“Lego 2K Drive” sounds like a charity event: a two-kilometer fun run, possibly sponsored by Lego, or targeted for donations. It’s a video game, in truth – an open-world racer studded with rich bricks – but its mission is no less than the spirit of giving. Without a doubt, the purpose of any LEGO video game is to give us something to relate to our finished creation. In real life, the joy (or at least the quarrelsome, driven quiet) is in architecture. After you’ve plugged them all in, all you’re left with is your Death Star, Batmobile, or whatever, which ends up as loot on a shelf, lightly adorned with dust. Not so in the Lego 2K Drive, where life is bright, pre-assembled, but nothing like that. If only it were more than the sum of its parts.
What exactly are these parts? For 2K Drive, developer Visual Concepts looked to games like Forza Horizon, Mario Kart, and Crash Team Racing. It’s a smart decision to kitbashing with the most curated kit, but it invites stark contrast. For example, the weapons you collect in races lack the smarts in Mario Kart. Take the spider web, for example, which can cling to enemies and make them loose. It’s a spin on the Blooper, the wide-eyed squid that squirts ink on your opponent’s screen; but it lacks the slick sense of humor, with a slight taunting pause before Blooper begins his shady work, letting your foes know They got scammed before it happened. Instead, the web is spring-loaded and instant, trapping them in bad operations until they jump off it.
Then again, not every comparison is fatal. The adventure structure here might be as good as Forza Horizon’s, with its sprawling fields and tons of activities, but that’s when I learned that the inhabitants of so-called Bricklandia are actually less plastic than the Horizon Festival staff. I love that series, but I always shudder at the dead positivity, all the halogen smiles and stale encouragement. It was a relief to play Lego 2K Drive, be revved up to be guided by Clutch Racington, with a stubbled grin on his helmet, and hands clamped to the wheel at ten and two o’clock. We’ve heard through news reports that Clutch is “a former big shot driver who is now a charismatic mentor who trains rookie racers. Lucky for you, and convenient for the story!”
As is often the case with The Lego Movie, the standard narrative blocks are poured out and playfully checked, and this irreverence, which starts out as a tonic, gradually loses its sizzle and luckily gives way to a good spread joke. You know you’re in ironic hands when the game’s villain, Shadow Z, describes you as “a nobody who suddenly becomes a threat to me for no apparent reason!” (However, fans of Crash Team Racing might point out that this knowledge takes away some of the fun. When the game’s villain, Nitrous Oxide, threatens to “turn your entire planet into a concrete parking lot and make you my slave “You know he’s real, but you also know he’s an airbag, the laugh leaked out.) I don’t care about Shadow Z’s whoops at all, but I’d love to see a horse drive, almost the same as that A pair of monkeys who run a garage.
Anyway, who really needs a plot when you have a whole bunch of Legoid biomes to burn? We start on Turbo Acres, a clean green runway where the Clutch will get you into a sporty rhythm. These include quests that let you find lost items, mow the grass with an electric lawn mower, or crunch through waves of aliens, skeletons, and what have you. A police chase where you chase suspects with missiles until they explode and peel away to bare chassis. There’s also point-to-point time trials, knuckle-biting challenges, and if you want anything other than a bronze medal. Neither of these pastimes are as engaging as pure competition – victories earn you the flag, better unlocks for the Champion Glove, and more importantly, more Bricklandia.
We have Prospecto Valley, a rocky sweep of pickaxes and gleaming nuggets that brings new and rubbery meaning to the term “gold rush.” Hounsborough, meanwhile, is a sprawling mansion and misty hills teeming with arachnids. My personal favorite is Big Butte County, with its jagged boulders. It is reminiscent of the background of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner; especially the later design, by Maurice Noble, in episodes such as “Zoomed and Bored”, the scene – pink and dry The shapes, rough rocky waves – take on an abstract style. Usually, anything that even vaguely evokes a Looney Tunes creation is worth the time, and Visual Concepts does a good job of bringing out Lego’s magic: the way it takes such disparate sources and makes them click. You can’t imagine any other world where these vistas don’t collide. How could they have come together if it wasn’t for the idea that everyone could fit in a bucket and piece together?
The point of all this diversion is the rising tick of XP, which later turns into a rough ride as you’re turned off and forced to grind it away. (The in-game mall can’t ease the running-in. After playing career mode, the cash is only enough to buy four cars, and there is no option to buy XP.) I feel that Visual Concepts has no way out, and I default to busy work. The controls are heavy and the drift vague, reminiscent of Hotshot Racing; but that game is pared down and adjusted to a compact format—no open world, just a series of modes. You never let any tedium seep into the space. Here, I spent hours poking around trying to reach an arbitrary level, but the fun faded like smoke. Talk about scaling and boring.
If you get creative, you can cobble together new cars. I have a grim monument in my garage to my own failed endeavor: a bare gray plank covered with a few black strips of nothing, 16 of them in all. It will be lurking there, “New Vehicle 00” is not suitable for submission to 2K’s approval process. Still, the depth of customization is dizzying, and if you’re excited by the prospect of sitting down and tinkering, give it a go. One reason I’m not bothered is that I’m terrified of the machines you’ve won already built. Check out the Hamburghini Royale, all 227 pieces artfully pressed into beef and bread with light lettuce and yellow cheese – a tooth-cracking meal on wheels.
If only the Lego 2K Drive offered more thought-provoking content. Visual Concepts features neat action-packed humor; watching your car morph – chikka-chikka-chikka – into different road, dirt and water forms is like re-dreaming on the fly. But it’s not backed up with as much depth or compelling mechanics as they need to be. The game has a rubber-band difficulty designed to keep things tense, but when it’s resolved early, none of the calls feel really close.
Indeed, LEGO 2K Drive was heralded back in 2019, and Playground Games inserted its wondrous drive into a plethora of visual jokes in Forza Horizon 4’s LEGO Speed Champions DLC. Best of all is the English landscape, with its green grass and boxy clouds, and how well it responds to its toy-like transformations—all those skimming drystone walls you climb over seem to be LEGO-like Forms appear at home. I think the idea has grown since then, but I can’t help but wonder if it should have stayed.
