Lego City Undercover X10 Red Brick

[Kensel Whiteman]

The game was first mentioned in The Brick 2009, "LEGO City Stories will have a more loose central story that will encourage the player to explore a wider variety of side stories and challenges". The game was then advertised at the back of LEGO set instructions from 2011 City sets. The advertisement took up two pages. On the first, it showed a code, from which arrows fan out, pointing at a DS with the game, a computer monitor with the LEGO website, and a computer monitor with the comic builder on the site. The second page advertised the game itself, utilizing an in-game snapshot. The game was officially confirmed to be in production on June 7th, 2011, at E3 2011 and will be available for Wii U on March 18th, 2013 and in Europe on March 28th 2013 [3] Additionally, a prequel, LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins, was released for Nintendo 3DS on April 21st, 2013 in North America and April 26th, 2013 in Europe. The game itself takes place during 2012-2013.

Additional voices by Stuart Allardes, Louise Andres, Stephen Austin, Becky Ballantine, Duncan Gillies, Adam Gott, Mark Healy, Alexandra Jaeschke, Glenn Kneale, David May, Greg McCarthy, Amy Parry, Graham Price, Jenny Rathbone, Ash Read, Meg Rouncefield, and Jon Spencer.

The Wii U controller is woven seamlessly into the gameplay experience. Players use it to scan for hidden clues and criminals, receive mission updates and place waypoints on an overhead city map that displays their position in real time.

Players can go undercover with a variety of disguises including a firefighter, a construction worker and even a robber and use their unique abilities to solve puzzles and access new areas of the city. Once you've earned these disguises you'll definitely want to take a break from the story to enjoy some good old fashioned 'off the clock' fun. As Doyle explains, you can't be a good cop all the time: "There's so much more outside of the story. As a robber you can steal cars and try to outrun the police, take part in vehicle and free-running time trials, be a limousine driver, catch renegade aliens, rescue cats, put out fires... the list goes on and on."

The car chase has not been kind to me. There was the lamp-post that I hit pretty early on that took off the roof of my car, and then the corner that I took too tightly that swiped most of the back off. Someone on a motorbike hit the side of me and that knocked a few bricks off. I think that was probably when I lost the hood.

If we're being honest, perhaps a fire truck wasn't the best choice for a high speed pursuit, but one was trundling by and I blew my police whistle and the driver hopped out to let me use it. The way I see it, he can absolutely have his car back when I'm finished, although he's going to have to follow me down the street, scoop it brick by brick up in his arms, and reassemble it into a fire truck.

Describing Lego City Undercover to people, it'd be easy to talk about the city, or the puzzles, or the spirit the game radiates with every action. But you've got to start with what happens when you crash a car.

When you crash a car in Grand Theft Auto, the hood crinkles and smoke pours from underneath. Keep beating it up and you'll lose a door, or the windscreen will shatter, and eventually it'll burst into flame and that will be that. In a world made of Lego, though, things are much simpler. With each collision, the vehicles are unbuilt, revealing their boxy interiors and internal structure.

Soon, they are nothing more than a chassis, complete with shuddering engine block and startlingly unphased Lego driver. And then , in a shower of colorful bricks and studs, they explode. The first time the game revealed this process to me, I sat holding the controller and grinning, as I did whenever the game showed me something new or surprising or joyful. Playing Lego City Undercover is an exercise in grinning.

Too much cheesecake leaves a taste of lemon in your mouth. For a long time, I thought my favorite Lego game was Lego Batman 2, in which, let loose in a vast open-world Gotham, you rampage around while playing as seemingly anybody who has ever appeared in a DC property. When you're Superman and you're flying, the Superman theme swells behind you, and this sounds like a small thing, but when I picture the game I see a plastic man, tiny arms outstretched, buzzing a skyscraper to the sound of John Williams. Undercover is my new favorite Lego game, and when I picture it, here is what I see:

A policemen dressed in a robber's outfit gleefully driving a sit-on lawnmower. A bear, sleeping on a collapsed tent in a campsite. A large ferry building itself piece by piece. Three clowns robbing a bank. Lego bricks on Lego bricks on Lego bricks.

