LEGO Party Review (PS5)
Party games are a delightful way to spend time with friends and family, and Nintendo have long held the party videogame crown with the Mario Party franchise. Now, LEGO Party has entered the party game arena to serenade you with a host of diverse and quirky minigames, as well as a game show format to give off a vibrant humour-filled presentation. Does LEGO Party beat Mario Party at its own game, or is it destined to be nothing but a pretender who keeps on coming in last place?
Right out of the gate it is profoundly clear that LEGO Party has been injected with plenty of effort from a presentation standpoint. You’re welcomed into the LEGO Party experience with a lively game show format, where two witty commentators punnily named Ted Talker and Paige Turner introduce you to the wacky lunacy of it all. You can then proceed to the minifigure select screen to choose from a number of custom minifigures, decked out in all kinds of showboating costumes such as a banana costume, a peas pod getup, an explosive rocket outfit, and a pizza-based ensemble. Once you’ve selected your outrageously-suited figures, it’s time to look at the menu of competitive modes LEGO Party has to offer.
Challenge Zone is the headlining mode in LEGO Party, where you’ll compete with three players across special game board sets known as zones. There are four uniquely themed zones that you’ll hope to conquer, each of them containing many secrets, pathways, pesky creatures, traps, and items to help you streak ahead of the competition and leave them inhaling your dust. Of course winning each minigame will give you an advantage as you take the first turn to move along the board. The luck and randomization keeps the surprises and rewards trundling along, and it is nothing short of great fun when you find yourself opening up new opportunities and getting the drop on the competition in spirited tongue-in-cheek fashion. Challenge Zones are lengthy drawn-out epic games, and they can take between 45 minutes and 3 hours to complete depending on the zone and how many rounds you choose to undertake.
Your goal in Challenge Zone is to accrue golden bricks, which you can obtain in a variety of ways from outright purchasing them from dapper fellow known as Mr Gold, stealing them, accruing studs to buy them, and by competing in special team games that reward you and your partner if you are victorious, among various other methods. The winner of a Challenge Zone game is the player who owns the most bricks once all rounds have been completed. Also, the winner doesn’t only receive bragging rights, but a spiffing special trophy to go along with their jubilant displays of triumph.
Collecting up bricks is a mad scramble a lot of the time, and you’ll be fortunate to obtain them by unconventional means. You might feel as though collecting enough bricks to win is a game of luck rather than skill, which is true, though when the overriding spirit of joy washes over you like a seismic tidal wave, any criticism ought to melt away and fade into the ether.
As for the minigames themselves, there are 60 of them you can unlock as you discover them through the Challenge Zone. You and your fellow players select which minigame to play out of a group of four in each round, and the selections are different each time. Once you and your opponents have selected, a randomizer will determine which minigame will be played, and then off you go to compete in hopes of a win.
The quality of these minigames leans largely on the good side, with only a few that are tricky thanks to the controls. Favourites include Bungee Boogie, where the goal is to use your grappling hook to swing onto a dance platform and stay there as long as possible in order to wrack up points; the winner is the the figure who has garnered the most points at the end. Slug It Out is an intense affair where you need to steal a golden coil and hold it as long as possible, the winner being the player who has held the coil for the longest time. Aim To Please has you gliding through the sky and collecting points on the way to striking a board with scores dotted all over it, and if you gather the most points on your turn you will win. Tumble Time involves turning a maze and ensuring vials enter the processing tube while keeping your eyes peeled for bombs which will deduct your points.
These examples and others showcase LEGO Party’s ability to create whimsical, exciting and moreish minigames that are very simple and enjoyable to play. Those listed are definitely party-starters and they’ll ensure competition is joyful throughout without frustrations. Thankfully most of LEGO Party’s minigames are at least passable, so party poopers are a rarity.
On that note, some of the worst minigames tend involve driving or otherwise maneuvering a vehicle. Fall Wheel Drive is horrible because you need to manipulate the wheels of these dumbbell-shaped cars individually, and there’s just no thrills in trying to drive this way. Yes, it is quirky and a bit different from other minigames, but it just sucks. Dizzy Driftin highlights LEGO Party’s awful handling controls because drifting is wild and isn’t satisfying at all; obviously it isn’t a racing game but the controls could’ve been way better. Rumble Rally at least places the focus on directing rather than driving the ditty cars outright, but even doing that isn’t satisfying. And much like Fall Wheel Drive, Very Tall Race is quirky, but constantly shifting your minifigure’s weight to move a wheel to a finish line is more patience-testing than pleasing to play.
Outside of Challenge Zone, there are a few other tasty offerings that are ideal for co-operative competition. Minigame Rush mode puts you and three others against a series of minigames, where the goal is to gain as many points as possible. The more you come first the better your chances of winning the series. There are specially hand-picked minigames from the presenters you can wade through, and you can customize your own set of minigames to challenge others as well.
If you just want to sample minigames individually, you can check out the Minigames mode, which allows you to hop in and out of minigames at your leisure. You can pick your favourites and test out minigames you’re not familiar with, or ones you love and can’t get enough of-and yes they include the team-based minigames too!
The other main mode of play is entitled Score Chaser, where you participate in minigames in order to obtain high scores. Unfortunately there are only 5 minigames you can play in this mode, but each of them adhere seamlessly to what the mode is all about. The minigames featured include Dirtbike Dash, Grapple and Go, Perfect Pillars, Rumble Rally and Very Tall Race, and your job is to simply lay down the gauntlet for other players to beat. This mode may’ve barely been worth featuring, but it keeps LEGO Party’s competitive spirit alive, and that is what makes LEGO Party thrive.
Plenty of costumes and minifigures are unlockable throughout LEGO Party too. At the end of a Challenge Zone game you’re rewarded a currency in the form of carrots, which can go towards unlocking new threads and figures. In addition, there’s a player XP system, so as you level up can unlock new minifigures that are otherwise unobtainable. LEGO Party rewards you for playing it and that is a lovely thing, even though playing it alone is pleasure enough.
If it isn’t so evident as you play it, LEGO Party is one excellently designed party game. Those Challenge Zone sets are glorious and they come to life in very particular ways. Get a load of that Pirate Zone and its elegant blue seas and that unsettling volcano will make you tremble. Space Zone meanwhile, is an galactic playground with aliens and a space odyssey’s worth of spacey happenings, meaning it’s full of interstellar surprises waiting to be unearthed. The game show hosts have fun zingers and a delightful sense of humour, which is immensely refreshing to hear-they really know how to host a game show. Maybe Ted Talker and Paige Turner could broadcast the news because their wit would be far more entertaining than watching besuited po-faced men and women dryly talking about the latest world events.
The music is upbeat and perfectly aligns with the energetic excitement associated with LEGO. The sound design in general is very well done, and adds plenty of oomph that keeps you excited to play more and more of it.
Are you looking for the next big party videogame? Well you’ve just found it in LEGO Party. There’s a treasure trove of exquisite minigames and presentation design in LEGO Party that it’ll be a fantastic game to give a child for their birthday or at Christmas. LEGO Party is exciting and it’s full of joyful minifigures and an assortment of diverse and uncanny minigames. You don’t need to think twice about it, you can put away your alternative plans for a shindig because LEGO Party is here to give you a great time. Yeah some of the minigames are duds and Score Chaser is too light, but otherwise LEGO Party has everything you need for a raucous evening of minigame amusements. Go ahead and get a few friends over, pop some drinks open, grab some snacks, and relish in one of the coolest party games around.
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