Test – Lego 2K Drive: a compendium of fun

2023-05-26 16:55:57

Announced just a few weeks ago, Lego 2K Drive is one of the good surprises of this year 2023. Coming out of nowhere, Visual Concepts’ racing game hits the mark on all levels.

Behind more than thirty sports simulations, the Visual Concepts studio certainly jumped for joy the day it was offered by 2K Games to do something “different”. The studio has been entrusted with the development of Lego 2K Drive, a crazy racing game in the world of the famous briquettes, aimed at young audiences but not only since everyone will certainly find something for them.

Lego 2K Drive presents itself as an arcade racing game, somewhere halfway between a Mariokart (for the colorful universe and the use of power-ups in races) and a Forza Horizon (for driving and open-world We are talking about open-world here, but in reality, the game gives access to several mini open worlds with very different atmospheres.

The different worlds of the game offer different atmospheres.

Each open-world offers a number of events: races that will take you forward in the main scenario, challenges in different categories, secondary quests, collectibles… all of which will allow you to unlock parts to create the vehicle of your dreams, new vehicles and characters… And casually, the content of the game is simply gargantuan when you take into account the secondary events, as varied as they are original. Because here, we are far from being limited to simple races on circuits. In some events, for example, you will have to try to recover missiles, then desperately try to bring them back to their owner, by playing against their propulsion physics. In others, you will have to participate in a Squid Game-inspired event, in which you will have to reach a position by stopping each time a robot turns around, to avoid direct elimination. There is a lot of originality but also fun!

On the driving side, the game also manages to seduce, with a very arcade driving style that is very similar to that of a Forza Horizon. It’s very accessible, fun and completely uninhibited. We drive at top speed by sending power-ups in the face of our opponents, on completely offbeat circuits. The only flaw in our opinion of this driving: the drift, which is activated with the left trigger, but therefore requires keeping the right stick activated at the same time to accelerate… Okay.

The competitions are fierce.

Lego 2K Drive also surprises with its richness. The game is not a stupid racing game since it offers vast open-worlds which conceal secondary activities and secrets to discover. In addition, we are not limited here to driving a single vehicle since your vehicle will literally change shape depending on the surface on which you drive. A racing vehicle on the tarmac, a kind of go-kart on dirt, and a speedboat on the water. This allowed the developers to design even crazier circuits, with prodigious jumps.

Visually, the game is true to the Lego brand.

Another advantage of the game, it is possible to design the vehicle of your dreams. As we said above, you unlock new parts, vehicles and characters as you progress through the adventure. Fans of small bricks will be able to use these to design the vehicle of their dreams by customizing the appearance and style of their cars. A nicely exploited idea that brings a real touch of construction to the title.

Ultimately, therefore, it is difficult not to be pleasantly surprised by this arcade racing game that is both very fun and generous in content. Certainly, we can blame him for the integration of some microtransactions, his expensive season pass which already announces new content and the obligation to create a 2K account to access certain functions, including multiplayer. But overall, the formula works very well and the game is surprisingly fun.

Speedboat races are extremely fun.

On a technical level, Lego 2K Drive also does very well, with neat sets that are full of detail, nice visual effects and great stability. Few to no bugs and zero latency. The game is nicely polished and runs well. On the other hand, you should not necessarily expect a graphic slap. It is certainly pretty, but far from being superb.

So, should we fall for him? If you’re a Lego fan, 2K Drive is a must. The game also manages to reconcile all audiences: it is quite accessible for the little ones, but the difficulty is there, the game is fun and technical enough for an adult to get a kick out of. In other words, he manages to seduce several different audiences, and that’s what makes him so charming. With it, 2K Games signs one of the best surprises of this year 2023, and potentially one of the GOTYs in the racing game sector.

Conclusion

We didn’t necessarily expect it at the turn, yet Lego 2K Drive is one of the best surprises of this year 2023. Visual Concepts’ racing game is not only extremely fun, but also offers very rich content, is faithful to the quirky universe of Lego and is rather pretty. Halfway between a Mariokart (from which it borrows its colorful universe and its power-ups) and Forza Horizon (from which it borrows its driving and its open-world), Lego 2K Drive is an extremely fun racing game for little ones. as for the older ones.

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LEGO 2K Drive

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