Lego The Incredibles (Switch) Review

There is no doubt a bunch of people like myself who happen to be big fans of Lego (Star Wars Lego is great no matter your age) and The Incredibles movies, so a Lego Incredibles game should be the kind of mash-up I would be all over. Turns out over the course of seven hours, I was forced to ask myself the question ‘am I too old to enjoy a Lego game?’

For those who haven’t played a Lego game; Lego The Incredibles is a retelling of the first and second Incredibles movies. Two or more characters are tasked with smashing up countless Lego scenery and items as you solve environmental puzzles, beat up bad guys, and use Lego pieces to build your way through each scene. Each character has unique abilities, forcing you to use each ability to their fullest to solve puzzles as well as find bonus collectables. There’s plenty to do tackling it solo, but it can be even more fun mucking around through the levels with a friend in co-op. Even better is with the joy cons you have enough controllers.

A lot of gameplay mechanics are from the Lego games before it, but with a new game, there are a few additions with it, mostly the Super Attacks and Incredibuilds. Super Attacks are attacks that are developed through building up enough combo until you can mash on a button to do a screen-clearing attack. It’s not a big addition, but at times it can be really handy to keep things moving. Incredibuilds are lego builds that require you to find Incredibricks in the nearby area to use to get to beat whatever obstacle is keeping you from progressing. When you have enough bricks the family comes together, and you need to mash on a button as you move between each character to build up each meter. This involves a bit of juggling between characters until all of them have enough meter to make the Incredibuild clear the way. While the Super Attack is a minor but useful addition, the Incredibuilds feels like an extra pointless step in progress.

If you’ve seen The Incredibles 2, that’s great! Because the game starts off with the sequel before unlocking the original movie’s story. I get that Tt Games would want to put the shiny new movie up front, especially when the original movie is over a decade old now. Having the stories play out in this order turns out to be bad for the pacing, and makes the first movie less fun to play though. As a result, you spend three to four hours getting to play levels that involve the family a fair bit, and then you’re relegated mostly to levels with Mr Incredible and whichever Super he’s paired with. The need to have two characters at any one time can make for some interesting moments when playing sections in the movie where characters were alone, and all of a sudden in the game are paired with characters that barely had a speaking role who all of a sudden are real chatty. The lengths they go to within the story to have a reason for why these characters are with you gets really bizarre. At one point in the original story that I feel kind of sorry for the poor workers who had to try and make some of these moments work.

In between the story levels you are also free to explore Municiberg and New Urbem, which form the open world hub. There’s plenty of collectibles that can be found here in the form of golden bricks and incredibricks. There are Incredibuild locations all over the map that make some neat structures, helping to add life to empty spots, and will have you looking for more Incredibricks (although it’s better holding onto them to make some cooler things). When you go back to the city there is usually a region that is flashing red as a ‘Crime Wave’ event. These events give you something to do when you want a break from the story or aimlessly doing things around the city. Crime Waves are often multi-part events that will have you helping several citizens from a villain’s goons by performing various tasks. Some tasks are just beating up enough goons, others involve running on top of giant bombs until you take them to a bomb disposal.

When you complete enough you’ll sometimes get the chance to fight a villain boss and lock them away. It’s great there is more to do than just the story, it’s just a shame it often tasks you to do the same thing over and over. But the reward for doing them is worth it as completing them gives you access to a special build and with a bit more puzzle solving you unlock a red brick. Now for those unfamiliar with the Lego games, the red bricks often need to be found hidden away in levels. Having the brick gives you the chance to unlock an extra feature. These extras are often stud/currency multipliers, visual filters or silly costumes, in the past, it was often frustrating trying to track down these bricks and find enough cash to unlock the extra feature. This time around it was great getting access to the red bricks in a less tedious manner. While it can take some of the challenge out of collecting enough Lego studs to fill the level meter, it was more fun not having to worry about smashing every single thing and madly collecting every stud.

There have been a lot of Lego games covering a wide range of franchises. It’s not unusual to hear ‘it’s just another Lego game’ and you know exactly what to expect. The Lego game formula is tried and true, and over a decade the core of the games remains unchanged. Every game usually introduces a small change that gets incorporated into the next one. There’s also the horrible truth; the Lego games might not be made for the gamer in their 30’s. There’s stuff in there that will appeal to me, but really the audience that is going to really enjoy these games are kids. That’s not a negative at all, Lego games should be approachable and easy to play for younger audiences. There is still a part of me that wishes they did more with these franchises that can make them more fun for older fans, but it’s awesome that so many fun franchises get the Lego treatment in the first place.

As you progress through the overall story of the Incredibles you start to realise that it does not lend itself as well to a video game as the usual superhero movie. The Incredibles does have some awesome action sequences and has people with superheroes all through it. But at the heart of the series is a family who happens to have superpowers who have to deal with a world where ‘Supers’ are illegal, handling family issues that don’t lend to fun Lego levels. Usually, Marvel and DC-themed games are packed to the brim with heaps of well-known heroes and villains with a bunch of the quite obscure ones. With the Incredibles movie being mostly about a family of Supers and a handful of other Supers, there aren’t actually that many to fill out an expansive roster. As a result, slots are padded out with alternate outfits and Supers that only showed up as mentions within the movies (as killed Supers), and any other character that happened to show up in the story. Although it is cool when you complete the Crime Wave sections of the game, you also get access to Pixar Incredibuilds which are worth unlocking.

If you’ve tangled with a Lego game before, there is a very high chance you’ve encountered some of the bugs that tend to pop up, whether it is visuals, sound or the game just not working how it’s meant to. Lego Incredibles is not immune to the usual bugs, in my time with the game I had characters getting stuck in the environment, sequences not progressing as they should. More than once when a cutscene should have been playing, it instead went to a loading screen as the audio played under, eventually, I was watching the scene silently as the game tried to catch up. Fortunately, the game is pretty decent with checkpoints so you’re not losing as much progress in the past, but it still shouldn’t be the case. As with other Lego games on the Switch the frame rate can get a bit iffy. It happens in handheld and docked, but it becomes a lot more noticeable in docked as the smaller lower resolution screen hides it much better. As long as you can handle the occasional hiccup the game runs fine, the intended audience isn’t likely to be too bothered regardless.

If you’re a big fan of Lego games then you’ll get your fix here. For older fans who love both Incredibles movies, you may find that the game lacks a lot of what makes those movies great, but is still a decent enough Lego game. For younger fans, it’s more Incredibles, and a great opportunity to smash up things made of Lego with lots of side things to do. The occasional bug can take away from some of the enjoyment, but for the majority of the time, you’ll get a fun Lego game and a good excuse to spend some time with the Parr family being Super.

Rating: 3.5/5