Games

Is Lego Worlds Worth Buying? It’s Cheap, But Reviews are Mixed and It’s Definitely Not Minecraft (Video)

March 14, 2017
Michelle Topham

The sandbox building and exploration game Lego Worlds was released last week, and I have had my eye on it ever since. It is a game that has been a couple of years in the making, was developed by one of my favorite game studios Traveler’s Tales and, while in beta, was getting pretty good reviews. It is also a game that has been talked about, and sold, as a Minecraft clone.

Since Lego Worlds release on March 7th, however, reviews from gamers and critics have been mixed. So is Lego Worlds worth buying? And is it a game that will rival the popularity of Minecraft?

From all that I have read from both professional video game journalists and gamers who have played the game, my guess is probably not. And especially not for Minecraft addicts like myself.

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After all, when you have played a game like Minecraft for any length of time, with its completely open world, and the ability to build and do anything you want to do, playing a much more restrictive game like Lego Worlds is probably not that much fun. At least, that is what reviewers are already saying.

Issues that plagued Lego Worlds throughout development still exist as well — camera problems, bugs that stop quests from being completed, cataloging of building items is poor — and the game’s controls are said to be non-intuitive, and sometimes extremely frustrating and difficult to use.

So let’s look at both the pros and cons of Lego Worlds so that, if you are thinking of buying the game, you know what you are letting yourself in for.

Pros of Lego Worlds

Low price — for a new game ($29.99 on Play Station 4, Xbox One and PC)



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Beautifully designed biomes

Excellent world editing tools allowing you to shape the terrain any way you like

Ability to copy and paste whole structures into the game without the need for building

Thousands of items to build

Cool vehicles to use

Random characters that spawn and either attack you or remain neutral

Fun Lego humor

A lot of possibilities for creative play

Rules are introduced well, so they are easy to understand

Unlike MInecraft, there is a storyline, although not much of one

Some mods are already available

Cons of Lego Worlds

Still existent bugs that make completely quests frustrating — workarounds do work, but take up time

Game has been reported to crash quite frequently

Precise building is fiddly and takes a lot of time — tends to become tedious

Biomes are restricted until you ‘unlock’ them

Worlds are small, and are definitely not infinite

No crafting or gathering resources in order to be able to build

Difficult to use controls — reportedly better to play on a console than a PC

Camera tends to zoom around a lot without notice, gets in the way and is not intuitive

Menu screens for object designs are difficult to find and use, wasting time and compounding frustration

Frame rate issues that can cause you to have to stop playing until the game catches up

More restrictive gameplay than Minecraft

As you can see, there are a lot of pros and a lot of cons. From watching several Lego Worlds gameplay videos (watch one below), however, I can already see where, as a massive Minecraft fan that enjoys the ease of the game, Lego Worlds would just be too frustrating for me.

That’s because I like the easy, intuitive controls of Minecraft. The ability to do anything and build anything, as well as the literally infinite worlds the game creates. I also love that the game rarely, if ever, crashes.

You, however, may think differently.

To get more of an idea about how Lego Worlds runs and works, watch the first in a new let’s play series of the game in the video below. In the one below that, you can also find out about 15 things you need to know about the game before buying it.

So, is Lego Worlds worth buying? From what I have seen so far, for me, no, probably not. For you, however, it may be the perfect game.

Michelle Topham
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