Nintendo 3DS - LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins Launch Trailer

Lego City Undercover - Maxi Geek Review

Lego City Undercover Review   

Lego City Undercover is a unique take on the old Lego game formula. The game places you inside of a large open city, with various missions and collectables and tells you to have fun. And that’s what you get with Lego City Undercover, Fun. Lots of fun.

Gameplay

The gameplay in LCU has not changed a great deal from previous Lego games, which means it’s just right for your little ones to pick up and play. You have an attack button, a jump button and a build button. And in Lego games, that’s all you really need. Here however, the jump button also acts as a nice context sensitive button.  This changes how you move about, but not much else.

The Wii U Gamepad has been incorporated into the very game itself, with it acting as your police toolkit. At anytime you might get notice that you have a video call, Chase will pull out the Gamepad in game, and you look at yours. The video stream and audio that is sent to Chase, is shown to you there. This little thought, of placing that on the Gamepad screen takes you further into the Lego City world.

Driving around is fun as all the cars like to handle a little differently from others, and while its fun to drive a police car, nothing beats blowing your police whistle and checking out the other rides in Lego City. And driving around the world is half the fun, because as you drive around you will find super builds. While some of them are important to the main story missions, others are simply there to help you out, by allowing you to request a new car, or adding something awesome to the city scape.

Graphics

The graphics in LCU look like you would expect them too. The citizens of Lego City look like the Lego we all grew up playing with. The cars, trains, busses, boats and planes all look like the real like Lego models you find in your local toy store. The big letdown is that the rest of the world is half and half. While you’re driving along, you will see lots of trees, and every now and again you will find the old plastic green Lego tree, mixed in with the rest. It is so jarring to see such a transition from an amazing world to that; that the immersion factor takes a bit of a hit.

That’s not to say the world as a whole is bad to look at, it is quite stunning getting up to the top of a mountain, and looking at the city as it spreads out before you. It’s just a shame that they could not decide to go one way or the other.

Chase McCain as a hero is quite agile, able to pick up new talents well, simply finding one of the undercover costumes will grant you new abilities, and each of those comes with a new set of animations. And this is a strong point for LCU, the fact that weather you’re a robber or a miner, Chase moves about like he was that his whole life.

Sound

The sound in LCU is another area that struggles to define itself, but the moments when it knows what it wants to be, well they really do shine. The opening cinematic showcases the city, and puts a great upbeat song along with it. That is really the only time that you get any real world music. The rest of the game is filled with the score from the developers, and while it’s not a bad score, it’s just a shame that there is no local Lego City radio to rock out to while you’re driving about.

The characters of Lego City are what makes this game great, each one has their own great lines that I found myself more than once just walking up to all the people I could see just so I could hear them talk. Chase himself has some great one liners, right up there with cheesy action here territory, but if I had to pick a star with the lines, it would have to be Frank Honey.

The entire audio package does make you feel like you are in a true city, it’s just a shame that radio is banned there.

Final Thoughts

Lego City Undercover is a game that will provide you with loads of entertainment value for your dollar, assuming you can overlook its exceptionally long load times. Be prepared for a great game, which will bring more than the occasional smile to your face. 

LEGO® CITY UNDERCOVER: THE CHASE BEGINS SETS OFF ON 27th APRIL ON NINTENDO 3DS

19^th March 2013 – Nintendo announces that LEGO CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins, exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, launches in Australia and New Zealand on 27^th April 2013. The handheld title puts the action of LEGO CITY into the palms of players’ hands allowing for portable exploration as Chase McCain.

Developed by TT Games, LEGO CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins is a prequel to the upcoming Wii U title and stars Chase McCain as a rookie cop on his first exciting adventure in LEGO CITY. Explore a city full of LEGO bustling with wacky characters, brought to life on your Nintendo 3DS, and learn the ropes of police work with Chase McCain, donning disguises for special skills when solving missions and fighting crime on the city’s streets. You can call up your Scanner from the Touch Screen and move your Nintendo 3DS, utilising the motion sensors, to analyse the LEGO CITY environment for audio or visual clues. On your first job as a cop you encounter the crime kingpin Rex Fury and it’s your mission to put him behind bars!

In upcoming Wii U exclusive LEGO CITY Undercover, set after the events of the Nintendo 3DS version, Rex Fury has escaped from prison! LEGO CITY fans looking forward to recapturing Rex can now also get to know the city's colourful cast of characters in a series of webisodes onYouTube. In the series of six webisodes leading up to the launch of LEGO CITY Undercover, fans can discover the stories behind Chase McCain and other key players in the hunt for Rex Fury, including Chief Dunby, the head of the LEGO CITY Police Department; Chase's bumbling buddy Frank Honey; colleague Ellie Phillips, who chimes in through the GamePad; Natalia Kowalski, Chase’s girl who’s gone into witness protection; and a host of bad guys Chase must defeat to bring Rex Fury to justice.

Fight crime on the go with Chase McCain in LEGO CITY Undercover: The Chase Begins for Nintendo 3DS which launches across Australia and New Zealand on 27^th April, or do some police homework from the comfort of your sofa in LEGO CITY Undercover for Wii U which launches on 28^th March, available as a packaged game or as a digital download via Nintendo eShop.

Lego City Undercover - Review

LEGO City Undercover

LEGO City Undercover TV Commercial - Disguises

Lego City Undercover - Commercial

Lego City Undercover - Preview

Dressing up a burglar will help you break into protected buildings and crack safes. Assuming the guise of a construction worker enables you to access sites and use a pneumatic drill. The list of uniforms and abilities goes on... and on... and on.

In previous games this would have required you to switch between key characters in order to make the best possible use of that expensive film licence and it's really refreshing that it's handled in a different way this time around.

Once you've earned these disguises you'll definitely want to take a break from the story to enjoy some good old fashioned 'off the clock' fun. As Doyle explains, you can't be a good cop all the time: "There's so much more outside of the story. As a robber you can steal cars and try to outrun the police, take part in vehicle and free-running time trials, be a limousine driver, catch renegade aliens, rescue cats, put out fires... the list goes on and on."

Click here to read more

LEGO City: Undercover launching in Australia and New Zealand on March 28th exclusively on Wii U‏

15th February 2013 - Nintendo Australia announces today that the upcoming Wii U™ exclusive LEGO® City: Undercover, developed by TT Games, will be available in Australia and New Zealand on the 28th March 2013 as both a packaged game and on Nintendo eShop.

In LEGO City: Undercover, multi-talented cop Chase McCain is trying to arrest the dangerous Rex Fury who is responsible for the recent crime wave in LEGO City. To do this he goes undercover, exploring the sprawling open-world LEGO City and donning a range of different costumes for special abilities; for example, dressed up as a miner he can utilise dynamite, while becoming a robber lets him pry open doors. The unique properties of the Wii U GamePad controller come into play throughout the hunt for Rex Fury. The GamePad functions as a Communicator to talk to others, is used to scan the surroundings for clues or criminals, or to view the handy map and GPS route when driving around the city.

LEGO City: Undercover launches in Australia and New Zealand on the 28th March exclusively for Wii U. Stay tuned also for upcoming news on the prequel to the game, LEGO® City Undercover: The Chase Begins, coming out later in 2013 for Nintendo 3DS™.

Lego City Undercover - New EPIC AWESOME Trailer

LEGO City Undercover - February 2013 Trailer

LEGO City Undercover - Visiting Albatross Island