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Lego City: Undercover is a very fun, very family-friendly game with lighthearted dialogue, vivid graphics, straightforward missions with clear objectives, simple controls, very subdued "violence", and plenty of "eye-candy" to look at. Although there is no cooperative play (only one person can play at a time), it's nearly as fun to watch as it is to play.
The controls are simple and responsive, and most significant actions require only a single button press or series of repeated taps to perform. The Lego world is bright, colorful, well rendered, and impressively expansive. There is plenty of variety so that you don't feel like you're constantly looking at the same recycled objects and buildings (which was a very common complaint with many older open-world games), and frankly, you could easily kill a few hours just walking or driving around to look at stuff. There are also a lot of vehicles (100+), as well as characters with distinctive personalities and smooth cut-scene animations with cute, clean dialogue and cheesy jokes that are sure to make you smile, if not laugh out loud. Clearly, someone had fun making this game and it was clearly made by a movie buff, since there are several obvious homages to movies like The Shawshank Redemption.
Essentially, this is a kid-friendly version of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) that doesn't take itself so seriously--an idea that works surprisingly well and that feels fun rather than obnoxiously childish. It is obviously set in the Lego universe and in place of GTA's vulgarity and abundance of adult content, this game is completely sanitized to make it family friendly. (The "E" for Everyone rating is certainly appropriate.) I especially like that you play a proper good guy (Chase McCain, a police officer) instead of a crook, and the dialogue is slapstick but never offensive. The action is also non-violent. You smash some lego objects to pieces in order to build new ones, but it feels more like puzzle solving than vandalism. And when you're fighting or arresting crooks, you simply tackle or throw them (in a gentle-looking animation) to the ground with a slow-motion effect for heightened drama. Then you toss handcuffs on them for the arrest. In short, feel free to let even very young children listen and watch while you play. My 3-year-old daughter loved watching me arrest three clowns on my first mission, and she got quite a chuckle from some of the jokes.
Other reviewers have covered the game's content pretty well, but a couple of important notes: If you play steadily through the story, the load screens occur every 5 to 15 minutes, and occasionally there are sequences where you go from one load screen almost immediately to another. However, they are NOT as bad as some reviewers have exaggerated. I timed them, and they vary from 25 to 70 seconds in length, with the average somewhere around 40 seconds. When you're opening up another whole part of the world (like going from the city to the countryside), you might have one of the longer load times (the longest I've come across so far was 1 minute 9 seconds). If you're just loading a new mission or objective in any already-loaded part of the open world, the load times tend to be much shorter (about 25 - 45 seconds). One reviewer complained that the load time for the title screen is over 5 minutes long. Not true. The very first time I loaded the game into my Wii U, the opening sequence played after just 45 seconds of loading. At that point, you start a new game or load a saved one, which triggers another load screen for about 68 seconds. Admittedly, this is the most obnoxious wait time in the game, and it will happen EVERY time you start up Lego City: Undercover to resume playing. However, it's certainly tolerable and takes less than 2 minutes (total) to start the game and resume the story wherever you left off. Some reviewers are clearly impatient and thus, grossly exaggerating the "load time" problem. Moreover, once a large section of the Lego world is loaded, you can roam around freely in that section with no additional load times, even if you walk or drive around for hours. You don't have to stick to the missions, and there's plenty to explore. The loads only occur between cut scenes, missions, and major sections of the Lego City world.
Another reviewer said that all the vehicles are basically the same, but again, not quite true in my experience. Obviously their appearances vary, but their acceleration rates, top speeds, and maneuverability also vary a little (sometimes a lot) from vehicle to vehicle. For instance, I found a tiny pink car that turned really sharply. I found a garbage truck that had a low top speed which made it easy to drive all over town and turn corners without ever needing to brake or slow down. Then I found a sportier looking convertible car that accelerated and drove so fast that I had to keep feathering the gas (or riding the brake) every time I approached a curve or turned through an intersection. It seems like they gave the vehicles just enough variation to encourage you to experiment, but not so much that they feel completely different either.
That said, a number of the vehicles do feel quite similar and most feel a little lazy in their responsiveness. In my opinion, this doesn't detract from the fun factor. You will adjust to the problem of oversteering fairly quickly after a little practice, learning to correct your course with quick taps to the left or right, rather than hard presses. Regardless, right from the start, if you're willing to feather the gas or tap the brake as you go into turns or near an obstacle, you'll have relatively little trouble getting around even in the fastest vehicles. It's also nice that you can pull over any citizen and take over his/her car at any time, instead of having to walk long distances. Especially for an open-world game, Lego City is very well designed and paced in order to minimize tedious activities or lengthy sections of dull, monotonous, uneventful gameplay. It also does a great job, with few exceptions, of making mission objectives and special abilities very clear by marking the paths and locations of items or events with conspicuous symbols, trails of Lego studs, shining beacons, and other tell-tale signs. There are some notable exceptions, such as when you need to find wheels for a police bike, and it isn't clear where the wheels can be found.
The Wii U's second screen is also very well utilized in this game. Characters sometimes call you to share information. When they do, they appear on the gamepad screen like a video chat, using the gamepad's speakers rather than the television (unless you turn the gamepad's volume all the way down, in which case their voice will come across on the television speakers instead). You also use the gamepad to scan the area for bad guys or "super blocks" (which are used to build objects or vehicles that unlock perks or new areas of the game map). This scanning feature works very similar to the way it works in ZombiU. When driving around the city, the gamepad screen becomes an active map, which includes the ability to set waypoint. When a waypoint is set, a trail of little green Lego studs appears on the television screen to lead you to your destination. At other times, you use the gamepad to scan for audio clips and eavesdrop on conversations to locate criminal activities. Certainly, this game rates as the smoothest, most intuitive effort to integrate the gamepad's second screen that I've come across in any Wii U title yet. I am never confused about which screen to look at, and none of the gamepad's second-screen functions feels obnoxiously "gimmicky" or disruptive to the enjoyment. The map and the scanner feel useful but not "over utilized" in a tedious way. And the idea of receiving video calls on the gamepad (instead of the television) helps you feel a little more immersed in the Lego world. Also, whenever your attention isn't needed on the gamepad screen (such as during a cut scene), it defaults to a Lego City: Undercover logo to make it obvious you should be looking at the television. Nice.
After many hours of play, I've only encountered one significant bug in this otherwise well-polished game: With the subtitles enabled, the voice acting disappears from some of the cut scenes. You can hear the rest of the ambient noises and sound effects, but not the character dialogue--which results in an oddly quiet scene. I've had this happen in other Wii U titles with subtitles also. It doesn't interfere with the fun of the game, and so far, it happens in less than 1 out of every 4 cut scenes. I'm guessing that if I turn off the subtitles, it may resolve the glitch, but I haven't bothered trying. My daughters like to talk and giggle loudly while we play the game, so often I don't hear all of the characters' dialogue anyway and thus, prefer to read it on the screen.
All in all, I think this is the best "compromise" I've found between a game with acceptable depth to please fairly avid gamers, as well as parents who need to be mindful of small children and thus, want to confine themselves to safe, family-friendly content. If you like open-world games, have a soft spot for Lego humor, and want a game that is family friendly, I highly recommend it!
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Customer reviews
Top reviews from other countries
QC-guy
Frequent and long loading delays ruin the experience on the Wii U version.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 8, 2018
Veronica Spurvey
Good game... even for little ones
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 10, 2015
