Be it taking on a movie franchise anthology, an open-world racer or a superhero adventure, LEGO certainly isn’t shy of taking on different genres. Now, LEGO is coming for Mario Party‘s crown. This is the XboxEra Review for LEGO Party!
Family Friendly Fun
LEGO Party! is a virtual board-game for up to four players (the game has some AI-controlled players to stand in if you need them) with four ‘Challenge Zone’ LEGO-themed boards on which to play. We’ve got ‘Pirate World’, ‘Space World’, ‘Ninjago World’ and even a pretty unique ‘LEGO Theme Park World’ to compete on, and all of these boards mix it up in pretty fun and surprising ways.
It all plays out via a fun, game-show aesthetic, with two presenters commentating on the overall proceedings and occasionally throwing some shade to whoever is in last place. The games themselves are round based, and the number of rounds you play can be adjusted to suit either shorter or longer games – anything from 45 to 90 minutes. There are additional modes beyond the standard board-game fare, including mini-game rush, where you can play through collections of different mini-games, or make your own customised playlist. There’s even a mode purely for players all on their lonesome, if needed (maybe just for practice?)
The Challenge Mode, which is the main thing you’ll likely be playing for a proper session of LEGO Party! has players taking turns to move around the board to collect the most Golden Bricks from Mr. Gold. Buying a brick costs 50 studs, which you’ll earn from landing on spaces, winning mini-games or mugging other players with the help of a thief and a horde of amusing monkeys.
Delightfully, each game board is a LEGO world, full of visual humour, bright colours and a variety of spaces to land on that change things up. Most boards have different special events, usually centered around building – this is LEGO after all. These event spaces let players choose what section to build on the map, with different results from each.
On the pirate map, you can build The Flying Duchess or the Jolly Roger. In the Ninjago map, you’ll face off against villains from the series. The space map gets invaded by a giant alien (who will control your turn if you get zapped) and the Theme Park world lets you build four different attractions to really change things up. In short, there’s a lot of charm and variety here, and my family had a lot of fun playing each one.
Mini-game Madness
Rather than relying on random chance to kick things off, each full Challenge Mode game in LEGO Party! starts with a mini-game, which then determines the order in which each of the four players will take their turn, with each winner receiving LEGO studs to spend on Golden Bricks. First place will get the most studs as a reward, and last place will receive the least. This applies to every turn around the board, so if you want to be first up in moving around the board and get as many LEGO studs as possible, you’d best smash that mini-game challenge.
There are around 60 different mini-games available in LEGO Party!, and I haven’t played a bad one yet in my time with the game. Pleasingly, especially for folks with younger players in the mix, they all have very simple controls schemes, either just relying on movement on the Left Thumbstick, Movement and one face button, or just the face buttons themselves. There’s even an option to give those younger players a headstart, should you feel inclined. There’s no huge complexity here, but even with that accessibility in mind, my eight year old still struggled on occasion (resulting in quite a few tantrums). Thankfully, each mini-game has a full ‘practice’ mode before the game proper, so you can test things out and get the hang of it before the real competition begins.
There’s a surprising amount of variety in the mini-games on offer, with some lovely call backs to classics like Excitebike or Lander. Not every game is skill-based either, with some being more cerebral, like identifying LEGO Fine art and history. While most mini-games on offer are basically free-for-all’s, there are also a number of 2v2 mini-games available for when you’ve landed on a ‘Brick Battle’ space, and have to team up with another player to win.
If I were to judge a game purely on emotional reaction, seeing how competitive kids and grown-ups get while playing LEGO Party! was laugh out loud fun, with screams of either triumph or despair commonplace, and my whole family really enjoyed sitting down and playing together over the last week. I think it’s going to be a regular game we’ll play in this household. I also really, really liked that LEGO Party! doesn’t dole a bunch of Golden Bricks out come the end of the game. Yes, there’s plenty of opportunity in the final few rounds to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, but the game doesn’t hand out participation prizes at the end to undo a player’s earned victory, which is a godsend.
Carrot or stick?
For LEGO fans, there’s also a ton of customisation on offer, with in-game currency doled out as you play in the form of LEGO carrots. These can be spent on different mini-figures, which you can just unlock through play.
You can also customise your own LEGO figure, selecting different faces, hats, legs, body and accessories, so your kids (and the grown-ups too, no judgement here) can spend plenty of time building out just what they want to look like. I do hope the developers plan to add more boards and more mini-games to keep the game going in an expansion pack sort of way, alongside partnerships to bring in other franchises in LEGO form.
It’s not all sunshine and roses in LEGO Party! however. During this review period, I encountered an unusual bug that resulted in the game instantly crashing back to the Xbox Dashboard as soon as it connected to the online services (Which is required for online multiplayer). This was replicated by another member of the XboxEra team here in Europe, but another North American colleague had no issues.
In the end, my partner had to load the game up on her Xbox Live Account, at which point I could log in as Player 2 and the game worked as expected. That being said, I am unsure at this point if player progress – earning carrots for customisation unlocks or XP – is earned by anyone other than the player that booted up the game, and I’m unable to test that currently. The developers have been made aware of the issue – and I’m curious to see if it affects any players on Xbox come launch day.
I would also say, and maybe it’s just that my daughter is a sensitive soul, but the digs made by the announcers towards the player in last place can feel a little mean-spirited. It’s obviously all in jest, and while I find the shade thrown at the player who performed the worst amusing, my daughter took it very personally.
Party Time!
Yes, LEGO Party! is a lot like Mario Party, sure, but they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If you’ve played and enjoyed Nintendo’s party game series, you’ll be pretty comfortable here. As someone who doesn’t suffer from any ‘Nintendo Nostalgia’ related maladies, I do think it’s a smarter game, if perhaps, a slightly meaner one.
Above all, the team at SMG Studios have created a game with all the LEGO charm one would expect, full of the sort of variety only LEGO can bring, and a selection of mini-games that produced all the screaming, laughter, competition and fun one would want from a family-friendly title. Definitely one to break out on game nights.
Review Code provided by the Publisher.
LEGO Party!
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Family Friendly Fun
- Bright and Colourful
- Hilarious moments are frequent
- Great variety of mini-games and lego figures
- Some clever board mechanics
CONS
- The Announcers can be super harsh (my daughter cried)
- Can be tricky for younger or inexperienced gamers (my partner had a tantrum)
