Lego Racers (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Andrew Park
• Reviewed on: 09/07/1999
• Updated on: 05/01/2000
• Released on: 07/31/1999
• Originally published on GameSpot: Lego Racers (PC) Review

LEGO Racers is everything you'd expect it to be: a simple, colorful, and fun high-speed romp through a land built entirely of those famous snap-together building blocks.

Essentially, LEGO Racers is much more of an arcade-style racer than anything else and seems like it would be more at home on a PlayStation than on a PC. It has little regard for physics and no real car damage modeling. Instead, it's a fast-paced game of unlimited powerslides and limited but plentiful power-ups on one of several fairly well-designed tracks. With these power-ups, you'll be able to shoot at an opponent in the lead, drop an obstacle on someone trailing behind, use a temporary invulnerability shield, get a turbo boost, or receive an enhancement to one of the above four. These power-ups are crucial to your success and basically constitute all of the game's strategy.

The actual racing in LEGO Racers boils down to the simplest of arcade racing principles - momentum. Though some of the tracks are truly challenging, if you can gain a solid lead on your competitors, your victory is more or less assured; conversely, if you let an opponent gain a solid lead, the best you can hope for is second place. This principle holds true for every single track in the game, which may prove frustrating for much younger LEGO aficionados not yet skilled in the art of playing computer games. In fact, LEGO Racers doesn't even have adjustable difficulty levels, which makes it seem as though it were intended for more experienced console gamers rather than for the small children of a PC owner.

Nevertheless, LEGO Racers is still quite fun to play, not only because its racing is solid and fast-paced, but also because it sounds good and looks great. You can't really be in any part of the game, not the building editor, the options menu, nor the middle of a race, without hearing some sort of cheery, upbeat cartoon music. And should you be in the middle of a race, you'll no doubt be surrounded by the ambient growl of your car's LEGO engine, the blast of a cannon power-up, and the cheers of triumph or shouts of dismay that you and other drivers will utter as you pass one another.

Continue reading

Compare prices for Lego Racers

This product is currently not in stock at any of our online merchants.

Email me when this product is available