honestly. The game feels much more confident when it falls back on the same mix of discovery, secrets and puzzle-solving the series has always excelled at than when it tries something new. If you or your kids love LEGO games, then you’ll doubtless get what you’re expecting out of LEGO The Hobbit. If you’re slightly jaded after so many entries in the franchise, however, it won’t do much to refresh your interest.
TOP GAME MOMENT
Two sequences, a battle on the back of two stone giants and the barrel-riding level, provide the most varied and interesting gameplay.
