Plus, our hands-on first impressions of the new open-world racing game. <\/p>
Announced today (Thursday 23rd March), LEGO 2K Drive is an upcoming open-world racing game that is bursting with personality, with smash-able LEGO vehicles and brightly-coloured environments coupled tantalisingly with generous dollops of humour and imagination.<\/p>\n
Prior to the game\u2019s announcement, RadioTimes.com<\/a> attended a preview event for LEGO 2K Drive at the Take-Two offices in London. Of course, Take-Two\u2019s subsidiary 2K is known for its sports games, including the ongoing NBA 2K and WWE 2K franchises, but this LEGO collaboration feels like something different.<\/p>\n In fact, LEGO 2K Drive feels more like a cross between Nintendo\u2019s Mario Kart and Microsoft\u2019s Forza Horizon than it does a traditional sporting sim. We were able to play the game for a few hours, across multiple modes (including solo play and multiplayer match-ups), and it feels like a wholesome yet silly recipe for family-friendly fun.<\/p>\n We started playing the game solo, going through the tutorial content that introduces you to the world, including wacky characters with pun names like Parker Carr. The set-up is simple: right now, you\u2019re a rookie driver, and you\u2019ll have to take on a series of increasingly difficult trophies if you want to win the big shiny trophy in the sky.<\/p>\n You can design your character from a wide range of options, and you can also design the absurd LEGO car of your dreams in the game\u2019s garage workshop (more on that later). We opted for a pre-made robot character and then went straight into the action, with a sharp-witted former champ on hand to guide our character through the basics.<\/p>\n Driving in the game has a \u2018pick up and play\u2019 quality, where it definitely feels like even a young kid could understand the basics instantly. Press this button to go. Use the stick to turn. That\u2019s enough to get you started, especially on this first rush around the track, but there is depth in the gameplay if you go looking for it. With boosts, power-ups and drifting to think of, there will certainly be players that use every advantage possible to post very impressive lap times.<\/p> One fun way in which the game embraces the LEGO licence is this: your car is actually three vehicles in one. When you\u2019re on the track, it\u2019s a sports car; when you go off-road, you shift into a more heavy duty machine; and when you go on water, suddenly it transforms into a boat.<\/p>\n Each of these three categories of motor uses the same basic controls, but it\u2019s fun to explore in different ways, and it\u2019s staggering to imagine how many different varieties you will be able to collect, build or tweak for each vehicle form.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that the game itself has two different forms: there\u2019s a vast open world experience where you can drive around, smash into things, hunt for collectables and undertake side missions, and there are also standalone tracks where you\u2019ll have to do a number of laps against CPU or online opponents, dishing out Mario-Kart-like attacks to try and outsmart the competition.<\/p>\n Both modes are fun, and it\u2019s easy to picture how players could lose hours at a time to the game, exploring and having fun without even thinking about their main objective. Similar to Forza Horizon, there\u2019s joy in the racing and there\u2019s also joy in the not racing.<\/p>\n We are not supposed to say anything \ud83d\ude09 but tune in for March 23rd pic.twitter.com\/i0NUiF3bqG<\/a><\/p>\u2014 LEGO (@LEGO_Group) March 20, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>