Who has never found themselves building a LEGO character, house or vehicle? Although there will be people who have never done this, of course, I'm sure in the minority. The Danish company, or rather the colossus, has gone to build a real empire (made of colored bricks), which spans all types of media in circulation: from toys, to films, to animated series and finally to video games. What is being created, it is an ever-growing mass phenomenon, which leads to a boom in box office purchases of various cinemas around the world. But when it comes to video games, the turnout is clearly scarce (except for the very good parenthesis of Lego Dimensions). The latest work produced for every type of console on the market: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC, is nothing less than LEGO Ninjago the Movie: Videogame. What have they managed to give us this time with blocks?
A world made of bricks, ninjas and chickens ...
The history of the video game, as can be understood from the title, is practically the transposition of the film. After starting a new game, we will find ourselves playing the classic tutorial, which will be fun, but also long and very wordy. A chicken, the Master Chicken, attack our dojo and Sensei Wu (our teacher and playable character within the adventure) will ask us for a hand to defeat this very powerful being. Yeah, it's not a joke… it's all true. We play the role of Llyod, protagonist of the campaign and son of the villain on duty, Lord Garmadon. Here we learn the various commands of hand-to-hand combat, both aerial and non, and after beating this bad guy, we will find ourselves in the city, which is as usual attacked by the forces of evil.
Aboard our state-of-the-art and super-equipped mechs, he will also start in the vehicle combat tutorial. The latter was somewhat confusing: many times we couldn't figure out where we were heading, or what we were going to hit. Through a key, we can launch our missiles, which will hit the enemy, shattering it into a thousand pieces (or bricks). After this chaos, we find ourselves commanding two other ninjas: Kai and Cole, who will have to reach their mechs, very far from their starting point, due to a miscalculation of the red ninja (Kai). During this journey, small and full of enemies and stuff to shatter, we will learn from this moment on everything that the Warner Bros. work will offer us. In the product in question, in fact, we can range between the classic LEGO games, or with everything what concerns this genre, to well thought out action actions, such as the Wall-Runs or the QTE phases, albeit mentioned.
"The city of Ninjago will never be burned to the ground!"
Each character in the title has very specific abilities, which will be used at certain points to proceed or unlock secret places and objects. Like real ninja, each of them has a favorite weapon and, always emphasizing the fact that they are expert and very strong warriors, they train constantly. But how can we empower ourselves? Simple, there is the system of Token Ninjury, which are nothing more than usable points in the power-up tree. These either improve combat skills (e.g. more stun time), or increase the drop-rate of LEGO tokens. To be interesting, then, are also the "ancient scrolls", which can be found, rarely being very rare, and selected to have a bonus of various kinds. LEGO Ninjago the Movie: Videogame has a system of "closed" levels, which can be explored to a certain extent. Once the chapter is completed, however, we could visit it in open world mode using all unlocked characters. We will therefore not only find the main story, but also secondary quests (very trivial at times) and the possibility of entering places previously blocked or hidden. Replayability is therefore guaranteed, were it not for the too much repetition. After a short time, continuing to defeat enemies, destroy items and collect tokens will be boring.
But thinking of the target audience, that is children aged between 7 and 10/12 years, this elusive chapter of the console saga, featuring the most beloved characters of the LEGO universe, will be nice, fun, full of action and having some good news, which perhaps were needed. For example, the "Multi-construction", which consists in being able to build one thing first, break it and rebuild another totally opposite or positioned differently. LEGO Ninjago the Movie: Videogame is recommended for a very young audience, who will feel kidnapped by the story, perhaps after seeing the film, to risk not receiving too many spoilers about it.
Modus Operandi: this review was written based on the version PlayStation 4 of the title, after finishing the entire game experience.
