LEGO Brawls

LEGO Brawls feels like an insult to LEGO fans after the fantastic LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga released earlier this year. From the terrible core gameplay to the incredibly grindy unlock system, there are very few redeeming qualities to this package. If you're really desperate to build your own minifigure, most LEGO games already have a character creator of their own. Your time and money are best spent elsewhere.

Beyond the ability to collect minifigs and customise your character — something that does nothing to really change up the actual battling at the heart of it all — there's very, very little here to sink your teeth into. It all ends up feeling like a rather poor free-to-play mobile game, and one that doesn't perform very well on Nintendo's hardware.

After the success of Lego Brawls on the Apple Arcade subscription service, porting it for all major consoles and PC seemed like the next logical step. However, after I played with the game for a while and found out its pricing, I couldn't root for it anymore. Even though there are wonderful plasticky ideas and I almost laughed my bricky bottom off while playing with my partner, it still plays like a mobile game priced as a AAA title.

I know the intention here was to put out something that a casual gamer would enjoy in mindlessly bashing out bouts while collecting an insane amount of customisable creations, but it would have been greater if there was time invested to make its “port” into a full fledged remaster for the premiere gaming platforms. If you’re looking for something in the LEGO Brand on home console, try out LEGO Batman; amazing title. But if you want to try this, I would advise pulling out the tablet and playing it there.

Lego Brawls fails bad, being one of the worst games of the genre.

While LEGO Brawls features both long-term themes like Ninjago and new ones like Hidden Side, the game lacks variety and a focus on gameplay. While you can unlock new parts for your minifig, those parts have no effect on gameplay. The lack of gameplay depth limits the time you want to spend on this game before is becomes too repititive, which is too bad as LEGO has more than enough variation in its themes and characters. All in all the feeling remains that this could have been a lot better.

It's not inconceivable that LEGO Brawls could turn into something fun one day. If it were beefed up with loads more content, along with more interesting and more dynamic fighters, it would definitely be a lot more interesting. But in this state, with so little content -- and with the content that is there being of such poor quality -- there's no way to classify LEGO Brawls as anything other than a massive disappointment.

LEGO Brawls is simple fun that is best played together locally. Kids will enjoy the LEGO themed characters and environments (Ninjago, Monkie Kid, Jurassic World, Pirate, Western, Vidiyo, Hidden Side, Space, Castle, Alien Conquest) as they battle each other to victory via brick brawling!

LEGO Brawls left me really frustrated. Seeing a vast creative opportunity being wasted this way was vexing. Not even having a huge amount of pieces to unlock motivates more than an hour of playing. A shame, to say the least.

Lego Brawls is a mixed bag as it really shines with the extensive level of customisation and unlockables available.