Recent reviews by Rocoua

I have just completed this game, but my playtime is a bit longer than expected because I missed an essential thing to do (donating to the submarine trip) early on in the game.

Honestly, I got a bit emotional at the end. The experience as a whole was incredibly enjoyable.

The Gameplay:

You start off as an enforcer (think moderator) for different sections of an Internet set in the 90’s called Hypnospace. Your job is to police the content and prevent harassment and copyright infringement on websites made on Hypnospace that are reminiscent of Geocities and the early web.

The Story (spoiler free):

The main plot focuses on Hypnospace as a whole. You learn about how people connect to the network during their sleep using headbands and they are able to browse and chat while asleep.

There are many side plots that take place at the same time which play out on the different websites. Some of the ones I noticed are: A guy called Tim who desperately wants to impress Tiff, a girl he likes; an underground group of hackers; a vehicle accident that could have been prevented; and finally a hunt for treasure.

The Audio:

The sound effects of the HypnOS operating system are satisfying and really improve the experience, however the music on the websites… not so much. It is clearly intended to be a bit ♥♥♥♥, for example the song that is stuck in my head is about shaving, but it fits the theme and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Graphics:

It’s mostly basic colour (I hesitate to say 16 bit) pixel graphics, and it fulfils what it sets out to achieve.

The Characters:

Over the course of the game I felt that I got to know all the characters really well. They have all had a lot of thought put into them with their own interests and styles, that we see portrayed in their websites.

The Message:

The messages that I took away from this game were that one day the internet as we know it won’t be around any more, and it’s really important that we archive everything that we can to preserve it for the future. I felt some undertones of anti-capitalism but that could just be me.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, this was an amazing game. Despite not having much replayability I would highly recommend you to try it if you think this is your thing.

My advice is to go in blind, use your real name when setting up your profile, be generous to the characters who request money, and don’t be afraid to use a guide if you need to. Only 1.5% of players have 100%’ed the game and despite it being a gruelling process, the outcome is worth it.

Game play
Lego City Undercover is an amazing open world game. Similar to GTA IV, the map expands as you progress through the story. Unfortunately, you cannot immediately start free roam, although some people have very kindly put their save data on Steam for you to use if you want.
Some of the level are genuinely difficult when you consider the target audience, and sometimes a bit unfairly.
The penalty for dying is minimal, I would have liked it to be a bit more harsh, especially during fights.
After quitting and coming back to the game, it is unclear where you are up to and where you need to go, since you always start at the police station.
The game progress is not intuitive and some things are not explained and you will need to figure them out for yourself, for example what the badges at the end of each chapter means and how to collect them. Maybe it's just me being stupid, but I can't have been the only one that didn't understand that the progress was on the pause screen.
To quit and save your progress, you need to finish the level, start the next one, sit through the cut-scene and only then can you quit the game and save your progress. The next time you play, the cut-scene will start from the beginning and you can't skip it.
The game requires you to collect bricks to build structures to progress the story. To find these bricks, you use the police scanner. However when this is first introduced, most of the nearby bricks are inaccessible due it requiring an ability that you haven't unlocked yet.
Yes, you can hijack cars and drive around.
Yes, you can run people over but they don't die, they just fall over

Story
Overall the story was pretty good but not groundbreaking. If you don't mind some basic cops and robbers story line, then this'll do.

Art
It's Lego, it looks the same as any Lego animation in a TV show or film.

Audio
The sound is terrible, I can barely hear anything that people are saying because the mixing is all off. Background noises are way too loud and drown out conversation. Subtitles are vital for understanding the story.
Just remembered; there is music but it is annoying and repetitive.

Controls
There is no mouse support, you play with 'wasd' and 'pl;''. You can change this, but there isn't really a keyboard layout that makes sense for this game due to you needing to use keys like 'e' or 'i' often.

Stability
The game crashed many times, mostly at the very start. I did have the occasional crash further into the story. It really feels like a Wii U port, with slow loading times and the weird local files directory containing lots of 2.1 GB .dat files.
Apparently the crashes used to be more frequent but it was updated a year or so ago that made the game a lot more playable.

Community
There is no mod support and no workshop support, and because it's not based on an existing franchise like Ninjago or Star Wars, it isn't as popular as the other Lego Games. There is a mod to increase the frame rate from the cap at 60 fps, but I didn't use it because 1. my monitor is only capable of 60 fps and 2. I was only getting around 24 fps during typical game play.

Playtime
My total playtime to complete the main story, without 100%ing it was 29.2 hours. Bear in mind that the average game in my library has around 7-8 hours and games usually take longer for me than other people.

Conclusion
Good game, long story but not much replay value

Even though it's still in early access, it's been very enjoyable so far. Would recommend if you like choice based 2D games. My main criticism is that the trailer does not reflect the gameplay at this point, but it was fun nonetheless and I hope that it gets even better when it is done. Soundtrack and art are both really nice, did not encounter many bugs even running on a compatibility layer on Linux.