It takes nearly three minutes from inserting to the disc to actually starting to play, and accessing Lego City takes well over a minute from exiting the police station hub or a mission.

On top of this the game has the worst load times since the 1980s. The textures are very low resolution and the shadows are distractingly low tech. The frame rate seems constantly on the edge of disaster and there’s so much pop-in that smaller objects just teleport into existence in the middle distance. There are far greater problems with the visuals than the generic art design though, and we have to say that on a technical level this is a deeply unimpressive game. As a result the city can look a bit bland at times, and it’s really only the vehicles and characters that maintain the Lego theme. It’s extremely well designed, and far more interactive than other open world games, but the building themselves are not made of Lego they’re just ordinary real world objects. The cast is immediately likeable then, but we can’t help but feel a beat has been missed when it comes to the city. The jokes are about as edgy as a snooker ball but we found them all highly amusing, especially the Arnold Schwarzenegger stand-in who manages to mention one of his movies or film quotes in every single sentence. ‘The first floor was easy, but the rest – that’s a whole other storey’. ‘How’s the building going? asks one construction worker.

‘Then I could’ve been a major not a miner’. ‘I should have joined the army’, complains a hapless mine worker. It may not be as subversive as Portal but the endless series of gentle puns and absurdities had us chortling away just the same. The game lacks a strong villain though, for although Rex Fury is repeatedly referenced as a mastermind of crime his screen time is miniscule.Įven so the script throughout is superb, and this is one of the funniest video games we’ve ever played. The hero of the game is likeable supercop Chase McCain, who has the indestructibility of John McClane and the voice of Zapp Brannigan. In turn the Lego City police department is staffed by obvious parodies of everyone from Columbo and Dirty Harry to Cagney & Lacey and Holmes & Watson. Oddly though Grand Theft Auto is never referenced directly, even though a stream of adult-rated movies are, from The Matrix and Shawshank Redemption to Goodfellas and The Shining.

Lego city undercover wii u review