Lego City Undercover

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-14-lego-city-undercover-review

Reviews are starting to hit from sources that I trust. Eurogamer gave it a 9/10, and Gabe over at Penny Arcade says that it's awesome. Reviews are also coming out before the release, which shows that the publisher is confident that they have a great game on their hands. If reviews aren't allowed until the game is released, that is usually a sign that the publisher is trying to control the message and reduce the damage that early reviews will do.

I was worried initially that the dire performance that we saw in the early trailers was going to follow through until release, but it looks like we've got a solid game here. That's good. I haven't touched my Wii U since New Year's Eve and was hoping that this was going to be the game to break that streak!

Are you going to tell the rest of us how to get it for $25, or is it a secret?

Probably the last trailer before launch.

So Lego City Undercover needs 22GB to buy the download version. This is more than a 32GB Wii U will hold apparently, so I ordered up a new USB HDD for it today.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008R7FC74

1TB for $75 isn't bad. I'll let you guys know how it works out.

The game is also published by Nintendo. If they paid for any of its development up front, it is not going multiplatform.

In this case, TT is more 2nd party than 3rd.

"publishing rights expire after a time."

Publishing rights don't really expire in games. They can be sold, leased, or end based on contract terms, but they don't just expire based on time. In the case of Mass Effect, Microsoft very simply looked at the numbers, saw that ME1 made them a small amount in its fifth year, EA offered them significantly more for the rights going forward on other platforms, and MS said "No brainer. Sold!".

Publishing in games almost always includes ownership. In this case, Nintendo probably funded a good 25-50% of the game's development cost. If they hadn't, this company that always makes multiplatform titles wouldn't have stuck with a single, small, unproven platform. History shows their preference for wide release.

"Many" is still by far the minority, and you'd be very hard pressed to find a case where the dev owns software based on a licensed property.. In this specific case, the evidence at hand strongly points to a large pile of cash coming along with the publishing deal. Again, these are the same guys that put Lego Harry Batman: The Return Of The Indiana Jones: Episode III on every platform imaginable.

At best TT is the for-hire contract middleman between the unquestionable owner of the property, Lego, and the fairly obvious source of funding, Nintendo.
Edited by darklordjames - 3/17/13 at 10:08pm

And the win goes to... Magic Cow!

*applause*

Gah! My hard drive is a bust. It seems to want more power than the Wii U will spit out over it's USB connection. The drive works great on my PCs with the supplied cable over USB 2.0, and it initializes on the Wii U. Beyond that, it becomes very spotty on the Wii. I moved a demo over to it at what seemed like a reasonable speed, but then it crashed upon load. Copying that demo back from the HDD to the Wii also fails pretty hard, as a copy operation that should take 38 seconds at the 26MBps it writes/reads on my PC is now in minute 4 and about 3/4 done.

I'm off to try and find a verified Wii U compatible drive now, and not one that simply claims that it will power off of a single USB connection.

I really want to play Lego City, but I need a place to store it first!

EDIT: Or I can just grab a Y cable that will let me steal additional amperage from the second USB port on the back... Hmm...
Edited by darklordjames - 3/20/13 at 12:34am

Yes they did. In general we've been pushing out 1000mA over USB ports for several years now, instead of the 500mA that the spec calls for. It's an odd decision for Nintendo to make to stick so strictly to the spec, then expect people to add HDDs to their system in order to download 19GB games from them.

Anyway, I ordered a $5 Y-cable to steal power from the second port. In the mean time I dug out an old 120GB external to download to right now. Their download service hasn't gotten much better. 19GB should take about 4 hours on my connection, but the estimate was sitting at 10 hours when I went to bed last night. That was of course followed by a 40 minute "install", which is still stupid.

I hate discs and don't want any for this system, but Nintendo sure isn't making it easy for me. This is almost more of a pain in the butt than swapping discs around, finding somewhere to store them, and listening to that drive spin at a billion miles an hour.

Also, my local Fred Meyer had a stack of Lego City in when I was there earlier. Check them out if you're having difficulty finding it in retail. I think they tend to be forgotten about when it comes to new releases.

Alright, Lego City Undercover is pretty great. I'm about two hours in and the writing is fantastic. Performance in the "levels" is perfectly fine at a solid 720p/30, but it dips to the 20-30fps range out in the open world. I haven't noticed any tearing, and it doesn't feel like the dip is directly from 30 to 20fps, so at least they seem to be properly triple-buffering. The draw distance is good for the world, but terrible for the Lego-dot-money that you are supposed to pick up. Aside from the money popping in 15 feet from you, I haven't noticed much more pop-in. Overall, it runs and looks better than the console GTA4, probably more on par with console Saint's Row 3.

The load times are terrible. Like check Twitter and RSS real quick on your iPad cause you've got a minute and a half to kill terrible.

The moment to moment gameplay is the most refined edition of the Lego game formula that I have seen. Again, great writing and perfectly executed gags. Playing this, you will laugh and smile. The only frustration I have so far is that early in the game so much stuff is locked off that it is making it difficult to get the resources that I need to move on to the next section. This will resolve itself as the game progresses and I gain more abilities. but right now it is causing me to grind for bricks for a bit. At two hours I am about 2% completion, though I expect that completion rate to accelerate as I gain abilities. Rough estimate? I'd say there is 40-50 hours here for the completionist.

Highly recommended. Spend your $50 on this.

Now I want the 3DS prequel.