I fondly remember the countless hours I spent during my childhood with the 1999 Lego Racers game, trying to build the coolest looking car while racing down Magma Moon Marathon. So when I was told that there’s a new Lego racer with Lego 2K Drive, I just had to try it out.

Racing into the Night

Lego 2K Drive, much like previous Lego Racers games is an arcade racer, something akin to Mario Kart as opposed to more hardcore racing games like F1 or Gran Turismo. While I personally tend to lean towards the previously mentioned hardcore racing games, I wanted to see how Lego 2K Drive compared as a racing game on its own.

The Lego Racing games aren’t particularly known for their thought provoking or compelling narratives, and Lego 2K Drive is no exception. You play as a rising star whose goal is to win the Sky Cup Grand Prix, this world’s biggest racing championship. However, before that you’ll have to enter and win other Arenas in order to reach the final championship.

Stopping you from claiming the championship is the main antagonist of the game, Shadow Z and his crew. However, I do wish that the game gave us more interaction with Shadow Z, because we only really get to see him during the animations.

When starting off the game, the ones who would show you the ropes are racer Clutch Racington and a robot called S.T.U.D, where they’ll be guiding you the basics to start your racing journey in Bricklandia.

There are also challenges and quests for players to try out aside from the main races, where you can get different rewards like money, cosmetics, and bricks for you to build your own vehicle. While there are certain quests that are pretty interesting to play, majority of the challenges feel very repetitive as they’re essentially the same thing.

Into Bricklandia

The world of Bricklandia is divided into 4 different biomes that players can race on, each with their distinct and unique style. There’s the first and starting biome of Turbo Acres where most of the basics of the game are taught here.

There’s also the Big Butte County desert biome, Prospecto Valley biome filled with lush greenery and a big mining area, and lastly the Hauntsburrow biome filled with haunted themes of buildings and props. This is an aspect that I’m glad made it in this game, as I was extremely fond of the visually distinct maps that were present in the original Lego Racers game.

The mixture between Lego bricks and real-life visual style gives off a pretty nice contrast for not making the game look too cartoonish, which provides more modernised visuals all throughout, and it’s something I can appreciate.

Step on that Brick

The racing experience in Lego 2K Drive is decent enough, and it’s more akin to a mario kart experience. The controls are pretty easy, but you’ll need some time to get used to it if you’re not familiar with this kind of racing game.

One of the interesting aspects in this game is the boost mechanic. There’s 2 ways to gain boost, one of it is from your usual power up and the second one is drifting. Given as to how drifting will only fill up the bar, players will need to manually choose when to activate it.

Much like an arcade racer, Lego 2K Drive offers players various powerups which could potentially turn the outcome of the race. One of the powerups is this spider web that can slow down other racers where they have to keep tapping to get rid of it, and another powerup that makes your car be ethereal which essentially makes you invulnerable.

Going through the various maps in the game, there’s a lot of objects which can be drove through to fill up your boost bar. I particularly found this feature to be pretty satisfying since there’s no limitation of where you can go and what you can do. Plus, it give players some creative ways to get around the map.

Cruising Through

There are 3 different types of vehicles in Lego 2K Drive, one is your usual racing car for players to drive on road, the second being an off-road vehicle, and the last being the boat. What’s interesting about each of these vehicles are that they’ll transform automatically according to the terrain that you’re on, so you won’t have to worry about accidentally treading the wrong path.

However, I personally prefer the off-road vehicle since you’ll be driving in the free roam world for most of the time, and this type of vehicle is your only choice for picking shortcuts. I also believe the designs of the maps are leaned towards this direction.

Aside from that, while there are different stats for different types of vehicles, I personally think it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. So you don’t necessarily need to worry too much about the stats of certain vehicles.

There’s also Perks in the game where you can slot in that upgrades the stats of your vehicle, and these perks can be gained by winning races or finishing quests and challenges. However, much like the stats, these perks doesn’t make that much of a big difference for your vehicle.

Leveling Up

The level system in Lego 2K Drive will affect gameplay, since there’s a level cap for you to unlock certain races and arenas, which means that for players who just wants to race till the final championship, they’ll need to grid before they can do so. This I believe breaks the immersion of the game since it essentially gates content from players by padding out game time.

My main gripe with this is how little experience you gain when you finish a challenge or a quest, which means that it’ll take some time to level up. This often made me feel a bit frustrated when I have to level up to continue the main story, and given how a race would take up quite some time to finish.

Customisation

My favourite aspect when it comes to Lego 2K Drive is definitely the car customisation, since you can actually build anything as long as you can fit it within the maximum bricks number. As someone who grew up with playing Lego, I could easily spend hours upon hours building cars.

The game already gives you bricks that’s enough for you to build anything, but you’re still also can get different bricks by finishing quests. While some of the bricks are purely cosmetic, there are certain bricks give functions. Like the lawnmower bricks where you can mow down weeds which would normally slow you down.

However, if you don’t want to build your vehicle from scratch, you can also use the per-existing cars that are available. You can either change their colour, bricks or even the structure of it.

Verdict

All in all, Lego 2K Drive is a game that’s suitable for different ages, and it’s decent enough for players who want to play a less hardcore racing game. The driving experience is more casual and fun, and you can also drive in the freeroam world to take in the sights of Bricklandia.

The strongest aspects in the game is definitely the freedom of creativity, and what you can do like the car customisation. However, the perks and stats for the different vehicles could be made more significant so that the different types of vehicles can feel more distinct.

Lego 2K Drive was reviewed on PC with a PS5 Controller, with the review code provided by the publishers