REVIEW: LEGO Universe

LEGO Universe has pushed into the realm of Free to Play. Well, more like Free to Sample for as long as you like. The game has a few strong points that make it an enjoyable experience. As far as gameplay, it is reminiscent of the other games in the LEGO franchise. More on this after the break.

Combat consists of a three swing attack, though with higher end equipment you can pull off special moves which will make or break your late game playing. It has the staple tenants of LEGO, with quick building, jumping, running along narrow paths and collecting obscurely (or not so obscurely) hidden items. Bearing in mind that the game is definitely designed for a younger audience, there are still definite aspects that can make it fun. The game allows you to rent properties which you can enhance with models or blocks you get during gameplay. When visiting others, you'll find challenging  obstacle courses and artistic masterpieces. For those who pay for the game on a monthly basis, they'll be able to select a Faction from one of the four, changing a small portion of the questline they will follow and altering the gear you get and its abilities. Once in a Faction you'll get to collect tokens which go towards buying the various ranks of gear. A lot of the game runs off your imagination bar, which while not being hard to fill up, can run low if you are in an area without a lot of smashables. LEGO Universe could use a bit more variety in some of their modeling, perhaps more hairs or weapon designs.

Graphically, the game is blocky (haha) yet enjoyable, however it isn't the sort of game that will run easily on your on-board graphics card. As far as loading time, it can be quick, but you'll find yourself running between worlds and seeing the load screen a lot.  The controls are simple yet effective. Spacebar for jumping, the standard w, a, s, d, for moving, with e and q allowing you to the turn the camera. One annoyance is that the alt key works to activate whichever attack you are on at the time, so if like me, you tend to alt tab away from the screen a lot, your character will swing or you might accidentally use up a good bit of imagination. It's not horribly inconvenient, but the other people you are playing with might think you are crazy when you randomly just attack the sky all the time. The game's sound effects tend to run on the repetitive as all characters share the same general variety of noises. Ambient music fills in the background but there is nothing overwhelmingly amazing about the sound that makes it stand out amongst any game.

Now to go over some of the drawbacks of the game. The first being that as an MMORPG, there is a certain expectation of an amount of content that I do not feel the game provides. It lacks in the instanced dungeons of the mainstream MMOs, so there is no raiding aspect, and the end game content there is seems to be farmed by parties to the point where you are competing with a bunch of other people over the same monster. This can not only be frustrating, but as most of these people are just looking for the drops and not doing the quests, it can interfere in your quest progression as well. The game could use larger areas if only to increase the number of monsters who are in it. One of the glaring flaws is the chat system, since you can't use numbers or words for the purpose of personal security. While I agree it is important to keep children safe, I also find it really difficult to not be able to tell your party members how many more monsters you have to smash to finish a quest.

In conclusion, the game doesn't have enough to it to justify the ten dollar monthly fee yet, and the free to play is such a small portion of the game that it struck me as more of a teaser. For the die hard LEGO fans, it might be worth a few months investment, and might be more so if LEGO decides to drop in a lot more content. Until then, I'd say the older more seasoned players should save their money for a bigger game.

RATING: 6/10
REVIEWER'S NOTE: The lack of content at present makes the game "winnable" in a month. With more content it would definitely be a better game.