Lego Bricktales has just released on PC, Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
The latest in a long line of Lego titles and movie collaborations, but this one is a bit different. It's a more sedate puzzle oriented entry that strikes an interesting balance between the isometric adventure titles that have formed the Lego staple and the more recent 'builders journey'.
The game begins as you visit your grandfather's amusement park and unfortunately, it's in a bit of disrepair. You need to help your grandfather and his trusty robot sidekick (Rusty) renovate the park into a glorious attraction in order to keep his lease.
Luckily/conveniently your grandfather also happens to be a scientist that can create portals to different worlds.
This is very handy as to renovate the park Rusty needs power crystals that can be found scattered across five different biomes.
You navigate the game in the traditional third person, isometric view, this changes into a first person brick building environment as you encounter puzzles.
Puzzles and challenges throughout the game have you building their solutions using unique themed sets of Lego bricks, you can approach the puzzles in various ways and stress test your solutions before finalizing them and moving on.
I played the game on PC and while both controller and mouse options were equally intuitive, traditional M&K was just quicker and easier. Although it would have been nice to have complete control of the game solely via mouse, however some keyboard interaction is still required.
Presentation wise it's very clean, it looks good and it's easy to differentiate areas and components in the puzzle sections; while the main game biomes are well created and pleasantly different.
It doesn't have the visual fidelity and polish that builders journey had, but it does have very different environments to explore and more depth of story.
Personally I found it to be a little too much of the old school Lego games. I've never been a big fan, although I always give them a go, I find I bounce off pretty quickly. I generally find them a bit too childish and the humor in particular just doesn't land. Thankfully Brick Tales doesn't suffer from hit and miss comedy and is more relaxed in it's overall approach, but it doesn't have that chilled out, creative appeal that set Builder's Journey apart.
It's a solid puzzle entry and an all around decent game, it's just difficult to see who is marketed at. Younger players might be a little put off by the more in depth puzzle elements, while older gamers looking for a puzzle challenge might be equally turned off by the cartoonist story medium.
Ultimately thought if your tempted by either Lego, or puzzles it's definitely worth considering for a very fairly priced $29.99.
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