The triumphant nakedness of Lego City Undercover
All this time I was thinking it was the Indy, the Darth Vader, the Batman, the Aragorn and the Legolas. You’d think I would have wised up when I found myself enjoying a Lego Harry Potter. I don’t know a Hogwarts from a quidditch and yet there I was Harry Pottering it up, collecting spells, hoovering up studs, and exploring some sort of kid wizard academy.
And now here I am supergrooving on Lego Undercover City, a game divorced entirely from unLego licensing. I’m tapped into the gameplay 100%, without any preloaded disposition towards the setting or characters. Not that the setting and characters don’t matter. They do. The setting matters because it’s so inventive and varied. The characters matter because they’re well written and enthusiastically acted. Furthermore, this is a funny game, with clever riffs on pop culture and charmingly awful wordplay. “That’s one small step, foreman,” a NASA technician says to another worker when he stumbles. I laughed.
But there’s no licensing hook for me here and the big revelation is that I don’t need it.
After the jump, maybe I never needed it Continue reading →
