Lego 2K Drive

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Fast Facts

Bricklandia brings you Lego driving with a twist. An open-world adventure where you can create and operate your own Lego vehicle. Street-based racing, off-road adventuring or water shenanigans, your vehicle transforms wherever you find yourself!

Earn chequered flags in Lego 2K Drive to compete in the grand brick tournament, aptly named the Sky Brick Grand Prix (as it’s in the sky), to defeat Shadow Z. Throughout the game, you will be sited against some of Shadow Zs underlings as they attempt to thwart your rise to glory.

Lego 2K Drive is an open-world landscape of multiple islands with a comedic and exciting story mode, side quests and mini-games. Think Forza Horizon meets Mario Kart, and you’re close to the premise of this game. Mastering drifting, boosting, and power-ups will help you on your road to success.

This game is designed for all ages, but in reality, it’s more for the kids, so with that in mind, I asked my kids to test and help me write this review. My children are 9 and 9; yes, they came together!

Ready, Set, Go

The game opens with a tutorial around creating a vehicle, where a lot is going on within the screen, which overwhelmed my kids to start. They just wanted to race. So they quit the garage in favour of some tyre time. However, once acquainted with the racing style and understanding the premise, they returned to the garage and made quite a few weird and wonderful “vehicles”.

The mechanics of this game seem simple, especially if you’re familiar with sonic racing, a game my children have invested many hours in. Race, Win, Advance. Oh and do side-quests.

Racing is somewhat frustrating; that’s what I felt. As they’ve progressed through the game, they’ve only ever started at the back. A 6-lap race usually requires 4 laps to catch pole position, and the lap length depends on the difficulty they choose.

The power-ups also don’t seem to affect the other riders as much as it does your vehicle. Many times one of the children found themselves in second place, launched a rocket, and hit first place, but they were back up and ahead of them before they could even take advantage. This is probably all coincidence, but it was frustrating to watch them get bested right at the end or slip into some environmental hazard and get stuck trying to hop out whilst three opponents ride by.

There are plenty of racing controls, whether an extended power slide, jumping over a hazard, nitro-boosting mid-flight or quick turns (like a 180 switch when racing). Combining all these make for pure chaos racing, which, if you don’t grasp fairly quickly, results in losing control or positioning. 

Currently, my children’s primary story time is around 5 hours. But they keep getting distracted by literally anything, sometimes picking up missions and not really understanding the context, or even some missions that need to be unlocked, and therefore cause some confusion. Mostly however, they’re driving around smashing into things.

What do the kids say?

Isaac – “I like that not all the races are easy, but I don’t like starting at the back all the time.”

Noa – “I like when I win races; I like winning cars and racing them.”

Isaac – “I don’t like how weak my car is; I would feel it should be stronger.”

Visuals

From an “adults” perspective, the visuals are rich, vibrant and bring that Lego flavour to life.

The endless buckets of Lego I can imagine used to create these vibrant landscapes are amazing, but sometimes the lighting and scaled items are a bit jarring for me as an adult, but my kids didn’t notice. They enjoy driving into minifigures and sending them flying! Should I be worried?

What do the kids say?

Isaac – “I like how it looks, and it’s not realistic. I like how fast it goes when driving around the map.”

Noa – “I’d like the damage to be more realistic, I wish the bricks didn’t disappear, and they broke into smaller brick pieces. It would be funny if the screen cracks when you’re nearly destroyed.”

Create and Drive

Creating and building vehicles plays a huge part in this game. My kids have now spent hours creating wacky rides, and yet, they don’t quite understand the mechanics of the game around weight and how that affects their overall driving experience.

The controls are fiddly, and sometimes things snap in the wrong place. Plenty of options are available regarding bricks, and you can unlock more as you progress, including competitors’ vehicles. You can “technically” build anything you can imagine, which is presumably why their time spent in the garage is longer than driving. 

What do the kids say?

Noa – “I like spending time in the garage building new cars and racing them.”

Isaac “I like being able to duplicate other cars and then adding other things on them.”

Noa – “I don’t understand the weight system; I wish it were easier to work out.”

Isaac – “I wish you could crash into the rival and break his car to win it or even score top three because getting first place is very hard sometimes.

2nd Place Feeling

Where this game falls short and has frustrated me a little over the last week is the storefront to purchase more blocks, vehicles, characters and more.

Throughout Lego 2K Drive, you can collect currency through the successful completion of events, but the rate at which you gain these will never be enough to get everything anytime soon.

In-App purchases in a game targeted at young children severely impact the relationship between parent/guardian and child, who will no doubt be hounded for real-life cash to turn into game credits towards these unlocks!

My children currently have around 8,000 brickbucks, and one vehicle costs 10,000 brickbucks!

The clever thing here, however, is you spend real-world money to purchase coins, which you then transfer to Brickbux.

10,000 Brickbux is 500 coins, and 500 coins are £4.49. These coins then increase in amounts to where a pallet of coins costs £44.99, which will net you 100,000 BrickBux.

Let’s also not forget the Seasons Premium Drive Passes, which costs £8.99 per season, or you can bundle it all together in the Year 1 Drive Pass. It feels a little disappointing that more games are going the route of In-App purchases, and no longer are games a one-purchase deal.

What do the kids say?

Noa & Isaac – “Can we buy some coins”

Dad – “No.”

Bricktastic

Overall the game is fun to engage with, and I can see many children spending hours free-roaming and creating weird and wacky things to race. I wish there were a share vehicle function where you could download another person’s design or even share your own. This would create a whole ecosystem of wonder for kids everywhere to enjoy.

The racing is challenging and feels almost weighted against you, but mastering the controls and tricks helps push you through the racing pack.

However, I’m not rating this game. My kids are, and they love it!

Rapid Reviews Rating

4 out of 5

4