So, this is where 'Love to Hate' comes in. Each week, we'll be taking a look at a game, or a series of games, that we like, or even love, but has problems that we cannot stand. We're talking about the kinds of problems that may start off small, but eventually wear your brain down to a fine powder, like a body to a wood-chipper. Your guides on this journey through sound, sight and mind, will be both Denny and myself, Adam, taking turns each week to bring you the games we 'love to hate'. See what we did there? We thought that was clever.
So, where do we begin?
The Lego Series
Now, here's a series that we have loved dearly. Tenderly. Like the love a man has for a horse which has been at his side through battle and hardship, but who has now broken its leg through a complicated accident involving attempting to drift under a truck, and must now be shown the gentle love of a shotgun blast to the noggin'. We still fondly remember Lego Star Wars as a fun title, that combined some great platforming action with a light sense of humour that made the prequel movies fun. Plus, the last third of the game was dedicated to Episode III, which at the time of the game's release was still a month away, making it the game of choice for spoiler-fiends. And who could forget the collecting? Hours upon hours wasted collecting the studs which were hidden in nearly every goddamn potted plant, cupboard and innocuous bit of pipe coming out of the wall?
So, I looked forward to Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy with due anticipation. With the novelty of a Lego-based Star Wars game out of the way, I was hoping for something that had a bit more innovation in its design. That didn't happen. On my second time round the Lego block I started noticing things. The repetitive combat, positively diabolical fixed camera and honestly kind-of-iffy vehicle sections. More hours were wasted collecting studs. I promised myself that this would be the last one I played. Then came The Complete Saga. And Lego Indiana Jones. And Lego Batman. And slowly, but surely, I came to the grim realisation. I'd played the same stud-collecting, camera-battling game five times.
So yeah, that's my complaint. Stop making the same game. Oh, Traveller's Tales will occasionally try to disguise this fact with a fresh new franchise, or maybe they'll rehash one they've covered before but add another seven million character skins in case you'd been upset at the exclusion of Mit'zana from Yavin IV. They'll very slightly change game mechanics, so instead of manipulating the force to maneuver Lego bricks into forming a bridge, your character will just get out and build the thing himself. Oh wait, that's not really a game mechanic change, that's a cosmetic change. And why can they add a character roster whose size rivals the population of Southern Hemisphere but they can't find a way to fix that blasted camera? This is a camera that is poised so obscurely, that you can miss a jump simply because it didn't realise what you were meant to be doing and thought you'd appreciate a zoomed-out view because it was pretty.
The combat remains dreadful. In every game, it involves running around like a lunatic either firing, swinging or hitting like a maniac until you hit something, before realising that you've lost three hearts and you spend the next couple of minutes hovering around desperately trying to find another. These games are meant to be played co-operatively, but in the absence of a second player, the computer will do a superb job in not helping in the slightest. The vehicle sections too appear to have remained stagnant in a stodgy near-isometric formula, where you drive around randomly firing at objects which could open the path to another area. You never know, they could just be there to spill more studs.
Which brings me to my final gripe with the repetitiveness that is the Lego series. According to my precise calculations and careful research, I have collected across the five games a little more than a million billion trillion studs. Does any game need to have so many collectibles? The massive number of studs needed seems completely arbitrary - if it's going to cost me 50,000 studs to unlock a new character, why not just divide by 1,000 and make it 50? Make the studs a little more challenging to collect so that unlocking something feels like a rare and welcome reward. While there are harder-to-find coloured studs which are worth more throughout the levels, normally you stand waist-deep in a sea of bronze and silver studs which have been ejected because you destroyed a desk lamp, requiring you to launch a careful grid sweep of the room to make sure you've picked up every last one of them. I bet if we collected every stud in every game to date, they'd probably form some kind of giant Lego mouth, constantly spouting "om nom nom" as it guzzles our time.
The final kick in the teeth is that it doesn't look like any of this is going to change in the near future. Sure, we have Lego Rock Band on the way, but that's just Rock Band with Pink and the Jackson 5. We're more concerned with Lego Indiana Jones 2, which for all intents and purposes, looks to be identical to the first one except with an added Kingdom of the Crystal Skull section. Because Lord knows we needed that. Lego Harry Potter is in the works too, and we fully expect that it will make for a fine paint job over the Lego template, with Harry firing bullets out of his wand, moving Lego bricks with magic and flying his broom through the same hackneyed vehicle sections. I'll probably play them all, and enjoy them too, but somewhere inside me the little person who tells me off whenever I waste time will have given up all hope, and moved on to live inside Peter Molyneux to have some serious discussions about Let's Meet Milo.
Until next time, remember that hate makes you powerful! Unlimited power!
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