After the first few, you’ll realise that there’s only a handful of variations, no matter which of the infinite number of procedurally generated worlds you visit: paint something, place an object or building, collect a random object, take a photo, kill some enemies. These can sometimes be collected from treasure chests, or by chasing down those annoying green monsters, but the vast majority are locked behind ‘quests’. However, once you have your basic editing tools, you soon discover that you’re stuck in a ‘story mode’ of sorts: to access bigger worlds, and eventually unlock the ability to create your own, you need to collect gold bricks. I think there’s a lot of potential here: if there was some way around the horrible quest systemI could look past these faults if the game itself was actually fun to play. No one talks except the narrator, but there’s a fair amount of sound effects to keep you company. The graphics are lovely, but there’s weird lag at times, for no apparent reason, and seeing objects in the near distance suddenly appear as you run closer is a bit jarring. LEGO Worlds is cute and pretty, as you’d expect from a LEGO game. Even something that should be simple, like removing a couple of bricks, is challenging as you fight with the controls and the camera. To top it all off, the controls of the game are quite clumsy. There’s no reason or incentive to place them as if they were real LEGO bricks. You can place bricks on, near, or even through other bricks. What really bugged me about the brick-by-brick building system, however, is that even though the bricks look like LEGO, they don’t act like LEGO. Just make sure you don’t tackle it near the edge of the map, or you can kiss that brick goodbye. You have to find little green monsters carrying the bricks on their heads, chase them down and tackle them to take the brick. This wouldn’t be a problem, if unlocking them wasn’t such a pain. Unfortunately, you’ll need to unlock anything beyond the most basic bricks. What really bugged me about the brick-by-brick building system, however, is that even though the bricks look like LEGO, they don’t act like LEGOThe building tool lets you build with individual LEGO bricks of any shape and colour. I’m not sure ‘landscaping’ is the right word for this… Not quite LEGO bricks You can use this tool to place blocks of bricks as well. This one is a bit weird: it lets you punch square holes in absolutely anything, creating awkward square or spherical holes in the landscape, right through any bricks that may have been there. Want to see what’s beneath you? Punch a hole in the ground with the landscape tool. You can also find blueprints for various structures. See a neat building in the world? Use the copy tool to add it to your catalogue, allowing you to place the entire structure wherever you please. There’s a stud cost to unlock each item before you can place it, but you’ll be collecting plenty of studs as you go, so that’s no problem.Īs you progress through the tutorial worlds, you’ll get more tools, including the paint and landscaping tools, the copy tool and the building tool. Things start off promisingly, as you’re given the discovery tool, which lets you ‘discover’ things like plants, boats, animals and people, adding them to your catalogue for later placement. When you begin a new game, you’re given a spaceship made out of LEGO, which crash lands on a tiny world. Unfortunately, that freedom is locked behind a tedious quest system that will likely deter all but the most determined master builders. In theory, what you get is an infinite number of worlds, built entirely out of LEGO, and a variety of tools to shape those worlds, or build your very own from scratch. It has more in common with Minecraft than games like LEGO Avengers or LEGO Star Wars. LEGO Worlds is not your typical LEGO video game.