Our very first official LEGO game is now available on Linux, but is it worth your time? I took a look with our caster Samsai.
The keys were provided by Funcom directly, so big thanks to them. That doesn’t mean we will sugarcoat anything though, as usual I will be brutally honest.
Thoughts
It’s very much aimed at a younger audience, so unless you have kids around it’s probably not worth your time at all. It’s a child-friendly MMO, and during our testing and livestreaming of it, we found it to be far too easy. Not just easy, but the dialog on the whole was too cringeworthy.
It’s very simplistic down to the core, but it does have a few of the usual MMO features like mini bosses, boss battles and a very simple levelling system. I mentioned that it’s too easy, and it’s laughable for an adult. The enemies do practically no damage, and even when there’s a lot of them, it’s extremely easy to defeat them all within seconds.
Something I mentioned during the livestream is that even for a younger audience, I can’t see them liking it, unless they are really young, just because of how easy it is. Being LEGO just isn't enough to make a game good, not for the kids of today who have thousands of other (and much cheaper) games. I can't imagine anyone over eight years old getting into it, so that's a pretty damn small market for the PC.
Honestly, if they made it a bit harder, or let you chose a difficulty it would be far better. There's no challenge to it, and I would be shocked if any adult thought it was good.
We found the Linux version buggy too, as if you launch it via Steam directly, there is no sound. You need to launch it outside of Steam to get any sound (so it’s not totally game-breaking), and the “normal” Fullscreen mode didn't work right either, luckily the fullscreen-windowed mode works fine, as does Windowed mode. I reported these issues to my contact, so hopefully they will look into it.
The game also looks nothing like the Steam store screenshots, which really, really annoys me. Shots on a Steam store page should be screenshots if they are made to look like gameplay, renders should be banned by Valve unless it's general game art.
The Linux version seems to have no anti-aliasing either, so there are jagged edges everywhere.
Check out LEGO Minifigures Online if you have kids, otherwise it’s a waste of money, and that’s being a nice as I can about it. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments
Plintslîcho Jul 2, 2015
I really like the Lego games, especially the Harry Potter games, StarWars and Pirates of the Caribbean. But this one here doesn't sound interesting at all. Too bad; I'd love to see a Lego game (a good, story driven one) native for Linux.
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I picked this one up. It is very easy, however i actually have died a few times, after the Pirate story, and into the Kingdom Story. Being swarmed by bigger creatures..haha. I know it has a simple leveling setup, but i am actually enjoying the game so far. It does have those bugs mentioned by OP. No sound when launched in steam. Terrible fullscreen/resolution issue. Which actually did fix it. Other things i have noticed though, is the menu's red X button up in the top right corner didn't work for me. Also ive had alot of crashes due to a movement key say (W), during a left mouse button click, caused a segmentation fault during the battle with Dreadleg. That battle was, eh...well after it crashed i logged back in, and it went to the cut scene right after you beat him. The entry way was still red, and i noticed Dreadleg as a ghost just frozen there, and other ghost pirates were coming out of the ship. So i had to attack him until he was dead, for the gate to turn green so i could move on...haha. I have gotten my character stuck in the map a few times while moving with the W,A,S,D keys, but simply clicked to move, and he unstuck himself.
It's not all that bad of a game though. Maybe if enough people complain about how its to easy, that maybe they could add an adult difficulty mode or something.
It's not all that bad of a game though. Maybe if enough people complain about how its to easy, that maybe they could add an adult difficulty mode or something.
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Kimyrielle Jul 3, 2015
Mind you I haven't tried the game, but personally "it's too easy" isn't what I'd consider a con argument against a video game. I don't get the "games need to be hard" attitude, personally. Watching a movie isn't hard. Listening to music isn't hard. Reading a book isn't hard. And yet we tend to do all of these things. Why? Because they are entertaining. I don't know why gamers tend to confuse "fun" with "frustrating", but as a longtime MMO player I find this strange attitude particularly prevalent in that particular genre. Apparently a MMO isn't a proper MMO unless it involves bashing your collective heads against a boss fight you will have to start over 20 times after watching a YouTube guide for another 45 mins explaining the exact step-by-step recipe how to beat it - for it derives its so-called "difficulty" from requiring a dozen people executing moves completely counterintuitive to the rest of the game's mechanics inside a 0.000001% margin of error, or die in the process. Maybe I am just a strange person, but I have yet to see a well designed boss fight in my life. They are either boring (boss has a lot of health and you need to spend an hour of your life whacking it dead, one health point at a time) or stupid (execute aforementioned counterintuitive steps that would never happen in a realistic battle to perfection and don't forget not to stand in the fire! Or in the red circles that kill you for...reasons. Or whatnot.)
