Developer: Hellbent Games, Traveller's Tales
Publisher: Warner Bro's Interactive, TT Games, The Lego Group
Platform: Playstation Vita, Nintendo 3ds
Lego Ninjago Nindroids – Review
Remember the time when you were a kid and used to play with one of the best toys there ever existed? Well, as it has been a trend to release a new Lego video game every so often, Lego Ninjago Nindroids is one that might be able to join your collection. Lego Ninjago Nindroids serves as the sequel to the previous Lego Nindroids on the Nintendo DS and is available on both the Nintendo 3Ds system and the Playstation Vita system. Put on your mask, sharpen your weapons and start brick breaking through this new adventure!
Story
Since this game is a sequel to one of the previous installments in the series, Lego Ninjago, the game will start at the point where its predecessor ended. After the defeat of the evil overlord by the hands of the Golden Ninja, Ninjago City has fallen into ruins. After lots of research and development and above all the urge to create a new future, New Ninjago City was build. This was made possible thanks to Borg Industries, a company run by Cyrus Borg and build on top of the rubble of the evil overlords defeat. However, mister Borg fears that evil might return and entrust the mighty weapons called the ‘Techno Blades’ to the Nindroid students that are on a tour in the company.
After they received these all important weapons, the system that controls the whole company turns against them, in the hope of capturing the weapons for itself. Realizing that the system is after the weapons, the students attempt to escape the elevator that is trying to crush them. They easily do so and go in search of their sensei to find out what kind of strange events are occurring in the building.
Graphics
The graphics are pretty ok. Everything has the Lego theme behind them and don’t look too shabby. However, it isn’t something impressive. The one problem that you might find annoying is the fact that your screen is quite small. Everything is viewed in a third-person perspective and look pretty much the same each mission, which is quite the shame.
There are a lot of cut scenes in this game, and they actually look pretty nice. You’ll often find yourself enjoying watching the cut scenes more than when you progress through each mission.
Sound
Lego Ninjago Nindroids’ sound is something that won’t be that memorable. Every tune in this game sounds rather unclear and they don’t have any enjoyable factor to them. They aren’t very unique and you’ll get bored of it pretty quickly. Even the sound effects sound pretty bland.
During the cut scenes, the characters will have voice acting to them. However, most of the time you’ll find that the voice-overs are quite forced and don’t really sound natural.
Gameplay
The game play of Lego Ninjago Nindroids is very linear. The game features a line of consecutive missions that follow themselves up. There are a total of 30 missions, where each mission lasts for about 5-15 minutes. These missions are very repetitive in game play and are of the beat’em up style. The fun part however is the fact that in each missions you have 10 challenges that you can complete. These challenges vary from taking no damage, to clearing a mission within a certain amount of time.
During the first time that you play a mission, you’ll only have a set of characters to choose from. Mostly you’ll only be able to choose between 2-4 characters of a grand total of 8. Each character does however have their own style of combos, although they don’t differ too much. Some allow you to chain attacks faster, or some shoot projectiles at the enemies. When you arrive at a certain point of the game, you’ll be able to revisit the missions that you have played before, where you’ll be able to make use of the other characters that you have encountered throughout the various missions. This is important because in some missions, a certain character is needed to unlock new stuff.
The enemies are also very linear and don’t change too much over the course of the game. After a couple of missions, you’ll fight a boss battle, that are a bit more fun that the normal missions. Each boss battle is fought in a space that utilizes different kinds of tricks, but sadly these aren’t much of a challenge and you’ll probably have no problem in completing them. It also doesn’t matter how often you die in a missions, since you have unlimited lives. This lack of punishment does take away the urge to do improve yourself. Some mission also allow you to drive in different vehicles and instead of a beat’em up mission you’ll be playing a shoot’em up. Some missions also require you to complete some puzzles before advancing, but you’ll have no problem in completing them.
Conclusion
This new installment in the Lego video game franchise is obviously meant for the younger players amongst us. As each mission is pretty linear and doesn’t vary too much in style, you’ll probably find it hard to come back too. The game is very easy as you have unlimited lives which doesn’t encourage you to improving yourself. It might however be something that’ll keep you out of boredom for a little while and the different characters that are available does make it a little more interesting. Thanks to the available challenges in each mission, you will have something to get you repeating a mission that you cleared before. This game is mostly suited for the younger players, and will probably succeed in getting them busy.
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