Effect and Call Of Duty are, it needed a release that wasn’t just an old port or another

Mario. It needed something fresh, something new, something exclusive...

And something good.

Rejoice, Wii U owners. LEGO City is all of those things.

Finally released this week to the Wii U, LEGO City: Undercover represents a major turning

point for the LEGO games. It breaks from the LEGO standard, it doesn’t have a huge mega-franchise

attached to it...and it was published by Nintendo. In fact, it’s also a turning point for Nintendo.

Or at least...so they hope. Because as great as some of the Wii U’s games have been,

it could really use more of this.

You play as Chase McCain. He plays the all-star cop. You know the type—great hair, dreamy

smile, played by some rugged actor. Kind of a familiar character, but that’s one of

the best things about LEGO City. It takes inspiration—uh, and at times, even actual

lines—from all kinds of movies and television shows.

In fact, it may not be about Star Wars or Batman per the LEGO usual, but that’s exactly

what makes it so good. Not only is it refreshing to have that characteristic LEGO humor and

charm in an original story with original characters, but it’s also a fun story with fun characters.

It’s a world that’s just really easy to get lost in.

I mean, metaphorically. You actually have a map.

What’s fitting about LEGO City is that...much like LEGO, it’s just this bucket of ideas

poured onto the floor. And that also applies to the gameplay. This is all the things you

love about LEGO games snapped onto a huge green baseplate of Grand Theft Auto. LEGO

City isn’t as massive, but its open world is still packed with people to meet, secrets

to find and those shiny LEGO studs to collect.

I mean, you can’t not go after those things. They freaking glisten!

Now, the missions and story are good fun...but really, just wandering around the city is

fun on its own. And part of that is because so much of it is destructible. You can smash

anything made from LEGO and collect the pieces...which you can use to create more useful things.

Pads that magically spawn cars, reliable sea vessels...hey, fortunately, you know a captain!

A trustworthy ol’ sea dog!

Of course, the game isn’t without its issues. And chief among them, LEGO City is constantly

interrupting your fun with really annoying loading times. The progress bars come one

after another, each one more annoying than the one before. It’s not enough to ruin

things, but it does break up the experience...and not in a good way. Of course, there’s also

an inherent degree of repetition...but there’s so much to do in LEGO City that, even when

it gets a little repetitive, it never stops being fun.

I think it’s fair to say that...recent LEGO games were getting stale. Predictability was

setting in, and as it often does, tedium seemed to follow. But simply placing the LEGO concepts—the

crushing, creating and compulsively collecting—into a new framework, that of open-world action

game...it’s just brilliant. It’s fun, it’s charming...

And it’s just what the Wii U needed.

It’s LEGO City for the Nintendo Wii U.