The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game Review

"Ninja Power"

Campaign

The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game is based on the animated film even taking certain shots from the movie and presenting them with some new voice over. The story here follows the exact same plot as the film with almost nothing really new when it comes to narrative. Most of the time, the LEGO series adds certain elements and that really wasn't present here aside from some in-game dialogue or well banter from the Ninjas. We also get more of an ensemble grouping here as you collect the various members of the crew and get to use all of them at once through the later levels. This created a possibility of many differing puzzles come into play and that variation was appreciated. There's a good amount of content present if you're just rolling through the core game or spending countless hours collecting extra items.

This is typical if you've played the past LEGO titles with various tiers of collectibles stuffed into every level. There's a focus on hubs here as the last couple games have been doing with a large open world to move through outside of the regular missions. I found that the balance of cinematic type play to regular traditional puzzle solving and action was fair, yet I still would have liked to see more combat since they had a lovely ninja system set up here. Aside from the story is a Dojo to work through challenges as an extra. This is followed by a multiplayer area of Battle maps where four local players can fight against each other on a few maps a few modes. You can play this solo as well against the AI with an option to have fullscreen which is nice.

Gameplay

It's very much a regular take on the LEGO series with some improvements to core gameplay. I love how the aspect of doing things now gives you a progression wheel instead of nothing. I didn't like that gameplay was constantly getting interrupted by tutorials or a points system that gave upgrades. Instead of taking the whole screen and interrupting progress constantly they could have been placed on the bottom corner of the screen. There was a good selection of puzzles present for the various characters to do and a well set cast.

The levels featured a solid amount of variety while being large in scale and filled with a plethora of activities. There were some issues present like with all of these games such as a character falling through the world at one point and many times where the guide arrow had no idea where it was sending me. This occasionally led to going in a loop and eventually I just gave up on it. I also faced some performance issues such as screen tearing though these moments were mostly minor, yet came up across multiple levels.

The Conclusion

The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game is a fine title for those that enjoy the series or are fans of this LEGO brand. It follows the movie exactly while adding a pile of collectibles to grab or activities to take part. The Dojo was a nice touch for extra content as was the multiplayer Battle maps. It would be nice to see online coop come back at some point and I also felt that would have been nice for the Battle area. Still, it can be played locally as a pair or in the arena with four players. This is a fine package with countless hours to play, some improvements to the base formula though some general issues that do hold it back.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie Video Game Review on Playstation 4
Review Code Provided by LEX PR

Rating Overall: 6.8