Opinion Piece- Lego Dimensions is a huge cash grab and I can't wait to throw ALL my money at it
For a long time, I've been very against games like Skylanders. Any reasonable human can take one look at those and know they're a scam. I mean, locking content behind silly looking plastic figures? You are clearly trying to steal every penny of every parents' money. But with every imitator, it gets slightly more tempting. Amiibos look neat but they're expensive and I don't own a Wii U. Also, they are super rare and hard to get hold of. Not entirely worth it. Disney Infinity also gets more and more tempting. Version one had nice Disney film characters. Version two brought in Marvel and a load of Pixar films. I was damn near sold at this point but then Version three came out and I am a fistful of dollars away from buying it as we speak. It brings in Star Wars (squee!!!) and Inside Out (double squee!!!!!!) and makes the whole experience smoother. I was all but about to buy this game when I saw what will now be my game of the year in the year of Fallout 4 and Just Cause 3. That game is Lego Dimensions.
Let's go back a few months to when the game was first announced. The first trailer came out and I was interested for sure. It looked like a mix of the Lego games and their assorted franchises which I had no problem with. Unfortunately, it had what has often been referred to as the real life equivalent of micro-transactions. With this in mind, I basically forgot about it, despite that intriguing first trailer with Gandalf, Wildstar, Batman and Joel McHale from Community. Or at least, I had until the new trailer. This one shows pretty much every property in the game, from DC to Back to the Future to Doctor Who. I'm now super pumped for this and also a few other reasons. But first, trailer time.
So that was awesome. But there are plenty of reasons to love this game (from what we've been shown, it could still suck). First off, the voice cast is just spectacular. We haven't seen a cast this good since... Well, The Lego Movie. Where else do Chris Pratt, Peter Capaldi and Christopher Lloyd share a world? Nowhere. This is a big ol' fan service game which is going to make many fan fictions a (virtual) reality. Even ignoring the characters, let's not forget how great all Lego games are. Yes, they are pretty similar but as long as you don't buy every single Lego game, this isn't a problem. And if you do buy every single Lego game, you're already buying this. So while the gameplay has never been anything in particular to write home about, it's good simple fun that for me at least, gives me a wonderful sense of nostalgia. The mix of collecting studs and solving puzzles is simple at worst but at it's best, it's a satisfying mix.
But there are also reasons to be skeptic about this game. For a start, it's possible that we could all be getting slight Lego game fatigue. I know I was just talking about how wonderful the games are but I've put a lot of time into them. I put 53 hours into Lego Marvel Super Heroes in the space of about two weeks. It's impressive that I got that much content out of it but I'm probably pretty sick of it. I'm only theorising because I haven't touched anything Lego since that strange two weeks of my life. But also, let's face it, the game is a blatant cash grab. It locks off a bunch of content behind little figuirines, currently valued at about 20 pounds each. That gets you one extra level, two characters and maybe a vehicle if you're lucky. It's pretty greedy, you can't deny that. Still looks great.
I shouldn't buy Lego Dimensions. It's greedy and pretty shameless about it. It also isn't going to offer much different from other Lego games other than it's shared universe. But I will eventually buy this game. It looks like delirious fun and there are so many franchises in here that I enjoy and I'm a sucker for flashy enough advertising. To everyone else, I recommend waiting for reviews to come in and a price drop. But I think it'll be pretty fun, if expensive.
Let's go back a few months to when the game was first announced. The first trailer came out and I was interested for sure. It looked like a mix of the Lego games and their assorted franchises which I had no problem with. Unfortunately, it had what has often been referred to as the real life equivalent of micro-transactions. With this in mind, I basically forgot about it, despite that intriguing first trailer with Gandalf, Wildstar, Batman and Joel McHale from Community. Or at least, I had until the new trailer. This one shows pretty much every property in the game, from DC to Back to the Future to Doctor Who. I'm now super pumped for this and also a few other reasons. But first, trailer time.
So that was awesome. But there are plenty of reasons to love this game (from what we've been shown, it could still suck). First off, the voice cast is just spectacular. We haven't seen a cast this good since... Well, The Lego Movie. Where else do Chris Pratt, Peter Capaldi and Christopher Lloyd share a world? Nowhere. This is a big ol' fan service game which is going to make many fan fictions a (virtual) reality. Even ignoring the characters, let's not forget how great all Lego games are. Yes, they are pretty similar but as long as you don't buy every single Lego game, this isn't a problem. And if you do buy every single Lego game, you're already buying this. So while the gameplay has never been anything in particular to write home about, it's good simple fun that for me at least, gives me a wonderful sense of nostalgia. The mix of collecting studs and solving puzzles is simple at worst but at it's best, it's a satisfying mix.
But there are also reasons to be skeptic about this game. For a start, it's possible that we could all be getting slight Lego game fatigue. I know I was just talking about how wonderful the games are but I've put a lot of time into them. I put 53 hours into Lego Marvel Super Heroes in the space of about two weeks. It's impressive that I got that much content out of it but I'm probably pretty sick of it. I'm only theorising because I haven't touched anything Lego since that strange two weeks of my life. But also, let's face it, the game is a blatant cash grab. It locks off a bunch of content behind little figuirines, currently valued at about 20 pounds each. That gets you one extra level, two characters and maybe a vehicle if you're lucky. It's pretty greedy, you can't deny that. Still looks great.
I shouldn't buy Lego Dimensions. It's greedy and pretty shameless about it. It also isn't going to offer much different from other Lego games other than it's shared universe. But I will eventually buy this game. It looks like delirious fun and there are so many franchises in here that I enjoy and I'm a sucker for flashy enough advertising. To everyone else, I recommend waiting for reviews to come in and a price drop. But I think it'll be pretty fun, if expensive.
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