When it comes to recent battle between LEGO Dimensions and Disney Infinity, two competing iterations of the toy to video game franchises, well, there was a pretty clear winner, as Disney threw in the towel on further versions of their game earlier this year. I’ll admit that I had some serious sadness about that – their toy models of familiar Marvel, Star Wars and Disney characters are absolutely phenomenal. Even if you’re not into the games, they sure look good displayed.
That being said, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that LEGO continues to roll with their own Dimensions games. They also bring familiar brands such as Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, DC Comics and many more into a unique gaming environment where you can play both a larger story along with various levels designed for the specific franchises available. For gamers it’s a lot of fun, and for LEGO obsessives, of which there are more than a few, collecting the sets is pretty much mandatory. Well, now there’s a whole new series of bricks to amass.
Over the past few weeks, the latest installments of LEGO Dimensions levels, story packs and characters were released. The great thing about all of the packs is that you don’t need to buy a new set to play them – unlike Disney Infinity, that saw new iterations pop up year over year (2.0, 3.0), LEGO Dimensions has been designed so that the main game set you can purchase is the hub that all new products work off of. That’s a good, practical thing that makes things easier on the wallet for fans (especially, once again, those LEGO obsessives who have just got to have it all).
If you read Biff Bam Pop with any sort of regularity, you know that my daughter and I are big Ghostbusters fans – be it the original 1984 film and its sequel, the Real Ghostbusters, and now the 20o16 version featuring the kickass female characters. This version has received the full-blown LEGO Dimension story set, complete with a very cool LEGO replica of the Chinese food restaurant that Abby, Holtzmann, Erin and Patty work out of. While the original casts voice are sadly missing, the replacement voice actors do a solid job, and playing through one off the most underrated and under appreciated moves of the year is a hell of a lot of fun. We also had some fun bringing the previous Ghostbusters game’s Peter Venkmen into the mix as well. For the Ghostbusters fan in your life, this set is about as essential as it gets.
Interestingly, apart from the Ghostbusters, the new level pack that my daughter was most excited to check out was the Adventure Time version. She hasn’t had access to the tv series, but we’ve been reading the comic books together. The level pack that we managed to try out comes complete with Finn, a Jakemobile and an Ancient War Elephant. Playing through the level puts your right into Land of Ooo, so once again, for fans of Adventure Time in any iteration (the tv series is ending its run on the Cartoon Network in 2018), it’s a pretty great mash-up that honors the source material. I’ll be honest with you, though – we’re not done with this story or series by far. There’s a Team Pack that my girl is desperate to get her hands on featuring Jake, BMO, Lumpy Space Princess (LSP) and the Lump Car which we’re going to have to add to our collection sometime soon.
And that’s ultimately the beauty of LEGO Dimensions. Sure, it’s expensive if you want to get everything that’s out there, but there’s such significant playability and replay value in the series, especially with new characters coming all the time, that you’ll never get bored.
Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’m taking my Ecto-1 to the Land of Ooo, dude.
