Lego is affected; How not to have it, after so many years using your pieces to build everything. Although these part of these blocks, an important piece of the playful imaginary of a few generations, have found fortune as a collector’s article (mixing with all kinds of intellectual properties; at least, the game or puzzle are others when we talk about The Horizon sets, to give an example that is close to us), personally I stay with the most basic boxes, which include the most normal bricks and decorations. The constructions that come from there, imperfect and full of patches and retakes, stimulate me greatly; They remind me of what I did when I was little and tender me now, when I do them with my son, who still is lucky to find beauty and fascination in almost all things. We ride something that looks like a house, with bricks of all colors and windows around here and there, at unequal heights, a Passion building and with inexplicable protuberances. In one of them, my son sees an opportunity and places a flat and elongated piece that is held in delicate balance, hooked from a single point; This is the terrace, he tells me, and tries to put a doll that disassembles the entire platform. He does not worry the accident in the least and decides to simply alter the order of construction in his favor, joining the platform and the doll antes of pasting the terrace to the house. Clever.
These days I have been playing Lego Brickbats , sometimes while my son played with his Lego blocks, and I had time to think a lot about what unites and what separates this new video game from the real experience of playing With the iconic blocks, using them to build anything that can enter the normally very wide borders of your imagination.
Clock stone, the study that Lego Brickbat develops, is known for its popular Bridge Constructor series, which already led them to collaborate with third parties to apply the sheet and paint that would touch their games to build bridges: there is one of The Walking Dead and another from Portal, and there is even a medieval version. The formula is good for the changes of airs because Clock stone uses them to give variety to what is still a puzzles game, surely closer to those of Mechatronics than to the most grid dated Sokoban-Like: change the metallic cables by Esparto ropes or putting portal transport portals in the mixture makes each variation different Know the pleasure of to play with physicists until you get a structure that does not collapse as soon as you have to endure the slightest load.
In that sense LEGO Brickbat is not very different: throughout a series of worlds divided into different interconnected dioramas (luxurious scenarios carefully made from Lego pieces, brick; caves, lakes, jungles, deserts, villages), you must help the characters with whom you are to, back to your grandfather’s laboratory, use the happiness crystals that people satisfied with your collaboration release to launch a machine, suspiciously similar to a washing machine, which can Miraculously repair the attractions of the once Boy ante Family Fair, today abandoned by the greatest interest of your grandfather in science, to which it is dedicated in rare staled underground facilities. It is not a game, in short, to go through history; Moreover, often the dialogues are a longer and more histrionic point of what I would have liked. Anyway, each world has a main story and several optional occupations (collectible, some secondary mission) that give Lego Brickbats a touch almost of collection classical.
Once within each world, you find different puzzles related to the environment. A bridge has fallen, for example; To get to the other side of a cliff, you must build a bridge that can endure your weight, an idea that is surely familiar for those who know, as we said before, Bridge builder. The thing is gradually complicated, of course: the structures that you must build are less obvious, more convoluted, or are mixed in the equation pieces that force you to keep the physics of objects more present. If you build a zip line, you have to look for some stability; The same when you improvise a helicopter to rescue a guy who has been hooked on a tree: the device has to fly, but also has to meet certain requirements of height and stability.
These puzzles are the best part of the game, and combine the most strict and limited part, the challenge itself (build a specific thing using specific pieces, which you have only in a limited amount), with the most creative touch of Do it in your own way, sometimes forcing the limits of what is possible and also adding freer decorations once the main challenge is resolved. They are not too difficult, even when due to the dimensions of what you have to build or the number of pieces that you have at your disposal it can be a bit overwhelming, but they do have enough chichi so that it is usually not possible to do them with the pilot automatic post; Moreover, the game knows, little by little and very organically, leading you to an increasingly careful way of building, more attentive to the details, in which it ends up wanting not only to fulfill the result but also to do it well. It is a very calm and relaxing _logo type; I think he understands very well those two ways of playing with the blocks, one following the booklet of instructions (opening the bags in an order; placing the blocks in one order) and the other, once the instructions are understood, freer and more creative, Using the extra pieces that you are buying in the store and that are added to the extended palette that you can to let the imagination fly once the puzzles for the first time.
Not all puzzles, or challenges, are equally brilliant; There are ups and downs, and development is linear enough to not have much to chop when interest falters and does not interest you, at that time, what the game proposes to you. At that time I would have liked the dioramas to be more squeezable. There are collectibles, yes, and from the pause menu you can examine the environment in more detail to find secret paths, locate chests, ruminate the way you could open a door or reach such a place, and in fact those moments, when the game He almost fiddles with the idea of being a captain toad from Lego, they work perfectly to create a conductive thread that he achieves, better than any dialogue or side quest, unite what else are puzzles or independent construction challenges with each other. It is a pity, I already say that the amount of exploration that you can carry out at every moment is more or less limited: you do not always have the skills you need, for example, an interesting idea sometimes, but that eventually does something more tedious account. The same goes for the worlds: all are equally fascinating, and traveling them (with your avatar or with your eyes) is a pleasure, but the stories and puzzles that hide do not always have the same level or manage to maintain interest with the same ease, especially when they explore challenges that go beyond the construction of structures. The commitment to the variety is appreciated, but the execution is not always the best.
But I think that some paragraphs that I arrived at the Lego Brickbat key, which is the ability, formidable but irregular, with which the assembly ordered with the free game; How it knows how interesting, even if the editing tools do not always work as well (especially playing with command), the process of fulfilling objectives and also to complete the mission in the most rocambolesque, or simpler, or prettier way, or more recharged. I like the constellation of influences that can be seen in the game, ranging from the Bridge builder of the same studio to others such as Banjo-Kazooie: Beaches and Cachivaches or the aforementioned captain Toad. Remember other games that stimulate creativity, but above all it reminds others that stimulate curiosity; When he knows how to do it well-when it is not you who has to pull that car, make the effort to keep curiosity awake; Exercising curiosity although perhaps the situation does not require it-, Lego Brickbats is a very satisfactory, pleasant and grateful experience without the need for stridency or exaggerations. LEGO There is nothing more than one, and it is out of the screen, but we are getting closer to having the audacity necessary to explore the same sensations on video games as with colored bricks.
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