Games / Game Reviews

Advanced Review: Lego City Undercover

By Sean Booker
March 17, 2013 - 17:01

For all intents and purposes Lego City Undercover is the brainchild of the Grand Theft Auto series and TT Games’s long list of Lego branded franchises. You will be familiar with how the game looks and plays when comparing it to past Lego games, but Undercover widens in ambition by creating a massive open world for you to jump and smash your way throughout. However, it seemed that throughout my time in this world, every good point I came accross had a negative undertone that bummed me out. There are a lot of great aspects to Undercover, it might just take some effort to really focus on them alone.

You play as previously exiled cop Chain McCain as you return to Lego City to help track down an escaped criminal. Working along side a great cast of characters is one of Undercover’s best features. The writing and jokes throughout the game are quite good and actually had me laughing out loud on more than one occasion. The game also contains a number of movie references that help add to the enjoyment for some of the older audiences. But the main treat you’ll find throughout the story is the number of crazy and fun set pieces. You adventures with McCain will have you stomping around on a T-rex, skydiving through almost endless mine shafts and quite a bit more. The final mission sequence specifically is one of the highest points in the game and left me with a huge smile on my face. There are some really cool moments to play through in Undercover and definitely help to hold your interest.



Despite some great moments in the game Undercover suffers from being far too easy. Like the previous Lego games, the majority of each level will consist of finding out what needs to be smashed and then doing so. And for about 90% of the time that is all that you will be doing. What gets really tiresome is that the game almost points out every single action you need to do. If that door needs to be opened to hit a switch behind it then you’ll be sure to have that pointed out in several different ways until completion. The ease of difficulty is also extremely relevant in all of the combat. Taking out an enemy is as easy as one button press and the addition of a counter attack makes you untouchable. There are a lot of parts to the game that are so simple to complete that it begs the question if they were even worth putting in other than to slow the player down. This monotonous nature causes Lego City Undercover’s story to really drag in the middle.

But when you’re not smashing your way through the eight or so hour story you have all of Lego City to be exploring. The map is quite large and consists of a number of different areas to hang out and play with. These range from prison islands to space stations to forests to castles and much more. The downside to this is that the world needs to load each time you enter and exit it which leads to some of the longest loads times I have ever seen in a game. And apart from this, Lego City isn’t really populated with much other than A LOT of collectables. Side missions are nonexistent except for the rare racing challenge you can find. Having mainly stuck to story missions and only spreading out a bit, I finished the game with a completion rate of 16%. If hunting down hidden Lego blocks isn’t really your thing, the vast area of Lego City won't have much for you.



You have a good selection of vehicles to use throughout the game, including boats, helicopters and even alien space ships. One nice addition is the fact that you can switch into a different car just by driving along side it. This allows you to easily switch out of a vehicle that might be getting close to falling apart. And since you’re a cop, your police whistle allows you to stop any nearby cars in order to jump in and use. This is great for when you’re exploring Lego City but you’ll find that often the next story objective will be on the other side of the map and Undercover doesn’t actually have any form of good fast traveling. Taxis will drive you on their own but you can’t skip the trip and the train you have access to only reachs about one third of the entire map. It’s a good thing that a lot of the cars have a nitrous boost option because you will spend a lot of your time driving around the map.



Lego City Undercover has the best use of the WiiU’s gamepad that I’ve seen so far. Not only does the screen display the full map for you (allowing you to zoom in and scroll around) but it also acts as Chase McCain’s communicator. Videos of your partners, employers and various characters will pop up on the controller and talk to you as if it was your cell phone. Along with this, there are a number of times where holding the gamepad up allows you to see objects in the game world that don’t appear on the TV. I was really happy to see TT Games using the gamepad’s screen for something interesting and not just another, smaller TV display (like in New Super Mario Bros. U for example).



If you can get past the ease of the game, there is a lot of charm and enjoyment to be found in Lego City Undercover. The game starts strong when introducing it’s clever mechanics and great characters and it finishes with an incredibly satisfying last mission. And although there wasn’t a ton outside of the campaign that peaked my interest, if exploring and running around looking for collectables is up your alley then there is a wealth of content here for you. I can easily recommend Lego City Undercover due to it’s fun and whimsical set pieces but it’s just a shame that the monotonous nature of the level design causes some of the story to really drag.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12