LEGO Worlds Preview

The first thing a gamer will think when they look at LEGO Worlds is - “Hey, that’s Minecraft with LEGO!”. Well, you’re not wrong there.

I’ve played a little Minecraft, but just didn’t have the patience for it. There’s no storyline moving things forwards, so it’s basically an art project: and I can’t even draw an accurate stick figure. Of course, Minecraft is the biggest of its genre -- the ‘build with blocks’ genre -- but TT Games obviously wanted to bring their own take on the genre, instead of making an almost carbon copy.

I’ll admit, I put off writing this preview because I was waiting for a patch. They delayed it because it was found to affect some users save files. Now, if they were the studio behind the PC port of Mortal Kombat X, no doubt they would have gone ahead and apologised later… The patch added loads of content and some new features, so I don’t regret waiting.

Ride an ostritch to unlock it

When you begin the game, you choose a minifigure to control, from a selection of two to begin with, and a randomly generated world, which can be randomised with the click of a button. There appears to be a way to generate an exact one by using a code, but that feature isn’t fully implemented yet. You can also delete a world if you’ve had enough of it.

Once you’ve arrived in the world, collecting items will be as easy as walking into them. Or beating them up, if they’re an enemy. Every item you come in contact with will register as something you can summon copy-after-copy of, once you unlock it with studs. This means destroying things, just like any other LEGO title, to get the studs out of them before you can buy the things (like plants) like a one-off microtransaction and use them. It’s odd, and quite limiting until you’ve earned enough studs, either by mass destruction or finding them in chests scattered about the landscape.

And there are a BUTT TON of skeletons

The graphics are very LEGO -- if you’ve played one of the franchise games, like LEGO Star Wars and its ilk, you’ll know what to expect. It’s bright, blocky and very vivid. Even the night time or inside cave systems doesn’t look too bad. The sounds definitely need work, though. There are sound effects, such as when you climb, jump or punch, but music is very sporadic. Some ongoing music during play would be nice, though it might affect the performance of the game.

Lava, coming from its usual place of 'the ether'...

As an Early Access game, it has its share of bugs… The game crashed to Windows without so much as an error message, digging vehicles got stuck and… well this happened… So beware. It is only one update in, though, so a couple of crashes and spinning through the air like a trapeze artist in an industrial digger aren’t that big of issues. The performance gets a little sluggish and jerky when you’re moving quickly, as the landscape is all procedurally generated and there is quite a bit of popup. The draw distance can be pretty poor, sadly.

And some of the walls are literally lava

As the worlds are randomly generated, I found that most of them had more water than landmass. This, of course, causes something of a problem with building a house, though digging a hole through a hill and into the water tends to… dig the water... But you can lower and raise the terrain really easily using the laser thing -- a huge shoulder-mounted unit which seems out of place.

Whenever you want to build or do anything to terrain, you begin floating in the air whilst holding the giant laser/gun thing. It’s strange, because it gives you less control over things than the Minecraft way of ‘it goes right in front of you’. Given the selection of LEGO pieces, you will find yourself having to hit Redo more than you might enjoy.

But selection is what LEGO Worlds has over Minecraft. The latter has cubes of different types, the former has everything you would find in a mega-sized tub of basic LEGO blocks. Single studs, up to 16x16 blocks, planks of all sizes, slanting blocks out the wazoo… Whatever type of structure you want to create, whatever the colour, you can make it. Of course, it is limited, unlike LEGO, as it currently has no moving parts. Any vehicles you want to use are ones you have to buy, the same way you have to buy an animal or tree. My dream of crafting a working mech is as-yet unrealised...

Currently there is no online functionality, but I’m sure that will come soon. There will also be more LEGO sets added, so vehicles and pre-built houses galore! I’m hoping for some of the space sets - specifically this guy. Because I loved those sets...

Barbeque on the pre-built home you can unlock

I’ll be honest: this was more fun than I thought it might be. I was expecting bugs galore, and just a boring Minecraft clone. I don’t know if I was missing something when I played that, but when I played LEGO Worlds I had fun. Riding pigs, flying on dragons, digging through mountains… It’s easy to play, and building isn’t too hard to get to grips with, using either a controller or keyboard and mouse.