Be Excellent To Each Other

I love em, me. And they've just announced LEGO Lord of the Rings for summer 2012. Wheeeee!



Still reckon LEGO Batman was the best so far, but Harry Potter had the best hubworld. Anyone else?

I don't mind them, but i don't get a chance to play them anymore as my wife LOVES them and insists on getting 1000/1000 on them even though she won't play any other games at all. Tried marvel superhero squad as it's a similar play mechanic but it wasn't the same. she reckons the best was harry potter because of the hubworld too and the amount of hidden characters. I've got her the new HP one for xmas.

Think they're doing a new batman one next year too?

Batman was a very good one. Indiana Jones 1 had the best achievement names. Harry Potter's hub world was annoying-took ages to go between levels when mopping up missing items or trying to remember how to get to a certain classroom.

Really looking forward to a LOTR game, and am still hoping Santa brings HP 5-7 for Christmas

Sounds familiar.

I'll be all over Lego LOTR, to be fair.

I have played Batman and Starwars.... very good fun, I might get more

Has anyone played Pirates of The Caribbean? It's existence in the UK on a non-wii platform (i.e. PC) appears to be as rare as SOMETHINGRARE.

I've got it on the 360. Not as good as Batman, but pretty good.

Excellent! I love them dearly. I can play them co-op with the Mrs.

I'm more a lover of the Lego games in theory, since I tried the first Harry Potter one (I love HP, for reference) but got rather frustrated at having to backtrack and do stuff.

On the other hand, I do recall enjoying the first Star Wars Lego game that came out on the original Xbox a few years back.

Bottom line is, I'm rather a LoTR obsessive, so yeah, will get this for sure.

I've only played one of the Lego games - Lego Indiana Jones, and got bored after the first level and turned it off. Probably means I'm dead inside or something.

Joking aside, it must help to be into the film. I've never tried the Indy game 'cos of that really.

I love Indiana Jones but I thought the Lego game was the weakest of the bunch. I've played Batman, Star Wars and Indie. I'd probably rank them in that order, too.

OT (but not really considering the thread title) Has anyone played Heroica or the other Lego board games?

No, but I've seen the Penny Arcade guys talk about them. They look pretty awesome -- for those who aren't familiar, it's more or less Hero Quest, but with a LEGO board.

I have Magma Monster, which is a bit like quoridor.

That looks interesting, never seen that before.

Gazchap raved about it, so Kern bought it for me, I raved about it with gazchap, and it went to the cottage and it was quite well received, if my recollection is correct.

The best Lego "board" game is Shave-A-Sheep, as any fool knows.

Playing the second Harry Potter game and it's been given a level of spit-and-polish over and above the other LEGO games. Excellent so far.

This. Played it at a friend's house earlier in the year and we spent the whole time giggling. It was great fun.

I FUCKING LOVE REAL LEGO AND LEGO COMPUTER GAMES.

Here is a demo of the LOTR Lego game for PC!

Remember to get an adult to help you!!!11

edit: It looks like the 3DS and Vita versions are already out? That was quite news, to me. (But then again I don't own those platforms)

ps: Releasing a demo before the actual game? Best advert a game company can do.

So I'm a big fan of LEGO and the LEGO games. Just played the demo. It's a really sexy thing. But it has the same flaws that most other LEGO games do which dulls the experience a bit. Still: I'm pretty excited to play the full game though! It looks like it might be a real winner.

It uses actual speech, rather than lego mphm mphm. The voices are direct sound clips from the film. At first I didn't like it, but it quickly grew on me. I hope there's an option or a postbox-code to allow the old style mpphs back? Still, it didn't seem to dimiinish the usual LEGO 'gags' that occour in the cutscenes. Also: the elf hero guy popped apart without any pomp, circumstance or a Legolas Nooooooooooooooooooooooo

The actual sound effects in the game are also from film -- swords hitting, boxes smashing, coins being picked up, legolas's jump sound etc. I wasn't so much a fan of that. It was a bit jarring. One step to far into the uncanny valley, especially as the LEGO figures are rendered so 'LEGO'-like in the game. They've really got that down to an art now.

In general the sound clips themselves were a bit lo-fi. I don't know if that's just due to the nature of using sound clips, keeping the demo size down or what. But I bet the full game will be like that though. The lo-fi nature of the sound was probably what made me dislike the film sounds in the game so much.

Object and character interaction highlight is nice - I can't remember if this was in the other games. (I've yet to play Batman 2 or POTC, as POTC seems impossible to get for PC in Europe)

Flaws that this + other LEGO games have which annoy me a bit:

• Alternate people you're not controlling need to pick up bricks. Especially if I have to hop down to another level to pick everything up
• The game needs to make better use of buttons on control pad. It needs to stop overloading b. In LOTRD it seems there now an inventroy context menu bound to long-hold B, which is a little bit exciting to see, except it takes ages to pop up, meaning legolas switching from bow to daggers takes fucking ages. I have a million buttons on my keyboard and 360 controller that aren;t being used -- why can't they instantly switch weapons or bring up the menu? Or even directly select a charcter so I don't have to dance between Legolas and Aragorn before I get to Gimli. (Speaking of Aragorn, he seems useless compared ot the other two? I wonder what his special skill is!)
• Focus on the depth of field was often wrong and on the foreground, as your dudes in the background were a blur fest. Meant I wanted to turn it off
• A lot of 'dead time' in the game where you're just running around smacking stuff without any form of hurry. The game just sits still waiting for you. all those animated orcs in the background just sit there. Still, one of my major complaints of the prevous games was infinitely respawning enemies when you're trying to build a fucking pile of bricks, so maybe it's good they got rid of it? Your other dudes don't seem to help much, as in other games. They really need to start being more helpeful to help them feel more alive. I'll try and get a 2p game going tomorrow.

