Lego 2K Drive (PS4. 2023)
I remember when the PlayStation 2 came out. I got it for Christmas. I got four games. All PS1 games. Two I don't remember offhand. One was Porsche Challenge, which was effectively just an advert for the Porsche Boxter. The other was Lego Racers, a game adequately described by its title and something that was pretty much perfect for a young boy who was really into Lego and racing games. Then came Lego Racers 2. Then came Drome Racers, and all of the real life sets to go along with it. I still have fond memories of all of these, and I still have my copy of the original.
Imagine my excitement a few months ago when, seemingly out of nowhere, Lego 2K Drive was announced. The first Lego racing game in over twenty years? Yes please. And it looks fun! All nice and bright colours and wacky personalities and everything you get in a Lego game nowadays. And there's your problem. Outwith the driving games I've listed the only Lego games I've ever played are the original Star Wars games and The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. I still remember Star Wars, a bit odd, a bit quirky, suitably childish because it's Lego and it's Star Wars and because the characters make suggestive noises instead of speaking. I cared less for The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. Constant self-referential humour, an endless cacophony of noise, colour and far too much happening on screen with no way of following the plot or any of the endless parade of unbearable 'characters'.
Anyway, sorry, enough about some other game, what's 2K Drive like? Constant self-referential humour, an endless cacophony of noise, colour and far too much happening on screen with no way of following the plot or any of the endless parade of unbearable 'characters'. Ah. Oh dear.
First things first, this game is just not enjoyable to play. I usually think a game can be saved by its gameplay or its story if it's lacking in other areas. A racing game is easy to salvage if it's fun. 2K Drive constantly feels like something that just never received any refinement. There are three types of vehicle you can drive - street, off-road and boat. It's an open world game so you pick one for each class and switch automatically when you're on each different surface. This can often happen so quickly you don't really feel like you're in control of what's happening, and the dramatic handling shift from surface to surface doesn't help. It's good because there's a decent amount of variety in what you're driving on, but in races and just exploring I often found myself wanting them to be better separated.
The game makes use of a drifting mechanic. Unlike most other arcade racers I've played where you tap the brake to turn and start drifting, in 2K Drive you have to hold the brake. This is fine, assuming you're already going full speed. If not you'll have to let go and start the drift again and keep fiddling with it until you're either past the corner or, more likely, you've overshot it entirely, gone off road, then started sliding more than you want because there's so much less grip off road. You have to do this because, oddly, holding on to the brakes slows the car down, so if you don't time it right you'll start losing speed. The whole experience just feels awkward, and in a driving game that's about as big a mistake as you can make.
There's a boost mechanic and powerups too. Boosting is weird. It feels like the things on screen around the car move faster but the car doesn't change at all. In fact this is a recurring problem. As you win races and complete events you level up, and as your level increases so does your vehicles' overall ability (each vehicle has its own strengths and weaknesses besides this). But from level 1 to level 30 I noticed very little difference in handling or performance at all. It was as much of a struggle to begin with as it was at the end. And no matter what I did, I would always run out of boost in a race right when I needed it.
Weapons are a pain too. Cars are destructible, with bits flying off when they take hits, eventually respawning if they're destroyed. The problem is a race usually lasts 2-3 minutes, and at the rate the AI jumps or dodges your weapons you're barely going to gain an advantage. The best weapon attaches two canisters of fruit to your car and fires ahead of you for a good amount of seconds, but then the canisters block most of the track and your surroundings so you can't see where you're going. Driving is awkward, weapons range from ineffective to a hindrance as much as a help, and the environment often gets in the way too.
Fortunately the AI are... pointless. You've heard of rubber banding. You've heard of chasing the rabbit. 2K Drive manages to do both. The entire thing might as well be scripted. In fact it probably is. No matter the race length, no matter your level, or the difficulty rank (each of the 24 races has three different difficulties - you play a certain one as default as you progress through the story, and can go back later), you will start at the back, gradually work your way up, and only ever compete for the win on the last lap or final few corners. I found it quite stressful the first few times until I realised the first 90% of the race didn't matter at all. If this is an attempt to make the game more child-friendly, it's a bad thing. They need to learn, and they learn by spending hours trying to beat Basil the Batlord without any friends or big brothers to help them.
Outside of races there are actually lots of things to do. The game is split up into three distinct areas. Each has a range of collectibles and things to find by exploring. There are also lots of 'On-the-Go' events, miscellaneous challenges with a time limit to beat. The variety here is huge and one of the game's few strengths. The thresholds for a gold medal on these can be surprisingly harsh, especially on drift events, but there's a lot to do and they really play into what sense of world building the game has.
On a technical level, I'm torn. I played the PS4 version of 2K Drive and it's often quite ugly. Like Lego games nowadays everything except buildings and the environment is destructible. I'd guess the sheer volume of objects plays into performance which is understandable, but you move around so quickly the blurred edges of your car and the things you hit are noticeable. That said, the game's long loading times include the entire world you travel to, and you can drive around at full speed without ever hitting any stutters or problems. My PS4 was also silent throughout, so there's something technically impressive happening here. The worlds are also very bright and as much detail and attention has gone into them as there is in your average Legoland exhibit, so there's some good and some bad.