Lego games generally come in two flavors. You've got your Harry Potter or your Batman in which players traverse a series of large-but-manageable linear levels, engaging in basic-but-satisfying platforming or puzzle solving. You swing from vine to vine, or discover secret rooms, or use a character with a particular capability to Clear The Spiderwebs or Open The Hidden Door or Crawl Through The Small Gap Because They're A Dog. Everything makes an amazing sound whether it's being built or destroyed: The sound of Lego moving against Lego sounds like ice being shaken in a glass, or coat buttons cascading onto a table. It is deeply satisfying. There will almost certainly be a level in a mine. There will definitely be one set in some sort of station or transit terminal.

Across the city, hundreds of valuable "super bricks" have been scattered, and much of the interaction with the game involves hunting and collecting them, which sounds so immediately off-putting, doesn't it? We've collected so many collectables across so many open worlds that the prospect of picking up hundreds of Lego bricks sounds almost physically unappetizing. Undercover's handling of the super bricks, though, manages to solve two great problems of the open world game: First, it makes collectibles meaningful. Second, it makes the vast city feel full of an easy possibility.

Almost every super brick is tied to a challenge that has been placed seamlessly into the world. See that ladder up the side of the diner? If you climb up there, you can leap to the opposite building, swing across the flagpoles to the hotel, drop down through a skylight, open a safe and grab a super brick. Or that shipping container with the hole in the base? If you use the nearby terminal to send a tiny remote control car into it and solve a little maze, you can turn on the power to the nearby building and grab another.

At first, this overwhelmed me. Other than telling you how many things you've found, there's no quest log, no tracking system, no way to keep an eye on puzzles you haven't solved yet. On top of this, some of the challenges were essentially incomprehensible to me: strange glimmering blocks I couldn't interact with, purple icons I couldn't parse, a ladder hanging just out of reach.

Here again, the rhythm is as easy as it is playful. There's no need for a quest log when any encounter can be solved within minutes of finding it, no need for a complex map when striking out in any direction will lead to something to discover. Undercover's city is substantially smaller in scale and fidelity than those of Grand Theft Auto or Assassin's Creed, but it feels infinitely deeper and more involving.

I keep coming back to the word "gentle." The game is running on my television as I type, and I can hear pedestrians talking as they walk past my character. It is warm in Lego City, and its citizens are warm, and their lives are filled with either genuine contentment, ("This is the first day of the rest of my LIFE!" said a man, optimistically) or uncomplicated curiosity ("The POLICE have FIGURED OUT how the criminal ESCAPED!"). When trouble emerges, it is surmountable. "She put PICKLES in my sandwich," says another man. "She KNOWS I hate pickles."

People sit in the sun on the roof of the diner. A Lego dog barks, a Lego plane drones in the distance. Across the street, I can see a series of blue handholds that lead up to the roof of the hotel, and if I stand on the top, I'll get a great view of the city. I'll also get a super brick, almost certainly. And that'll be real good too.

I'm wondering something here, are the super bricks you find, both by smashing lego objects and the other from ones you find around the city, are they affected by the multipliers at all? As in, the 2x, 4x and so on red bricks you find? I have the 2x one right now, but I'm uncertain on if they are affected by it or not. Because if not, then I'll know I'll need to grind for some here and there for all these super builds I'll need to do, especially the more pricey ones.

Quite the Lego binge you've been on, Drake. I can only play one every few months since they get so boring long before the Plat is obtained. I've got Undercover in my backlog but I just finished Ninjago a few weeks ago so I doubt I'll get to it any time soon.

I know, this is one I have actually wanted to play for a while and managed to finally get it a nice price, instead of the usual full price. And I am enjoying the game for what it is. I do like the Lego City sets that are released (haven't bought too many), but the ones I have put together, being a few different vehicles, I find to be quite cool looking.

Well, well, well. You're back for day two! Didn't know you had it in you. Obviously I whet your appetite yesterday by showing you round this here LEGO City. But you're a long way from being ready to go on patrol yet. You may know how to get around town, you might be able to get from A to B, but what are you actually going to do when you get there? Well, that there's what this here class is meant to sort out. This is LEGO City 101, and by the time you've read through these, you'll be ready to head off on the beat, or my name isn't Bill Ding.

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