Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve spent rather a lot of time of late in the lands of Lego Universe, the kid-friendly MMO from Auto Assault creators, NetDevil. It’s been out for a couple of weeks now, so how does the brick-built world fare? Read on to find out Wot I Think.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whoa, the backstory for the Lego Universe MMO is the same as the plot for Roadside Picnic. It’s (roughly) true! Check out the new trailer, below.

John is on this one, by the way, so we should have a review coming up later in the month. Healing notwithstanding. I had a play too and, despite some generic MMO elements, it’s got a lot of intriguing ideas.
Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new video up over on the main Lego Universe site which shows a bit more of the building procedures in the game. For me it’s this stuff – rather than the standard “hit bads for XP” MMO material – that is really interesting. This is kind of a CG mock up, rather than in-game footage, but it’s worth browsing over this and the other videos there to get a broader picture. I get the feeling that the quest stuff is largely going to be secondary, and that – if we’re lucky – it’ll be the user-created content aspect of LU that will really shine. I’ve got my fingers tightly crossed for this one, not because of LEGO so much, because developers NetDevil have much to prove.

Why not take a “brick” from playing StarCraft 2 (ha! ah) to watch a Lego animation of the original game? Brought to our attention by the fabulous Joystiq, the video features base-building, combat and the sweetest cotton-wool explosions you’ve ever seen, and you can find it right after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

One of the last of the PC showings from E3 that we’ve got around to taking a glance are those for Lego Universe. I’ve posted the lovely cinematic and some developer-chatter captured by GameTrailers below. I think it gives you a fairly good idea of what this is going to be. It’s not exactly throwing off the familiar mantle of how MMOs doing things – with quests and hitting stuff and so on – but it is still doing a fair number of things differently. Plus you get to build stuff with Lego, which is kind of special, all on its own.

I’ve messed around with the beta of this for a while, and we’re hoping to have some detailed impressions closer to release. And that release will be in October.
Read the rest of this entry »

Look, right, I’m just going to say it: I don’t much like Harry Potter. The books, I mean. I’m sure Harry’s just lovely. But the whole thing has never done anything for me. I’m not boasting – how tiresome people are who think they’re clever for not liking something popular. I’m missing out. (Although I can always re-read His Dark Materials, I suppose.) But still. I tell you this to explain my confusion at the new video for Lego: Harry Potter Years 1-4. It’s quite a dilemma really – the Lego Star Wars games were wonderful, and even though the Lego Indys were weaker they still offered that smash-everything fun that appeals to me so. So of course a Potter game will offer the opportunity for deliberately making those characters collapse into their Lego bits over and over.

Read the rest of this entry »

I know there’s a few of you out there who will be interested in this. The Lego Universe Beta sign ups have gone live over here. No word as yet for when it will kick off, but it can’t be long. It might be worth registering with the main Lego site too, as there’s an option for logging in with Lego ID? Hmm.

You thought they’d run out of Star Wars films to make Lego games about, right? Wrong. Now the TV series, Clone Wars, is to receive the plastic man treatment. I think it’s tempting to start rolling eyes at the prospect of another Lego game. The Lego Indies have been a bit disappointing, and the prospect of Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 may not fill everyone’s hearts with glee. But the Star Wars games were genuinely fantastic, and yet another could be fun. It will feature all the characters from the two seasons of the show, and apparently “brand new battle modes”. There’s also a new version of the level builder, and of course lightsaber fighting. The game site’s here. So, as is obligatory, below you must suggest which other film series merit the Lego treatment. And everyone’s already said Godfather. Go!

You’re unlikely to have missed that CES was going on last week, and it coughed up a few gaming bits and pieces. One of these was a demo of the rather shiny-looking Lego Universe. The all-seeing record-o-brain of GameTrailers was there, and it delivered the five walkthrough videos you can see posted below. It shows the character creation, glimpses of the world, the importation of Lego constructs, and so on. It’s interesting that you can see a lot of the seminal Lego Star Wars design influence in there. It’s going to be for kids, it seems, but also for very big kids. A mixture of the basic run-about-smashing-stuff fun of the previous Lego games, with co-op building, competitive building, action stuff such as racing and combat, all combined with the user-generated input that Lego is clearly going to inspire in generations of plastic-brick-layers. Go take a look.
Read the rest of this entry »

These still aren’t properly in-game, but they’re nevertheless a lovely target for Lego Universe to aim for. Apparently the idea of “build” underlies this latest release of images and, according to LEGO themselves, it “represents the power of building and customization that is core to the LEGO Universe experience.” And furthermore “players will be able to build with an abundant supply of virtual bricks. And they’ll be able to add these creations to their own personal space or to areas within the game’s diverse environments.” The game is due some time in 2010, and is being developed by NetDevil in conjunction with the toy brick geniuses themselves. Go click on the images below for full size shots.

Read the rest of this entry »

The official Lego Universe site has some images of the game “in action”. They all look at little concept-y to me, but if it’s a rough approximation of what we can expect from the game then I’m interested. Gleaning what little we can from this shots, we can see that it’s going to have a Lego minifig spin on the traditional avatar creation and customisation, while the game is probably going to feature collaborative building projects of some kind – we can see a monument and a rocket here.

It’s also going to feature pirates and ninjas. Which makes sense. Could this be the next big thing for Lego videogames? It’s certainly intriguing, and the idea of being able to construct things from virtual Lego and then port them into the game world makes this an interesting overlap with the Second Life world-building themes that usually get left out of game-like MMOs.