The moment I heard about LEGO 2K Drive — an open-world racing game with heavy inspiration from Mario Kart and the fantastic LEGO movies — I knew I had to play it.
LEGO was a huge part of my childhood and, judging by the several sets sitting on my office shelf, a big part of my adulthood, too, and combining it with an arcade racing game seems like a dream come true. And, for the most part, it really is but the game is held back by a frustrating approach to how it gives out LEGO bricks.
LEGO 2K Drive gets so much right. The world is broken up across four areas — a starting area and then three highly themed areas that include a Route 66-style desert in Big Butte, a forested Prospecto Valley and the spooky Hauntborough — that are packed full of races, challenges and secrets to find. Each feels like a big, varied playground for racers packed with imaginative locations and buildings that are fun to explore on their own.
It all has that charm of “The LEGO Movie” that seems to really understand what makes LEGO so special.
You’ll race your way through the hairpin streets, rolling offroad courses and sparkling lakes with a trio of vehicles — a road racer, offroad vehicle and boat — that seamlessly transform as you move from one to another with an immensely satisfying sound of LEGO bricks clicking together. You can use a wide range of pre-built cars or spend time building your own.
The racing is very similar to other action-packed cart racers like “Mario Kart” or the destruction fest that is the “Burnout” series. You’ll be drifting around corners and smashing bricks to build up your boost meter while also picking up powerups along the way that arm you with useful weapons — homing missiles, electric blasts and spider webs — to deploy against the other racers.
It all combines into an exhilarating, fast-paced racer that can really test your skills.
The building system is surprisingly robust and with a bit of practice, it’s easy and fast to put together your own vehicles. Each vehicle — whether it’s street, offroad or boat — will start with a base that you can build onto however you want. I spent several hours in the building mode putting everything from cars that look like cars to cars that look like spaceships and tacos. Seeing each in action was magical.
However, the major problem I have with LEGO 2K Drive is how it handles unlocking additional bricks to build with. Namely, it’s stingy. You start with a pretty good range of bricks, but once you really start to dig in, you’ll see that pieces are missing. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but races rarely reward you with new bricks and even the unlocks—which take an enormous amount of in-game currency, presumably in a bid to try to get you to drop real-world money — don’t unlock all that much. Even if I wanted to empty my wallet to unlock every brick pack in the store, I still wouldn’t have access to many pieces.
Even the simple 1x2 vent plate — a staple of my building as a kid — is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, the best way to get your hands on a big variety of bricks — including my 1x2 vent — is to repurpose the prebuilt vehicles you win from racing rivals. These are fantastic and characterful vehicles that would fit right in “The LEGO Movie” and each has a ton of fun pieces, but that feels like playing with someone else’s creation and building within the rules they set out. Critically, you can’t mix these sets.
It’s frankly a frustrating revelation, and it ultimately feels like it runs contrary to the spirit of LEGO. Rather than being able to mix all the pieces together in one big pile and letting your imagination run wild, you’re stuck building from Ziploc bags of each set that can never, ever mix. It also put a damper on my desire to build because, hey, what if there’s a prebuilt car that has a good frame, the 1x2 vent and a bunch of other fun pieces?
It might not have been as much of a wet blanket on my experience if the game was more upfront about how it was going to handle unlocking bricks but it’s hard to overlook. I still had a load of fun racing through the world and enjoying all the effort that went into building each area and scene you’ll run into, but it was hard to shake the feeling that I was playing by someone else’s arbitrary rules.
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: May 16, 2023
Internet: Required for multiplayer
Matt Buxton is a freelance writer and gamer. He can be reached at matt.a.buxton@gmail.com.