As I've been typing this I've been watching a longplay of the original Lego Racers on youtube. Aside from the obvious nostalgia hit from the introduction and the music I'm mainly wondering what this framerate is. I'm not sure it's getting above 20. Aside from that, the first menu option is "Build." You create your racer and build your first car. I've tried not to compare 2K Drive to any other games but here I'm really going to lament the missed opportunity. It's Lego. If you're a child playing this, you have or have played with Lego. If you're an adult playing it like me you probably just wish you were a child playing with Lego. The idea of extending that to a virtual world where there are no parents or things like money to limit the amount of bricks you have is a dream.
2K Drive has an extensive builder system with a seemingly endless amount of bricks you can use, with lots more to unlock as you progress. It has an extensive, if annoyingly voiced, tutorial about how to get the best out of it. And after you spend an hour putting together your basic little car with some wedges at the front, a wing at the back and some of those grill bits to make it look like an engine you'll start playing and unlock a car shaped like a chicken that you'd need about a month and two university degrees before you could think about trying to build it yourself. Oh and all the vehicles you unlock or can buy from the stores or download from people who've been here first and are smarter than you all have stat boosts too which means if you want to drift, or you want to be fast enough to actually win a race, your painstaking labour of love will be forgotten about immediately.
The basic problem with 2K Drive's creation aspect goes back to my comparison between Star Wars and Ninjago. There's too much. I remember getting The Sims 2 on PC because I liked it so much on PS2. But when I played it I was overwhelmed by the amount of extra content and detail in it. The same goes here. Not only is there too much choice and variety on offer for me to make my own car I can be proud of and be attached to, there's pre-built stuff available in-game which looks cooler and goes faster. Maybe there is enjoyment to be had here if I had the time or patience or mental capacity, but I get the feeling I'd just wish I was playing with real Lego instead. The back of the case says "Build and customise brick by brick!" and the picture to go with it looks like some sort of twin-drilled mining vehicle and there's just no way I'm getting near that.
While the game's areas are easy to navigate and filled with detail, there's a lot lacking too. Areas where there is Lego are great. There are buildings and characters and it's all very vibrant and engaging. I go back to the Legoland comparison - it's just exciting to see that much Lego built into things that look cool. The problem is that these actually take up very little space. The whole world isn't made of Lego. It's natural surroundings - water, land, rocks, mountains - with bits of Lego dotted on them here and there. And because of how quickly you can drive you can blast through an entire town or city in about five seconds without actually noticing anything. For all the detail in these areas it almost seems like you need to make a concerted effort to take any of it in. When you do that, you realise just how superficial and shallow it all is. I can still remember Sandy Bay in Lego Racers 2 with its four buildings, or the bases on Mars. I barely remember the names of the three places in 2K Drive. Like the sense of scale which ruins the fun of creation, the world itself just seems fleeting and almost redundant because of how small it really is.
My final problem - and I promise this is my final problem, because I'm boring myself right now, is the characterisation. That characterisation exists at all. I've already said there's virtually no point in creating a driver or creating a car. I'm going to go back to Lego Racers again. The intro movie sets things up nicely. You see Rocket Racer, the guy on the box, winning a race and being crowned champion. He's mean to his pit crew and he cheats, so he's the bad guy. You see some mild slapstick comedy along the way. Nobody speaks. There's the odd bit of facial movement. There are a few bosses you beat in championships along the way before taking on the big man himself and winning, bringing justice to the world. The childish joy of transplanting your own personality and characterisation onto the silent figures is the same simple joy that's made Lego so popular. You can build what you want, and you can make them do what you want. Anything else is irrelevant.
Sadly, if you're reading this you've probably seen the picture I opened with. A screenshot of the head bad guy saying something about jaded Gen-X references nobody gets. And therein lies the problem. There are a lot of characters in this game. There are 24 races dotted around. Each has their own racer you need to listen to, and beat, and each race is themed around them somehow. This is mildly amusing the first couple of times, but when you're done you just forget about them. There's a main guy with a racing team you come back to every now and then and isn't it hilarious, he has an unruly dog! Haha, woof woof, am I right? I'd actually be curious to see the ratio of time spent listening to characters talking or reading their intro messages to total time spent doing the game's core races. I think it would be quite a bit closer than you'd want to believe.
I'm thinking about it now and I don't think I can honestly say I enjoyed any part of 2K Drive. It's not fun to play, it's not rewarding to build, it's not inviting to explore and other features like online racing (getting dropped in mid-race is great) or the game's apparently compulsory battle pass and multiple currency microtransactions just seem an inevitably hollow reminder of why games like this are made nowadays. 2K Drive was released in May 2023. I bought it in a Black Friday sale, and the following week it was announced as one of December's free PlayStation Plus games. Despite everything I've said I don't mind this because it was still cheap and I still wanted to play it, but after the time I spent with it I can really see why.
How can I play Lego Racers 2 again, and in perpetuity?
Or a game where your choices affect the story 
.
