Should you put your brick pedal to the metal?
Welcome to Bricklandia, home of a massive open-world LEGO® driving adventure. Race anywhere, play with anyone, build your dream rides, and defeat a cast of wild racing rivals for the coveted Sky Trophy! In LEGO 2K Drive, your awesome transforming vehicle gives you the freedom to speed seamlessly across riveting racetracks, off-road terrain, and open waters. Explore the vast world of Bricklandia, show off your driving skills, and build vehicles brick-by-brick!
Lego and racing seems like a good fit. Lego games have usually had some form of driving sections in them, even if they were mostly for either getting from A to B or for certain brick challenges. The same can be said here for Lego 2K Drive but on a much larger scale. Think of Lego meets Burnout Paradise, Forza Horizon and Mario Kart and you’ll know exactly what to expect here.
The open world areas are home to story missions, side-quests and challenges that are scattered throughout. You will need to reach certain levels to push on the story though, so you’ll need to do quite a bit to carry on. The story itself is quite good and has typical Lego humour as you would expect and there’s plenty of it too. The vehicles you control also transform depending on what surface you are on, so you automatically switch from race car to speedboat if you land in the water and vice versa, for example.
Challenges dotted about can include small objectives like tracking down people for others, racing through checkpoints or in one very specific example, crashing into a wall that has a tunnel painted on it like a Looney Tunes cartoon…
The vehicles all handle well and there’s plenty of customisation to be found here, along with plenty of microtransactions for cosmetics and other perks. I can’t claim to be a big fan of that but I can see why they would include it from a business point of view. Playing races either with your friends in split-screen or against people online is a blast and while it can’t hope to compete with the likes of Mario Kart in this regard, it’s still a fun arcade racer nonetheless.
The visuals are charming and do the job well. The game runs smooth as butter and the transitions between vehicles is seamless. The animation is top quality and the voice-acting isn’t too bad either. I didn’t come across any glitches and load times were minimal overall.
The Verdict
Lego 2K Drive provides a great blend of Mario Kart, Forza Horizon and Burnout Paradise to make a fun arcade racer. It may not offer many surprises and the microtransactions may prove divisive, but underneath that is an enjoyable experience for all.