So, have you seen Iron Man 3 yet? I just got a chance to catch it last night and it was just as fun as one and two.
One thing I was disappointed with **warning: slight spoiler** was that of the three Iron Man 3 LEGO sets, only the Malibu Mansion has anything to do with the movie. I realize that the sets are often designed while the movie is still in production, and perhaps there is a small chance that the other two sets may have been left on the Editing room floor, but considering the continuity of the movie, I really doubt that.
On that note, LEGO Marvel Super Heros the video game is coming out at the end of the year. And for this one Walmart, not Gamestop, has the exclusive figure — Iron Patriot. Via FBTB
Its a pretty sweet fig, although I still think that the helmets look a little on the big side.
Iron Patriot is available with the preorder of the game on PS3, XBox, or WiiU — all for just a hair under $50 each. Sadly it doesn’t look like it works for Nintendo DS or 3DS.
The weird thing is that it says that the game will be available for shipment on Dec. 31st, everywhere else it says Oct. 31, which makes more sense. So we’ll see what the actual date is.
The LEGO Batman Movie may not be out on DVD till May 21st, but I got to see the West Coast preview at WonderCon! Not only did they show the movie, but there was a Q&A afterward with the director Jon Burton of TT Games and several of the voice actors.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, here it is:
I’ll get back to the Q&A part in a minute. Now for the review — if you haven’t played LEGO Batman 2 yet, or don’t want to know what happens, you might not want to read this review. Spoilers ahead –
If you have played LEGO Batman 2 like I have, read my review of the game here, and read the description of the movie you would think what I thought — that the LEGO Batman Movie is basically the cut scenes from the game.
That is both true and not true. The story line is the same, but an interesting fact that I discovered from the Q&A is that the game is based off the movie!
According to Jon Burton, the director, they were working on the movie and then realized it would be a great game. But the game took less time to make than the movie and that’s why it came out first.
So in watching the movie, the plot is not really a surprise for those of us that played the game. Even so, this is worth watching. I have to admit I enjoyed it a lot more than any of the latest LEGO Star Wars mini movies. It was cute, fun and funny.
And watching a Gotham that’s built of LEGO is just plain cool. One of the coolest scenes is something that isn’t in the game — Lex’s airship. Its massive, shiny and “built” of over 20,000 parts. Like Jon Burton said, all the models in the games and the movie can be built in real life. TT Games actually has LEGO Master Model Builders on staff to ensure this.
What I like about the movie is that you can just watch it, you don’t have to do anything like in the game, and when you get the DVD you can pause it to look at the models more closely.
If you want to watch the Q&A here it is: (more spoilers)
After the panel I was able to meet both Jon Burton and Christopher Smith (the voice of the Joker)
Here’s a picture of Christoper
It was awesome seeing it on the big screen and meeting some of the talent behind it. I highly recommend it!
And don’t forget that you get this awesome minifigure with the movie
Overall 5 out of 5 stars! Fun movie, and I’ll be wanting to watch this one more than once.
I’ve done it again and been gone from here for the past week or so. Lack of an internet connection and my third convention in March kind of took the writing wind out of my sails. This month I’ve got a little bit of a break from Cons, which frankly I needed it.
I will be going back in time and writing about both Emerald City Comic Con and BricksCascade, but as WonderCon, my latest convention, is still very fresh in my mind, I’ll focus on that one first.
This was supposed to be my “fun” Con. I wasn’t planing on working really, just going and hanging out with friends and my brother. But I seem to find LEGO and LEGO related items everywhere, and its really not a stretch that would find it at a comic convention.
The Nintendo booth had a giant picture of the new LEGO City Undercover game.
I would like to review it, but I can’t (at least currently) justify buying the WiiU just for one game. And I would have tried to play it at the show, but unfortunately there were way too many people trying to play it. That went for the 3DS game “LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins” too. But as I actually have that game system, I’ll be picking it up when it comes out. GameStop does have the Chase McCaine figure if you preorder it, but as he’s also in a set and let’s face it, he’s just a cop figure, I’m not as focused on getting one.
