Lego 2K Drive review – racing into a brick wall

Lego 2K Drive – not quite a hole in one (pic: 2K)

The latest Lego game is not a movie tie-in but an open world racer that works like a cross between Lego Racers and Burnout Paradise.

It seems strange to think that just five years ago we were getting two, or even three, new Lego games every year, all using the same gameplay formula and made by the same developer – the UK’s Traveller’s Tales. It wasn’t just a brief spike of popularity either; for more than a decade new games, based on everything from Star Wars to Jurassic World, enjoyed considerable commerical success and it was only the failure of toys to life game Lego Dimensions, and the pandemic, that finally put an end to it all.

Since the pandemic, there’s only been one movie formula game, the extremely successful Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, as well as puzzle game Lego Bricktales. Rumours suggest that Traveller’s Tales are working on a new Harry Potter title that’s not yet confirmed and there has been some suggestion that Lego Star Wars will end up being the last game from Warner Bros.

While the announcement of Lego 2K Drive came out of nowhere there were already rumours of 2K working with Lego on a football game, so it wasn’t quite the surprise it could’ve been. It makes sense too, since 1999’s Lego Racers, and its sequels, are amongst the few memorable Lego titles that don’t follow the movie game formula. For better and worse, though, Lego 2K Drive isn’t quite the spiritual sequel you might be expecting.

The Legacy of Lego Racers

Although the ability to build your own cars and minifigures added some wrinkles to the formula, Lego Racers was a fairly straightforward Mario Kart clone. But Lego 2K Drive is something more. It greatly expands the customisation options and while it still has collectible power-ups and Mario Kart style races it also comes across like a family friendly version of Forza Horizon and other open world racers.

Lego 2K Drive tries to channel a lot of the tone and energy of The Lego Movie (which we’re now staggered to find is almost a decade old), with lots of hyperactive chatter and talk of things being ‘awesome’ but the first disappointment here is that the game just isn’t very funny.

The script is aimed at the very youngest members of the game’s potential audience and apart from a few good puns for characters’ names it’s nowhere near as clever or witty as it needed to be, to justify the surprising amount of time spent on cut scenes and story mode quest giving. It’s certainly not a patch on Lego City Undercover, which still has one of the most genuinely funny scripts in all gaming.

The developer here is American studio Visual Concepts, best known for the WWE 2K games, and they don’t seem able to generate quite the same level of charm as the previous games. However, they’ve done very well in terms of the driving model, which is surprisingly technical and if divorced from the Lego visuals would happily fit a more serious arcade racer.

Drifting, in particular, is satisfyingly difficult to master and it’s clear Visual Concepts understand that despite all the wackiness Mario Kart is still a very solid racer, and so they have to be too.

A surprisingly serious racer

The big Lego-related gimmick is that the second you touch any water or go off-road your car automatically changes into a boat or 4×4 – much like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (and coin-op classic Spy Hunter).

You’re also encouraged to smash any trackside scenery that’s made of Lego and collect the disgorged studs in order to either repair your vehicle or build up its boost meter. All of which is in addition to the power-ups, many of which are functionally identical to Mario Kart and just change the visuals (spiders spinning a web to block your view, instead of a squid squirting ink at you, for example).

The AI would probably be quite good if it wasn’t for all the rubber-banding going on, which means it’s impossible for anyone to get an unassailable lead. That might make sense in terms of accessibility but it means the game is never able to take full advantage of its excellent driving model, and the only real challenge comes from online and split screen multiplayer.

Thankfully, the customisation options are excellent, even if they do require a level of concentration and effort that many are not going to be prepared to give. Not only does building Lego objects from scratch take real skill but all the different pieces you add change things like handling, speed, and traction. So while building whatever you want sounds appealing there has to be a practical side to it too, which is great.

Lego 2K Drive – the legend of Spy Hunter lives on (pic: 2K)

One of the most unambiguous problems with the game is one that is unfortunately commonplace with modern racers: there is no reason for this to have an open world environment. Racing around pre-made tracks is a ton of fun in Lego 2K Drive but to get to the next race or mission involves dragging yourself backwards and forwards across the map for no obvious reason or benefit.

The open world looks nice but there’s really nothing of interest going on in it. Attempts are made to liven things up with special challenges and mini-games but most of them are little more than fetch quests and while fighting skeletons and searching for UFOs sounds fun and imaginative in theory, in practice you just wish the game would get on with things and cut to the next race.

there is no reason for this to have an open world environment

And then there’s the problem that everyone anticipated the second they saw ‘2K’ in the title… microtransactions. It’s not quite as bad as NBA 2K but the game is desperate that you should spend real money on it as often as possible. Technically you can earn in-game currency just by playing, but so little of it that the temptation to just give up and pay for cosmetic unlockables is hard to resist. Which is especially cynical in a game that’s specifically aimed at children and in which cosmetic items are so important.

There’s a great game somewhere within Lego 2K Drive’s code but it’s suffocated beneath an entirely unnecessary open world structure and deeply unpleasant monetisation scams. It all begins to feel like a badly made Lego model, where either the pieces have been put in the wrong place or they’re completely the wrong ones for what you’re trying to build.