Lego Dimensions Fun and Games

I'm a sucker for Lego stuff. I've got a Lego VIP card and everything. I've always liked their computer games too. I've got very fond memories of playing Lego Star Wars on the Xbox 360 with number one daughter. We worked through most of the campaign together and when we got to a difficult bit she'd unplug her controller so that her dad could take over and sort things out. Happy days.

When Lego Dimensions came out it was just a matter of time before I got a copy. The cynical part of me noted how clever it was for them to give you some Lego to build during the inevitable enormous download you have to perform whenever you install a new game these days, but we started playing while the update was being fetched and it worked fine. When the update was finished we just installed it and continued playing.

I've had a go with figure based games before. I had quite a bit of fun with the Disney offering a while back. But the Lego one has a few clever twists. For a start you have to build the character figures themselves which is always fun. There's a little platform that you plug into the console so that the game can tell which playing pieces you are using, but you can put more figures on this than you can with the other games. They've also incorporated the platform into the game in some rather neat ways. To solve some puzzles you have to move people and vehicles around a bit, which is rather neat.

We got the Portal add on as well, which is great fun although we weren't sure what we had to do to complete it.

If you like Lego games you'll like Lego Dimensions. The gameplay is as solid as previous versions with a similar mix of shooting, puzzles and building. The characterisation is great too. The voice acting for the characters is spot on and the script is very funny. There is some nice banter between Batman and Dr. Who in amongst the set pieces.

It looks like it could be a serious drain on the purse though. We kept finding things that we couldn't do because we lacked a character with the appropriate skills. We could of course solve this by going and buying the requisite person, but the sheer variety of items and people makes completeness a very expensive proposition.

But if you can stand the cost, I don't think you'll be disappointed.