{"id":2794,"date":"2009-09-04T04:00:32","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamingwithchildren.com\/?p=2794"},"modified":"2009-09-04T04:00:32","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T10:00:32","slug":"game-review-lego-battles-ds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/04\/game-review-lego-battles-ds\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: Lego Battles (DS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"lego-battlesbox\"Nearly every child has whiled away some time playing with those ubiquitous building blocks, Legos. Whether through luck or planning, Lego has managed to also make a name for itself in the video game market, with dual licensed games such as Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman that are fun to play by kids and parents alike. Striking off on their own, Lego has entered the real-time strategy market with the Nintendo DS title, Lego Battles. It has much of the expected Lego charm and is a solid title, but due to its appeal to the younger set, it will not appeal to the typical hardcore real-time strategy gamer.<\/p>\n

Lego Battles is a very basic real-time strategy game. You control several individual units from a top-down perspective. Attack other players units and buildings with your own military units to win the scenario, but to do that you must first gather resources and build your own buildings with your basic non-combat units. Your builders earn resources (\u201cbricks\u201d) by either gathering wood or constructing a mine on special locations. Players can spend their resources to build buildings which can then produce military units and\/or upgrade their other units. To make things slightly easier, groups of military units can be given move and attack commands all at once and are slightly autonomous so that they are able to attack and defend their immediate area. All this is basic to a real-time strategy (RTS) veteran.<\/p>\n

That sums up the game nicely. It is a nice beginner RTS game. The Lego theme makes it particularly attractive to younger players who are also more likely to be beginners. Most of the scenarios and quests in the game (there are 70+ missions spread out over several different campaigns, or storylines) are fairly easy to accomplish. The game has fun cutscenes and the graphics really do convey that Lego feeling. My main complaint with the game is the extremely poor pathing abilities of the units. For anything but a fairly straightforward point to point walk, the units will often get stuck in corners or other places while trying to move where you indicate. This means for longer treks across the map, your units will need a bit of babysitting. If I had a second complaint, it would be the difficulty in picking individual units out of a crowd due to the small screen.<\/p>\n

Aside from the cute graphics, the best feature in the game are the multiplayer options. Playing against other humans is more fun than against the computer and brings the competition up a notch. Players can even mix and match their army from the various genres in the game (there are campaign stories set in Castle, Space, Pirates, and even Wizard settings) as long as those units have already been unlocked in campaign mode.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the game has that LEGO charm, but is fairly easy. It is best for younger players but could be decent enough for older players if they intend to play a lot of multiplayer games.<\/p>\n

\"legobattles_screenshot.ds\"<\/center><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong> No real worries here for kid-appropriate warnings. No blood, although units do get eliminated in the standard Lego \u201cfalling to pieces\u201d manner. While reading isn\u2019t too much of a requirement, critical thinking on some level is helpful. I\u2019d go with tween and\/or late grade school kids to have them get the most out of the title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly every child has whiled away some time playing with those ubiquitous building blocks, Legos. Whether through luck or planning, Lego has managed to also make a name for itself in the video game market, with dual licensed games such as Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman that are fun to play by kids and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[54,67,119,124],"class_list":["post-2794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-reviews","tag-ds","tag-game-review","tag-review","tag-rts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}