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Kurremkarmerruk Jul 3, 2015
I don't know if you've played other lego games but they are all really easy. It's more about playing the world than providing a challenge. This actually ends up being what kids want (I've found). Challenging games are for older kids who won't even be interested in a LEGO game.
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Quoting: KimyrielleI don't get the "games need to be hard" attitude, personally.The fun of a whole lot of games lies in being challenging. Take Chess, Checkers or pretty much any other boardgame, nearly all of them exist to pit humans against each other. There's exceptions of games where people have to work together against the game itself e.g. D&D, a rather interesting case because this is arguably more about the Dungeon master's story-telling than about challenging the players. In any case, it's a mix of the two. Arcade games were made hard for obvious reasons, but most commercially available videogames (all that I know) were also made to be difficult. As technology advanced more story intensive accessible (no walls and walls of text) games have become possible. Then there is the typical mobile game that has neither story, nor challenge, but exists solely to waste your time (and money in a lot of cases).
I think a good game should either be challenging or good at telling a story (or both!) There's really easy games that I've enjoyed because they had a great story (To The Moon springs to mind), and there's really hard games with no story that I've enjoyed (Geometry Wars), but I'm not a big fan of easy games with no good story (I haven't played LEGO Minifigures, so I don't know if it fits, I'll probably get it eventually because I want more LEGO games on Linux)
That's just personal opinion tho.
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Kimyrielle Jul 3, 2015
Quoting: IlyaI think a good game should either be challenging or good at telling a story (or both!) There's really easy games that I've enjoyed because they had a great story (To The Moon springs to mind), and there's really hard games with no story that I've enjoyed (Geometry Wars), but I'm not a big fan of easy games with no good story.
*nod nod* One of the best games I have played lately is Life is Strange. It's...completely not challenging, just a really well-told story. I do agree that games need to be entertaining, otherwise we wouldn't play them. The part that's lost on me is when "challenge" became the ONLY defining part of entertainment for a computer game.
You might be on to something about the arcade origin of modern gaming. Arcade games were designed to be more or less impossible to complete to keep people inserting coins. They also inflicted boss fights on the world, which really have no good reason to exist other than intentionally delaying player progress with fights that are unfairly stacked against them and thus create the illusion of more content that isn't really there by forcing them to repeat it multiple times to finally overcome it. It's actually funny that players actually complain about games that try to finally rid of the archaic concept that are boss fights and replace them with something more original (I played Guild Wars 2 - the forum discussions started by so-called MMO veterans about the notable absence of raid/boss-fight content in that game were hilarious). But hey, it's what they are used to. Computer games always had boss fights after all, so that has to be the only acceptable way to design a computer game, right? :p
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The point is it's an MMO, it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to it. It has nothing, it's boring, and the dialog is oh so terrible.
We aren't talking about a story focused adventure game folks, it's an MMO.
We aren't talking about a story focused adventure game folks, it's an MMO.
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Quoting: liamdaweThe point is it's an MMO, it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to it.
Not sure how you came to that conclusion, Massive Multiplayer Online has nothing to do with challenge or not, there are plenty of MMO's where people just log in to do easy stuff and hang out with their virtual friends, talk about their day or what ever. Not every MMO has to be like good old EQ ;)
Anyways if you take a look at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/game-reviews/lego-minifigures-online you see the age group is around 10 years and kids learn Thinking & Reasoning & Collaboration
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Kimyrielle Jul 3, 2015
Quoting: liamdaweThe point is it's an MMO, it's supposed to have some sort of challenge to it. It has nothing, it's boring, and the dialog is oh so terrible.
We aren't talking about a story focused adventure game folks, it's an MMO.
I think you're confusing "It's always been that way" with "It's meant to be that way".
There is no god-given law that would dictate that MMOs have to be challenging any more that there is no law that every adventure game has to be a string of completely counterintuitive puzzles solely designed to waste your time either. Some of the greatest adventure games of recent are actually completely not challenging: Gone Home and Life is Strange.
Oh, and there is no god-given law that MMOs have to be horrible at story telling either. And while most indeed were implemented as if creative writing didn't exist as an art, there are actually at least two examples that are really well written: The Old Republic and The Secret World.
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