Posted in: 2K Games, Games, LEGO 2K Drive, Video Games | Tagged: 2k Games, lego, LEGO 2K Drive

We Got A Chance To Preview & Have Fun With LEGO 2K Drive

We had a chance to play LEGO 2K Drive in a special preview session with 2K Games, and this is what we thought of it, so far.

One of the cooler games revealed to come out this year has been LEGO 2K Drive, as 2K Games and The LEGO Group have teamed up to create a unique racing title. This was our first introduction to the game, weeks before it was officially announced to the public. 2K brought us out to their offices for a special preview event with other game journalists, as we got to play a sample of the game for the first time, which included playing part of the campaign, several challenges, and multiplayer races and competitions. Here's what we thought about the game after playing that demo.

The game will put you n the role of a racer who lives and races in the multilayered world of Bricklandia. Everyone who races here has one goal in mind: winning the Sky Cup Trophy, which is the highest honor in one of the most competitive tournaments here. When you first start the game, it is clear you are in a LEGO title as everything about this world will immediately take you to familiar TV shows and films with a ridiculous amount of humor, self-awareness, and pop-culture references. Being a LEGO title, they went above and beyond to make the world feel super expansive while also retaining that building-block setting, and it started off with a tutorial that took us around the starting area of the map to learn the basics. There was no wrong way to learn, and it was the smoothest lesson structure ever. Especially since the game transitions between vehicles as you go, so if you are in a car and dive into the water, your vehicle instantly changes into a boat. When you go off-road, you get better tires. When you hit the air for a specific period of time, you turn into a plane. It is one of the easiest and smoothest transitions in a game I've seen in a long time, as you hear the LEGO pieces form and watch them transform.

Once we were done learning about how to race and learning all the tricks of the trade, we were unleashed onto the world in general. LEGO 2K Drive is divided up into several maps that you'll travel to by land, sea, air, and more. You'll take your car around the map and explore a couple of different options at your disposal. The first is to find races where you'll challenge specific racers who are looking for someone to beat. Each racer has their own personality and a specific car, tied to a location on the map that will turn into a unique track. Once you beat that racer, you'll gain access to their car that you can then use in future races. You'll also be able to use them in challenges that have been spread across the map, which range from the simplest time challenges to the silly. One of them was racing into the side of a rock wall where someone had painted a tunnel, ala Road Runner style. Another was pushing a giant egg into a frying pan. One we got stuck on for a minute was clearing a jump in a specific amount of time, but we did it.

The goal of every level is to beat all of the races and specific challenges that have been laid out in front of you to eventually make it to a major race. Once you conquer that race, the world will open up a little more and send you to a new area filled with more races and challenges. Each area has its own theme going for it, all of them modeled after LEGO sets you'll recognize right off the bat. Because why would you make a game called LEGO 2K Drive without featuring the sets that made the IP what it is today? While we did get to experience a great chunk of this as part of our demo, the reality is that there's just too much to experience in a single session for a few hours. It became very clear that the game has a ton of experiences for players to go through so that it isn't just you racing around in the same courses with different window dressing on them. I really appreciated the time and care that went into making these worlds feel different instead of carbon copies of one another.

From there, we moved into the co-op and competition side of things. Our group was put into a few different races against each other where we took in a car we really felt could do the job and hit the tracks in a proper competition. To be very blunt: there's no way to predict a winner. One of the people I was with was bragging earlier in the day that they were an expert at racing titles, and we're looking forward to smoking everyone if given a chance. That player won a single game, and then found themselves between 3rd-8th place in other races. I myself won a race, but the rest were close affairs where I was all over the board. The reality is that they made these races so that anyone could compete in them and have an equal chance of doing well or finishing dead last. The other side to the co-op were mini competitions. One of them was trying to locate a very specific character on the map before anyone else, with very few clues on where you might be able to locate them. Another was a speed competition similar to Red Light, Green Light where we tried to get to the end of a raceway without being spotted or else we'd explode and have to start over. Its a great system for couch co-op or online multiplayer to have fun.

The last aspect we got to check out was car customization. LEGO 2K Drive has what could possibly be one of the best LEGO building block setups we've seen in a while, as they give you multiple options from various kits to make a car however you see fit and then race it on the track. No matter how broken or wobbly or just plain unfeasible it is to race it. As you can see from the image below, the devs decided to make a car out of a burger using basic LEGO pieces and then paint them using colors used by the company. As you make your way through the game, you can unlock multiple items across the board from other sets, so at some point, you'll basically have access to almost everything the company ever made. And we're sure somewhere down the road, there will be DLC content added to it. But this will be a chance for you to build whatever Wacky Races design you have wanted to make with all the LEGO blocks you could ever need.

I really enjoyed my time playing LEGO 2K Drive. Keeping this preview very simple, this is a racing game for people who hate racing games. I promise you, if there's any part of you that dislikes a racing title, this will change your mind as the developers at Visual Concepts went out of their way to make a game that feels like modern racing titles like the Forza series, with the most all-ages franchise they could utilize. I have no complaints about this preview! It is the best time I've had in a racing game in years, which is saying something considering some of the modern games on the market that go out of their way for a realistic experience with graphics that highlight everything to the notches in the leather of the driver's seat you can't see. I look forward to seeing what the full version of the game will be like! Which we won't have to wait long for, as it drops on May 16th for PC and all three major consoles.

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