Big name companies like Blizzard seem to be in favor of Demos as of late. It’s almost like an apology letter to the people out there who are true legit gamers and not cultists, or perhaps it’s a brainwashing tactic in an attempt to real in more devout followers and earn more cash. But then again, I got to play World of Warcraft (the real one) and Lego Universe a bit and wanted to join neither so I guess either option 2 is not the case or they simply have no control over my strong anti-cultists mindset.
Any way I played WoW for all of a day which is hardly enough to give it a good review seeing as how big it is so here’s Lego Universe a game I played for three days.
Make no mistake Lego Universe is fun; it is really, really, REALLY fun. However as long as it is P2P it will never be a legitimate MMO in my eyes. The story of LU is that an evil wizard saught to control creation through the use of a powerful magic that brought one's imagination to life. However this only corrupted the magic and as a result the "maelstrom" was created. A powerful force that is constantly churning out bad guys through the use of corrupted LEGOs. The whole experience is best described as an MMO version of Lego Star Wars, only with a significantly larger amount of customization. That’s one of the main things I am truly happy about when it comes to LU. The people demanded customization and LEGO more than delivered. A lot of the weapons and armor you find all do the same things stat wise so both weapon and armor choice is cosmetic and centered almost entirely on personal taste. There are no classes but you’re certainly welcome to favor knight in shining armor over sorcerer or techy, or better yet be a combination of all three. I was running around with a scythe and an owl on my shoulder and frankly I didn’t know how my outfit would look any more badass. Unless I found the LEGO equivalent to the Lich King’s armor.
There are no stats in game, but there are three bars you should constantly keep an eye on. Your Health, your Armor (gained from clothes and some weapons) and your Imagination.
Imagination is what you use to build things in the world. Ironically your ability to create comes solely from your ability to destroy as imagination is primarily filled by breaking stuff. It’s a nice concept and definitely keeps the flow going in a LEGO MMO which would quickly lose interest if one person built everything while you were asleep, and you logged on the next day to find all the puzzles solved for you and most of the quests impossible to finish.
This game also has a really weird name mechanic. If you’re a member you can input your name like any standard MMO, but if you’re F2P you make a name from a set of pre-selected adjectives. Normally this would be a middle finger from the game and would turn me off right there, but they have every adjective in the dictionary and the monkey dictionary to use which can make for some truly awesome names. I wasn’t complaining in the least as I walked around with the super awesome username “DarkNexusGoul.”(NOTE: As you’ve probably noticed by now I don’t make a habit of revealing my usernames, figured I’d make an exception since the name was premade…and awesome.)
LEGO Universe scores a 5 out of 10 the score having obviously been kicked down a bunch of points as I was only able to play a demo of it. Again, if the game was F2P, as it should be, it would have a MUCH higher score.
