Legoland - Theme Park for kids...

Legoland is, I’m sure no-one will be too surprised to hear, basically Theme Park but with LEGO characters… like the real-life Legoland, in fact. Though in an attempt to make things more interesting you also have a mad professor time travelling, generally wreaking havoc and creating new rides by zapping historical dudes. Oh and you have some fun-loving aliens who pop down and steal your rides.

Sadly this doesn’t get past the fact that Legoland is essentially Theme Park for kids. I’ve never been a huge fan of the genre myself (though my sister has spent many hours playing that sort of game); I find theme quite diverting for a while at first but get bored of them quite quickly. Therefore if you are a fan of the genre, you are quite likely to enjoy this game more than I did. There is also the fact that it’s clearly aimed at a younger audience and therefore tends to lack the style, depth and challenge of this sort of game.

Still, all things considered Legoland is still a relatively fun game for a while. To start off you must go through the tutorial levels, which introduce you to the basics of managing the theme park; building the rides, beautifying the environment, maintaining the park and gardens, ensuring there’s enough power, keeping an eye on the cash flow, building pathways to make sure that everything is connected, and that sort of thing. The interface is easy to use and allows a fair level of control when you design the bigger rides. You start off with just the basic “theme” plus one other, and gain more as you progress through the game. Every theme has its own attractions, shops, plants etc. The bigger rides such as roller coaster and log flume have an additional menu and you set the course of the ride. When everything is finished the ride you’ve created is built and you can see the little LEGO people go on them and enjoy the ride - or not enjoy it so much. As you’d expect, you can click on each person and see how happy and hungry they are (if their cheeks are puffed out, they’re full!).

The graphics look very old-fashioned but are clear enough and there are some nice animations. The video clips played to advance the story are reasonably entertaining, though nothing like as amusing as the cut scenes from the LEGO Star Wars games. The park is presented in an isometric view, which is fine most of the time but a variable view angle would have been nice. The sound is very disappointing - the music isn’t great quality and there’s only one tune, which quickly gets annoying. The rest of the sound effects are rather limited and basic, though the annoyed sound gardeners and mechanics make when you pick them up to relocate them in the park is quite funny. Overall though, it’s not exactly a triumph aesthetically, It was released in 2000 and wouldn’t have been impressive then - it certainly isn’t now.

There are 10 levels you can play, with a little chap ion the bottom right of the screen telling you what your next objective is. As mentioned there isn’t really too much challenge in it for an adult playing, even though it will still take you a while to complete the whole game. (Once you’ve been through the tutorial, there’s also a Free Play mode if you prefer.) You get more and more themes, rides, and add-ons the further you get in the game. Personally though I found it extremely annoying to build up a nice lot of rides only to have aliens suddenly appear and take them all away, leaving you to rebuild virtually from scratch!

I’m not going to mention the system specs because I doubt there are many PCs left in working order that wouldn’t be able to run this game. I think it would really only appeal to kids or perhaps those looking for an undemanding gaming experience - if you’re a fan of this sort of game, I’m sure you’d find it much too easy. For younger ones it isn’t bad and it‘s obviously aimed at them, so I’m giving it the dignity of a 3 star rating. However I couldn’t really recommend it for adult gamers.

Please note: to run this game in Vista, go into the program properties and run it in XP Compatibility mode (right-click on the LEGOLAND executable file, click on the Compatibility tab, and select XP Service Pack 2). If you don’t run it in compatibility mode the title screen will run but the game will crash the moment you try to actually start it.


A far better LEGO gaming experience, for children and adults in my opinion (as an adult / old child) can be found in the LEGO Star Wars games:

Lego Star Wars
LEGO Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy

Younger ones may also enjoy:

The Hobbit

Bugs Bunny: Lost In Time

Cars