Review: Lego Worlds tries to take on the 'Minecraft' gaming genre

Minecraft popularised the gaming genre that allows you to explore a sandbox world while creating your own things. Lego now wants to tackle this genre with its own Lego Worlds video game.  It's hard to call Lego Worlds a clone, because the Lego toy brand has been around for decades way before Minecraft was ever created. In hindsight, Lego toys may have been the biggest inspiration to make Minecraft in the first place. After all, both products are about building your own creations using lots of blocks.  In the video game world though, it's interesting that it has taken a long time for Lego to make its own building sandbox video game. The company releases a lot of games, but most of them are adventure games involving licensed properties such as Star Wars, Batman and more.  Lego Worlds is essentially the first time you are able to make your own creations using Lego bricks in the virtual world. It's a cool concept on paper and it works really well. However, Lego Worlds does have several flaws that prevent it from being as fun and enjoyable as Minecraft.  That being said, this game does introduce a lot of things that Minecraft doesn't have. This game brings a lot of new things to the table to make construction less frustrating and time consuming.  Anyway, construction in this game has complex controls and there's a lot of information that you need to take in. Instead of overwhelming the player with too much info at one go, this game does a great job of teaching you the basics with its tutorial. The tutorial is broken up into many different levels teaching you all of the tools that you can use to build things.  The many tools that you have in your arsenal is where Lego Worlds improves on the system put in place in Minecraft. In this game, you have access to a copy and paste tool that makes things less time consuming.  Yes, if you see a building you can simply copy it and paste it elsewhere on the map. You can even reshape the entire terrain of an island or dig deep to find hidden treasures. You are also able to spawn animals, paint the environment or delete bricks with ease thanks to the many tools in your inventory.  Building bricks using a controller is where things get iffy. Building things in Minecraft is easy because the blocks are huge and you can change to a first-person perspective to see from a better vantage point. In Lego Worlds, it's difficult because some Lego bricks are small and fiddly. Not to mention you can only build from a third-person perspective so I would find myself putting bricks in the wrong place lots of times. It does take time to get used to the controls, but things get slightly better once you finish the tutorial.  Another thing that might bother some players is the fact that you are forced to play a huge chunk of the game's story before you are able to play an unlimited create mode to build your own world. The Create Mode was playable from the start when you play Minecraft.  Unlocking the Create Mode in Lego Worlds is a huge pain because you need to unlock 100 Gold Bricks before you can do that. Gold Bricks are attainable by either doing several missions on different planets or by finding them underneath the ground.  The Gold Bricks that are hidden underground are the worst ones to find. Not to mention most of the missions in the game are tedious fetch quests given out by lazy non-playable characters. The story mode is better to play with a friend, but the mission structure gets repetitive after a while.  Overall, Lego Worlds is not a bad game as it improves on the formula that Minecraft has set a few years ago. That being said though, forcing players to play the story mode just to unlock the Create Mode is a wrong move in my opinion. The Create Mode should have been available after completing the Tutorial.  Verdict: 7.0/10