True Open-World Playtime
LEGO City Undercover is a true open-world game. If it’s 20+ districts and abundance of vehicles haven’t convinced you, maybe its length will. The story will take up about 20 hours of your time, which is a respectable amount. However, at this point you will have only scratched the surface. Don’t be too surprised to see your overall completion percentage sitting around the same number of hours you’ve invested. In order to see it all, Free Play will have to be utilized as well as all of those costumes. The costumes will come in handy as you water plants and paint up walls throughout the city. Completionists can easily double the campaign time as they go for the brag-worthy 100%. The sheer amount of activities will ensure the LEGO City Undercover doesn’t leave your Wii U for quite some time.
Wonderfully Paired with the Wii U
LEGO City Undercover takes full advantage of the Wii U and the Gamepad. These range from small features to intricate gameplay mechanics. On the “nice touches” side of things, you have the voices of those talking to Chase coming through the Gamepad. Looking to the gameplay mechanics, the Gamepad can be used as a detective tool. Cetain areas will allow you to hold your Gamepad up to your TV screen and scan for suspects of Super Bricks. Later on, its uses expand to taking pictures and listening in on conversations. These events never occurred too frequently and thus, never became dull. LEGO City Undercover just works on the Wii U and you can tell TT put a fair amount of time ensuring that this exclusive felt right at home on Nintendo’s new system.
NOT
Lengthy Load Times
LEGO City Undercover is a great game, but the long load times hold it back and break up the fun. You’ll run into many of these annoyingly slow white progress bars throughout the campaign. Heading indoors typically results in your Gamepad being repurposed as one big loading bar. The load times here are rather lengthy. You can find yourself waiting to continue your game for around 30-60 seconds. For a system touted as next-gen, this is disappointing. Fortunately, the game’s quality is high enough to keep you sitting through these loading screens.
No Partner in [Stopping] Crime
Cooperative drop-in, drop-out play has been a staple for LEGO games. You may be surprised (or not) to learn that LEGO City Undercover does not allow a second player to jump in. Given the Wii U’s current setup of allowing one Gamepad, it isn’t all too shocking that they didn’t allow a heavily limited second player to jump in with a Wiimote. That aside, playing a LEGO game without the option of having a friend jump in is a downer. Exploring the rooftops and taking down criminals with the aid of another officer could have elevated the game to new heights. We can always hope that we will see this feature return in LEGO City Undercover’s sequel, assuming there is one.
Verdict
LEGO City Undercover is a superb Wii U-exclusive title, one of the first “must have” titles for the four-month old system. It’s engaging and addictive gameplay will keep you holding on to your Gamepad for countless hours. And the LEGO charm is sure to play its part in keeping you around as well. The load times and lack of co-op are the only negatively aspects that impact the overall enjoyable experience. Wii U owners must not miss out on this definitive LEGO title.
