Most of us have at least made a simple car in LEGO in our lifetime. Those of you with more imagination might’ve even made a custom ultra-sonic-looking car that could potentially be race worthy if it existed in the real world. In our own imagination, we all thought our self-made cards made from bricks were masterpieces in their own right. In LEGO 2K Drive you can (at least in pixel form) test your hotrod, rally beast and formula one behemoth against a plethora of AI-controlled opponents. If you think you are good enough you can even prove it against the online community.
Build-a-car
LEGO 2K Drive is the first (of potentially many) collaboration between the Danish toy giant and 2K games. The game has a few different modes but the story mode might be the best way to start the game and familiarize yourself with the mechanics. LEGO 2K Drive drops you in an open-world racer where you need to defeat the infamous Shadow Z and take home the Sky Cup. Before you can enter the Sky Cup you need to prove yourself and even improve yourself. The game uses a levelling system. Through quests, on-the-go events, special mini-games and more importantly… races, you earn “experience” and rewards to improve your loadout of vehicles and give you some boosts to give you the competitive edge to take on Shadow Z (and his legion of villains).
The most exciting thing about LEGO 2K Drive is you don’t need to use the vehicles offered by the game. Instead, you can just build your own car in the garage with an overload of available LEGO pieces at your disposal. I was amazed at how fluently this feature worked. It took me 5 minutes to build my first design from scratch. I can only wonder what someone with more patience and better imagination can come up with. With so many available bricks from many different LEGO sets available you can build almost anything you ever wanted. Through playing the game you’ll even unlock extra brick sets to open up even more possible builds. After you’re done building, the game analyses your vehicle and adjusts the handling, top speed, durability and acceleration based on the same parameters the in-game cars have. If you are not happy you can off course always tweak your design to get the best possible build to your own heart’s content.
Many things to do
LEGO 2K Drive revolves around winning races and having fun. The game will offer some challenges but with a bit of perseverance, you’ll be winning in no time. The core audience for this title is not the hardcore racing fan but rather the casual younger gamer who grew tired of playing Mario Kart and is in for something new along those lines. Smashing through everything and racing like a maniac are mostly encouraged in this game. The different “biomes” featured in the game offer a much-needed change of scenery in the open world and during the races. Despite the game trying hard to make exciting races, my brain mostly blended them together. There were – besides from the very last race for the Sky Cup – not many memorable courses. The on-the-go events and the quests scattered around the map luckily added some more variance to the game. For instance, I remember having to push a giant egg in a frying pan over a specific time, or having to traverse the full length of a giant garden hose in order to get a gold medal. I also remember the annoying rescue minigames where a bunch of baddies tried to destroy my car and the people I needed to save kept getting under my wheels instead of in my backseat.
Cup Series
Those who are more serious about their racing can leave the story mode and just focus on the races in either “Cup Series” or single races. For the grand prix experience with multiple tracks and points earned each race, you can go for the cup series. Playing these with a friend locally in split screen is certainly fun. Getting bested over and over again sucks so those looking to get that edge over their rivals can focus on a single race to really find the perfect approach for each corner. The minigames are also available out of the story mode for those willing to replay these. Doing it once in the story mode was more than enough for me though.
Unkie’s Emporium
LEGO 2K Drive really went all the way with offering ways to build and customize your own race-worthy vehicles. Through the different events during the game, you’ll earn coins. These can be spent in Unkie’s Emporium to unlock more vehicles, different LEGO sets to use in the garage, different stickers, new racers and much more. Here I start to have a problem with this game… The coins earned in the game are not the only way to unlock stuff in the Emporium. You can buy “brickbux” with real money bypassing the need to earn coins in the game. For a game mostly catered for a younger audience I find it morally wrong. I know these things are common in a lot of games catered to a younger audience but that doesn’t mean I should be OK with it. Luckily you can easily complete the story without having to pay to win.
Conclusion
Driving around Bricklandia at high velocity and smashing through tons of bricks is a lot of fun. The races feature different terrain with a lot of jumps and crazy ways to get around to make it interesting but sadly not memorable. The customization possibilities seem endless making the “build-a-car” feature easily the standout for LEGO 2K Drive.
