Legoland (PC)

Legoland is basically Theme Park but with LEGO characters, and is presented in a simple way that makes it a good game for younger ones, though it makes it less interesting for adults. In an attempt to make things more interesting you also have a dotty professor who time travels and generally wreaks mayhem (grabbing new rides and ideas at the same time), and aliens who love theme parks and subsequently visit earth, usually taking most of your rides ...
.../> 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 ... more

Legoland is basically Theme Park but with LEGO characters, and is presented in a simple way that makes it a good game for younger ones, though it makes it less interesting for adults. In an attempt to make things more interesting you also have a dotty professor who time travels and generally wreaks mayhem (grabbing new rides and ideas at the same time), and aliens who love theme parks and subsequently visit earth, usually taking most of your rides with them.

I've never been a huge fan of the theme park and spin-off games like Roller Coaster Tycoon style myself - though they are quite fun for a while, I tend to quickly get bored of them. If you are a fan of the genre, you will probably like this game more than I did - although you will also probably want more depth than this game, as it is after all aimed mainly at children.

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 - or not.

The graphics look very old-fashioned but are clear enough and there are some nice animations. As you might expect, everything is made from LEGO pieces, and the people are LEGO people. The park is presented in an isometric view, which is fine most of the time but a variable view angle would have been nice - and, in some instances, rather helpful. The cut scenes also look old and low-res, but not so much that they aren't quite enjoyable. Young ones especially will probably enjoy the antics of the mad professor. The sound is very disappointing - the music is mediocre quality and there's only one endlessly repeated tune. This quickly makes you want to bang your head against the wall so putting on a CD and changing the settings to effects only is recommended! The rest of the sound effects are okay but pretty minimalist, though the annoyed sound gardeners and mechanics make when you pick them up to relocate them in the park is quite funny. For a 7 year-old game I guess it doesn't look too bad, but the graphics and sound aren't going to enhance your gaming experience much.

There are 10 levels you can play, with a little chap on the bottom right of the screen telling you what your next objective is. The objectives change as you get further into the level and achieve previous objectives. 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 a more open-ended type of game.) As you go through the levels you get more themes, rides, and add-ons to play with. Personally I found it very 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 sure how kiddies would react to that - possibly they'd find it funny and not mind. Maybe not...

The system specs for this game are extremely low - I doubt there are many PCs left in working order that wouldn't be able to run this game. (CPU: 233MHz PII, 4Mb graphics card, DirectX 7.0a, 150Mb HDD space, 32Mb RAM.) It officially works on Windows Me, 2000 and XP, though it works fine on Vista as long as you run it in XP compatibility mode.

All things considered, I would only recommend this for children - it's got an ELSPA rating of 3+, but my guess would be that it's best for children aged about 6-10. Since it is after all aimed at kids though, I'm going to give it 3 stars.

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We got Legoland in a 2 games for £15 deal at Game. Amazon only have it second-hand, from 97 pence on the marketplace and Play.com have it new for £7.99 (postage free in the UK). 

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