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Battle of the Blocks: Lego takes on Minecraft with Lego Worlds

Minecraft may be the biggest name in free-form construction video games, but when it comes to the real world, nothing comes close to Lego. These titans are finally going to clash with the announcement of Lego Worlds, which is essentially the Lego version of Minecraft.

LEGO Worlds - Open World Game - Trailer - Early Access

Developed by longtime Lego video game maker TT Games, Lego Worlds is available right now as a beta on Steam Early Access for $15. Much like MinecraftLego Worlds drops you in a procedurally-generated landscape to explore and create in, with familiar-sounding upcoming features such as additional biomes and underground cave networks. It’s only single-player at the moment, but online multiplayer is promised as development continues.

The game does not appear to share Minecraft‘s survival elements, instead focusing on the creative possibilities, so less subsistence farming and more building giant snow men. Various creatures will be available to populate your world, along with an assortment of items and vehicles. The player will also have access to tools for easily manipulating the landscape en masse, something that requires special mods to accomplish in Minecraft.

Elements from TT Games’ other popular Lego tiles will carry over as well, such as character customization and hidden red bricks for bonuses. A select number of real-life Lego playsets will be unlockable in the game during the beta, with many more to come when it gets a full release.

Minecraft has been well-established for a while, and Lego already had a strong position in video games with TT Games’ light-hearted Lego takes on popular franchises like Marvel super heroes, so you’d think a creativity-driven Lego game would have been a no-brainer some time ago, and you would be right. Lego Universe was a short-lived Lego take on a creative MMO that lasted from 2010 to 2012. Developer Megan Fox recently tweeted about her experience working on the game, saying that one of the major factors to sink it was their inability to create cost-effective “dong detection.” (via Eurogamer)

While players could create whatever they want in their own worlds, anything they wanted to share had to be vetted so that parents could be reassured that their children would be safe from lewd content. If you give gamers construction tools, though, they will inevitably make a lot of penises. The automatic detection tools were outfoxed by clever workarounds such as multi-part sculptures that would look like a penis from one particular angle. Ultimately the cost of human moderation was simply too great to make the game viable while ensuring parents that it was safe. It’s not known whether a similar problem might bedevil a future multiplayer version of Lego Worlds.

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Will Fulton
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
Gotham Knights skipping PS4 and Xbox One
Nightwing in Gotham Knights.

The new Batman Arkham series spinoff, Gotham Knights, is still set to release in October for Xbox Series X/S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5, but it won't be showing up on last-gen consoles. The news comes as Warner Bros. Entertainment shared a new gameplay trailer for the superhero title, showing Nightwing and Red Hood in action.

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Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga isn’t just for kids
Promotional art of Lego Star Wars The Skywalker Saga.

Before Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, I had fallen out of love with TT Games and WB Games' Lego titles. The Lego Star Wars, Batman, and Indiana Jones series helped make me passionate about video games as a kid as I spent endless fun (and sometimes frustrating) hours playing them with my brother.
Over time though, I aged out of the series and grew more disappointed with the basic open-world formula the series settled on after great games like Lego City Undercover. I was no longer smitten with one of the series that helped cement my love of video games. That’s why The Skywalker Saga’s bold new direction excites me.
It not only revisits the films behind some of my favorite Lego games, but builds on top of them with more expansive hub worlds, mission variety, and deeper gameplay than previous Lego action games. While The Skywalker Saga’s multiple delays and development issues concerned me, my hands-on with an early build of the game managed to engross me just like the original Lego Star Wars did 17 years ago.
A New Hope for the series
My demo took me through the first 90 minutes of A New Hope, one of the nine Star Wars films represented within The Skywalker Saga. Like every Lego game before it, this segment of the game followed the events of the film it was based on. It features full voice acting (from soundalikes, not the film cast), though I appreciated the inclusion of a “mumble mode” that makes the characters grunt and pantomime as they did in early Lego games.
LEGO® Star Wars™: The Skywalker Saga - Gameplay Overview
TT Games also experiments with the iconic opening of A New Hope. Many jokes are present to keep kids entertained, but it also intertwines with the end of Rogue One. The first character I played as was actually Princess Leia, who has the Death Star plans and is trying to escape Darth Vader as he boards the Tantive IV. Somehow, this Lego game made this oft-adapted and parodied plot beat feel fresh.
This mission also served as a tutorial and a demonstration of how The Skywalker Saga differs from previous Lego games. Yes, there are still combat, exploration, and puzzles, but those are deeper than before. A cover-based system has been implemented to make shootouts more involving. Meanwhile, players can now string together melee combos with different moves and counter enemies' attacks, making melee battles more enjoyable than before. Character classes and abilities also ensure fights in this game are more than simple button-mashing affairs.
Missions often give players multiple options to complete objectives, whether that’s because of a specific Lego build players can create or the abilities of their playable character. It’s no Devil May Cry, but these deeper gameplay systems made sure my eyes didn’t gloss over out of boredom within the first hour, something I can’t say for the last couple of Lego games I played.
The Skywalker Saga made a strong first impression on me and excited me to see how the rest of A New Hope would unfold. I was able to play as Luke Skywalker on Tatooine, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi, recruit Han and Chewbacca, and explore the Death Star before my demo ended. While this is the second time TT Games is adapting this material, it feels completely new because of the revamped approach to storytelling, level design, and gameplay design.
All grown up
During my demo, I only scratched the surface of what the game had to offer. The Skywalker Saga seems to be the most densely packed Lego game yet, as all nine mainline Star Wars films have been recreated here. Not only are there linear levels based on the main plot points and set pieces of each film, but there are large hubs on planets and areas in space that players can explore and complete side missions within.
As players complete the stories of more films and gain access to more characters, ships, and planets, the amount of options players will have at their disposal will only continue to grow. The Skywalker Saga also has a progression system to back that amount of content up ,as missions reward players with Kyber Bricks that players use to unlock and enhance abilities on skill trees.

Yes, this game has skill trees to complement the aforementioned classes -- which include Jedi, Smugglers, and Protocol Droids -- and their abilities, which is useful during and outside of combat. Systems like this bring TT Games’ Lego series more up to par with its action game peers and make it feel like the franchise has finally grown up. As The Skywalker Saga will be the first Lego game in years to appeal to those with nostalgia for the series' earliest game, it's a relief to see that it won't disappoint. 
Of course, The Skywalker Saga still will be approachable enough for kids thanks to its visuals, humor, and approachable gameplay basics, but it finally doesn’t seem like that’s coming at the sacrifice of engaging gameplay for older players. While I thought I had aged out of ever liking a Lego game again, this demo of The Skywalker Saga revealed that I could still love these games -- they just had to catch up to me first.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will be released for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch on April 5, 2022.

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Two characters race in a Lego Worlds neighborhood.

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Set to launch close to the start of this year's FIFA World Cup, 2K's upcoming soccer game is reportedly being developed by Sumo Digital, which has previously developed Crackdown 3, along with numerous entries in the Sonic Racing franchise. It's somewhat ironic then that 2K's second Lego game will be an open-world racing title developed by Visual Concepts, which itself has made multiple sports titles for 2K, including NBA 2K22 and WWE 2K22. The 2K Lego racing game will reportedly release in 2023. According to VGC's sources, a third Lego sports game based on a major sports franchise is also in development.

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