Putting aside the recent LEGO licensed platformers, nobody has ever really got a LEGO game right. Even Traveller’s Tales’ games don’t really get it; they’re great because they’re simple and funny, not because they use LEGO in a particularly exciting or satisfying way.
This 3D clip, from Francisco Prieto, is what a LEGO game should look like. The success of Minecraft, in which many people just walk around building stuff, is testament to that.
LEGO doesn’t need stories, or characters, or plotlines. It needs…LEGO. A simple structure to allow you to build things. Then something with which you can easily share images and/or videos of your creations.
Actually, now that I’ve typed that down, it doesn’t even sound like much of a game. But who cares! It’s still play, it’d be LEGO, and given the extortionate prices the real thing commands these days, it’d be a welcome way to let people express their creativity without going broke in the process.
Getting back to the video at hand, it took Francisco over three years to produce, as he had to model every piece individually.
Lego Millennium Falcon Stop Motion Assembly 3d [Vimeo, via technabob]
Sticken
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:12 PMDoesn’t Lego Digital Designer let you do this?
kevin
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:13 PMRight at the start of the video I was thinking “I wanna build a Millenium Falcon”… Great minds think alike?
charles
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:24 PMEhhhh but LEGO is about feeling the pieces in your hand (I think) and having something in the real world once you’ve built it. And then breaking it down and making something else. In real life.
Lord Bob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:11 PMTotally agreed. I don’t think there’ll every by a really great lego game because, at least for me, most of the appeal is in actually doing something tactile and building a real object.
Even the Lego StarIndianaPotterWars games were just shoddy platformers with a “look it’s made of LEGO!” draw card. Seriously, take away the lego and what’s the difference between them and every other cheap movie tie-in game you’ve ever played?
Lord Bob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:12 PMAlthough this video was still pretty cool.
AdrianT
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:48 PMI think you could make a great Lego game with elements of games like Little Big Planet, Minecraft and The Incredible machine.
Lord Bob
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:21 PMHmmm, I hadn’t considered a minecraft style lego game. That might work although accessing the huge variety of blocks coul be difficult unless you went for the incredible machine route and restricted those available to solve each scenerio. I hope somebody tries to make your idea reality, I’d give that game a shot.
Water Bear
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:28 PMOuch, end credits: “and a lot of patience inverted in over 3 years of work”
I assume he meant “invested”
The irony is brilliant.
AdrianT
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:32 PMParov Stelar – Chambermaid Swing :)
Do yourself a favor and check out his other tunes as well, especially “Catgroove”.
Great Electro Swing artist!
Scrooge
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:46 PMI’ve never liked the Lego games, dull game play that pales against kids classics like Mario 64.
I would never play with lego in a game though – too tedious, wouldn’t you rather model it in a 3d program and then have one of these 3D printing services print it for you?
Benno
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 6:58 PMThere’s an app for that:
http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx?icmp=COUSCreateShareSL100DBM
you used to be able to purchase your design once you had finished with but it seems that feature is no longer available, see:
http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/subpages/designbyme/
Gutsman Heavy
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:31 PMBanjo Kazooie nuts and bolts is my favourite lego game.
PuppyLicks
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:53 PMWow, that must have been one hell of a project.
Rod
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 7:54 PMI so want to go and play with LEGO now. God I wish I still had all mine…
Thermal Ions
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 8:51 PMLego has their Lego Digital Designer which is about the closest there is presently to my knowledge. I’ve not used it since version 2.0 so I’m not sure what improvements they’ve made in the current 4.2 version.
http://ldd.lego.com/en-us/Default.aspx?icmp=COUSCreateShareSL100DBM
CWEST
Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 9:55 PMsuch a beautiful project ^_^. Respect!
Lazarus
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 2:02 AMSo much obfuscated detail… anyway, my ideal Lego game would be some sort of space-sim. I have memories of my brother and I turfing out the whole box of pieces and then fighting over who got the large “wing” bits, which usually resulted in the more-impressive starship. Picture a Lego game where you start with a very tiny vessel, then have to harvest more bricks in order to build a larger battlecruiser…
Jason
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12:01 PMYou’ve heard of the captain forever series right? Your last sentence pretty much sums up the game.
http://www.captainforever.com/captainforever.php
Lazarus
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:22 PMI see… imagine if it was Lego, though…
Chazz
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 2:14 AMLego Racers. It kept the simplicity of the real era of lego while adding fun gameplay to it.
Gusman
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 10:55 AMThat was a mad game. Loved building the vehicles :D
Gabe McGrath
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 9:50 AM@Luke …
If you want to build virtual Lego on PC/Mac/Linux – with thousands of parts, many more than the Lego ‘Digital Designer’ offers – your mind will be blown by LDraw.
It’s a free, fan-built system of programs/data (3D CAD programs, virtual parts, etc) that outputs to PovRay (a freeware raytracing program) so you can build incredible-looking Lego models – and even animate them.
Wikipedia explains it more fully: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDraw
And to get started, you can download the full suite of programs in one big installer here: http://www.ldraw.org/GetStarted.html