What parents need to know
LEGO 2K Drive is a racing and adventure game in which players take on the role of a novice vehicle driver in Bricklandia.
Players constantly oscillate between 3 vehicles: one vehicle for the road, one for off-road, and a boat. The vehicle transforms automatically when moving from one surface to another. At any time, they can change one of the 3 vehicles by one of the vehicles unlocked or purchased in the options menu.
In the main game mode, players explore Bricklandia, it is 4 different environments. Each environment is an open world and players can practice many quests, races, and other mini-games.
Players accumulate experience points, but also play money represented in the form of a ticket. Experience points give access to levels that unlock skills and also elements in environments.
The vehicles drive like those of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, very easily, with jumps, boosts, controlled skidding and possible throwing objects.
It is also possible to create your own vehicle, or to observe the instructions to reproduce a vehicle present in the game. On the other hand, this last function, makes me confused:
Who has so many bricks at home, that he can replicate a vehicle as presented in the game?
There are a lot of special bricks that are used in each of the models. In any case, it can at least serve as inspiration for budding LEGO creators.
The game was provided by the publisher for review, this does not influence our opinion.
Details
Level of experience required
| Age | 3+ | 7+ | 12+ | 16+ | 18+ |
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| Beginners |  |
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| Intermediate | |
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| Experienced | |
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Evaluation
LEGO characters and bricks colliding. It’s cartoon violence.
You can choose to drive on passers-by with these vehicles. No one dies, everyone bounces back, explodes, and automatically rebuilds the scattered bricks.
None.
Requires to know how to read for several years to be able to play it. Many instructions are spoken and dubbed.
Children’s language, similar to that of LEGO movies. There’s a lot of humor as well.
Several levels of difficulty and very easy to handle.
- You have to buy the base game (89.99 CAD at launch) to play it
- There is a store inside the game. Everything is optional inside, one can buy stickers for vehicles, vehicles, drivers, brick lots, horns and engines.
In the store there are 2 types of currency, which starting from is already a very bad point:- Notes (soft currency) is currency that can be recovered by playing the game, or by using coins.
- Coins (hard currency) is money that can be bought with real money by charging your credit card.
We buy the drivers and vehicles with the tickets, except that in 4 hours of play, I only got 1200. Most items start at 4,000 tickets and can reach 14,000 tickets. I’ll let you make a rule of 3 to calculate how many hours it takes to get AN OBJECT.
And there are hundreds of objects.
So as usual with this kind of game, either we play for many hours to accumulate tickets, or we use our credit card to buy coins that allow us to buy tickets instantly.
The publisher wishes to clarify that they significantly increased the rate of obtaining notes (the Brickbux) between the time I tested the game and its release. - Another negative: Some drivers and vehicles in the store, disappear over time. As in Fortnite, the goal is to frustrate and push impulse buying so as not to miss the object of these dreams.
- There is a “Drive Pass”. Still as in Fortnite, it is a Battle Pass, where we will give anecdotal rewards for free automatically to the player, the more he plays, while dangling the interesting rewards, which he would get if he bought the Drive Pass.
- There are “Season Passes” that are planned. You buy this every few months or every year, and it brings you additional content as you go. In general, the content is not announced at the outset.
Local game modes
History: the open world with all the history and activities to do
Cup Series: To play a series of races
Unique race
Mini-game
All game modes can be played with 1 player or 2 in split-screen, split, co-op mode!
Strangely with 2 players, each of the 2 players must pause for the action to stop.
Online Game Modes
Cup series
Race
The game is crossplay, that is to say that the owners of the game on PC, Playstation consoles or Xbox consoles can all play together!
On the other hand, Nintendo Switch owners cannot play with the rest of the world.
The first time you launch the game, it asks you to link a 2K account (the publisher of the game) to be allowed to play the online part of the game. You can create an account or use an existing one, but it’s a shame that without an account, the game is restricted.
Expansions/Add-ons (DLC)
There are
LEGO® 2K Drive Awesome Edition
LEGO® 2K Drive Awesome Rivals Edition
Our opinion
I now want to buy LEGOs.
So it’s a successful mission for LEGO 2K Drive. The game is FAN-TAS-TIC, it is beautiful and very well done.
The player drives his vehicles in an open world where he can break everything: buildings, trees, elements of the scenery, other vehicles. It’s very nice to drive each of the vehicles, it’s really the best point of the game. I really enjoy starting the game and just doing anything in the environments. After I finished playing, I just wanted to go back and do that.
The physics engine of the game is so well done that even the reverse is immediate and fast, you never get stuck in the scenery or against an element. All we do is go full speed in all directions. I’m honestly so impressed. Imagine a child playing with a LEGO vehicle in real hands, and driving his vehicle into a LEGO city, breaking everything, piercing structures. That’s what this game is.
The races are also pleasant, the humor too, only the mini-games counterbalance this observation.
Indeed, their objectives are not always clear, nor is the way to execute it. And sometimes you end up losing or winning by chance.
But beware, if the game is fantastic, it has a big negative point: ITS MONETIZATION. See gauge “Business model, additional costs, monetization” above.
Visual Concepts did a great job, they really have a hit in their hands, it’s a shame that it’s spoiled by aggressive monetization techniques, especially for a game aimed at kids.
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