I have this! It's very terrible to play more than once. I tried to come up with some alternate rules but couldn't be fucked to find ones to make it work. I really like the Wolf and Sheep though. Good way to get white 2x2 blocks

http://www.zavvi.com/games/platforms/pc ... fil=thggps

Cheapest I can find. £14. Where's LewieP when you need him?! (They also bundle it + batman 2 for £24, but you don't get the Newborn Lurtz DLC, whatever the hell that is, that you do in the standalone?)

Steam don't seem to even list it yet, so no idea how much it will be on there

You sodding PC gits. £35 quid from Game is/was the best Xboxen one. And you get a ickle wickly Elrond for it too!

Speaking of Lego, I got me a Lego Spongebob for the top of my monitor. He looks larrvly.

I was planning on hitting Legoland for my birthday this year - does anyone know if it is remotely worth the 45 a head? do you at least get some sort of massive Gnomical discount on the shop?

The photos a former colleague of mine came back with from his trip were incredible.

Drive past it twice a day, not been in, but my mate spent £700 including a hotel stay there for 2 nights with his 3 kids. He had used Tesco club card stuff as well.

So I doubt when they have you captured in the park of magic the will be selling Lego on the cheap.

Definitely not. Sometimes they even charge above Lego's own RRP.

I've been - it was alright. Christ knows how your mate spent so much.

LLOTR IRG. Open world!

Is this any good then? It's about the only Christmas release I'm tempted by this year (never played any of the other Lego games)

As a Tolkien fanatic, it was difficult at first to reconcile the changes to the plot. But then I reasoned the film already changed so much and Lego games have always cut down the plot to make it "fun". It's... odd to see Lego faces saying words from the flimums. I would've preferred the old style no-dialogue option. Wandering a semi-open world middle earth to get to places is great, though.

Cheers, Dimrill - I think I can live with those oddities, so it's off to the shops for me.

Off to the Christmas list for me!!

I'm going off list.

Has anyone made a Legolas joke yet?

Haha. Lego-las! Him name!

I need to think this through.

Got a glitch whereby after the Black Ruder level you are supposed to return to the hub world near the Prancing Pony but we keep getting dumped back by Farmer Maggot's field to replay same level. Can't get to other part of hub world.

Oof. You're not too far in, have you tried a new save?

Just doing that now. Played it through three times in case it was where in two-player the action split between the Gandalf fight whilst on the split screen the hobbits were carrying on their adventure past the rider, but no luck.

Have deleted file, trying anew.

Fingers crossed!

New save worked!!

Yay!

We had this one, too - Dimrill's solution worked here as well. Btw, my wife really likes this but it's one of those games that gives her some kind of motion sickness, she starts burping and feels queasy after about 20 minutes.

MrC, I thought we were going to get that with this one as well, as the Prologue level was motion heavy.

The split screen seems more fixed in later parts though, rather than it constantly bring the movey line of death.

Mr Russell, Mimi, Dimrill, Emma Peel, anyone? We're stuck at Weathertop unable to create the fifth fire.....any ideas? Can't find anything on the net....Jeez, beaten by a children's game, this is a new low...

Edit....forget that, just worked it out - university education, can't beat it...

I have to admit that when I was looking for a way around the glitch yesterday I resorted to Youtube walkthroughs to see what screen the game should leap to.

That might be an idea for if you get stuck again.

I've suffered terribly with motion sickness in games. Had a couple of twinges yesterday, where I e had to look away, but it's nowhere near as bad as Lego Pirates of The Caribbean was.

But this was is more traditional!

I remember telling a Tesco delivery lady how to find her way out of being stuck on a Luigi's Mansion level, once!

I get the pesky motion sickness too, mostly from FPS games which I simply avoid completely.

The recent Batman Lego game made me queasy here and there, though very mildly and it was something I could basically control by taking sensible breaks.

I again felt a mild wave of nausea during LoTR yesterday, but in truth I'd been playing for about three hours and was clearly in need of a break, so I stopped before it became worse.

I dunno about the other Lego games, but in this one I note there is the option for on/off for motion blur in the options somewhere, so probably worth tinkering here to see if it helps.

As for the game though, I'm loving it, and it brilliantly captures the films and the excitement of the big scenes and big battles. I can see why some wouldn't like the voice clips perhaps, but I think they're done well and work well.

The humour, too, is genuinely funny and I like how they poke gentle fun at the film while still being respectful, if you know what I mean.

I get motion sickness with games. First one I ever had a reaction to was Kingpin on the PC. The wildly undulating flesh. Latest one was Rock Band Blitz. It starts with my internal thermostat going wonky and overheating, then migrates to headache.

I think the problem with this one is the out-of-focus backgrounds in the free roam. It's a stupid decision in any game to mess with your own eye's ability to focus. Bioshock was quite bad for it, blurring things at the edge of the screen.

Portal is the one game that really screws me up, motion sickness wise. Especially the last level where your in the large room and have to ping yourself around all over the place. I think it is the sudden displacements and losing a frame of reference. Everything else i'm fine with, strangely.