I went slightly to the dark side and picked up the Character Building brand Doctor Who Tardis set. I normally stay away from non LEGO brands but this was the Tardis after all.
There’s not all that much to the set at 53 parts considering the price (I paid $15)
The interesting thing is that the Amy figure is basically naked under her skirt which is a separate piece. Why they didn’t make the hip part white or some other color than skin tone is a curious decision to me. Both figures are kind of like hybrids between minifigs and Friends figs. They have the more human shape of the friends fig, but they have the rotating hands of minifigs. I still wish that friends figs had rotating hands.
The disappointing thing to me is that all but the doors are large panels (you can see it on the left of the picture). There is very little building, just the bottom, and top of the model for the frame.
One interesting thing is that they give extra stickers, like they expect you to make a mistake or that they will eventually come off. And there’s a cardboard insert for the “inside” of the Tardis.
I do have to admit that there was a pretty cool 4×4 grey tile for the floor of the model and the 1×6 tile with 2 studs for the doorway (there’s two in the set, one for the top and one for the bottom). The roof was disappointingly one part, but the tiny light at the top is a separate part.
For some reason I didn’t take a picture of it built while I was at lunch (yes I built this while waiting for my order) but here’s it almost completed
Was it worth it? Not really. The plastic is clearly inferior and the figures aren’t all that great, which is why I didn’t buy their version of collectible minifigs. They did have a set with all 11 Doctors, but as I only like 9-11 and the cheapest I saw it for was $45, I couldn’t justify buying it — I’d rather spend that on a LEGO set!
Most of the rest of my WonderCon experience had nothing to do with LEGO, that is until the last day. But that will be a post all its own.
Carl Merriam has created this sweet little vignette. I love how tiny the little Bob-ombs are and how very detailed. Carl himself told me that there’s no cheating or cutting.
Hi all, as you can see I’m still not fully recovered and not posting at all regularly yet. I did get back home finally after an almost 3 week trip up and down the West Coast. And once I’ve managed to upload all my images to Flickr I’ll be posting about the trip in more detail.
But I wanted to post about the recently released Hobbit movie on Blu-Ray and the Target exclusive version with the Bilbo Baggins minifigure.
I won’t go into a full review of the movie, as others such as FBTB have done a very good review already.
No what I want to talk about is the small featurette on the making and designing of the LEGO Hobbit Models that is on the Target Blue Ray and the Bilbo figure — cause let’s face it, that’s really the main reason I got it at Target.
Its not that I “must have all minifigures!” But since I was going to get the movie anyways, I might as well get it with a Bilbo minifig.
Its a pretty cool fig, with a nice blue waistcoat and printing on the back. There’s even an alternate scared expression on the other side of his head.
What I found that interested me more than I thought was the featurette about how they designed the LEGO Hobbit models.
Now as I’m not as tech savvy as some, I took pictures from my TV while I watched the feature so that you could get an idea of what it shows.
The thing I thought that was coolest to me was the original prototype of Bag End, Bilbo’s house.
You can see how it differs from the actual set and what stayed the same.
They also talked about how they designed the Goblin king and his minions.
Its only about 15 minutes long, and there’s scenes from the LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game at the start and end of it. What I’m hoping and predicting will happen is a LEGO Hobbit game about the time the 3rd Hobbit movie finally gets released.
The Blu-Ray / DVD combo pack is on sale at Target.com for $24.99 in the US. I found it at my local Target for $22.99 so if you want it, I’d recommend getting it there before the week is over and they jump the price up to $29.99.
Is it worth it? Well the feature was interesting, I don’t see myself watching it over and over again. I’m of the reluctant Blu-Ray crowd. I don’t care all that much that my image is that much crisper than the DVD version. However, it seems that is the way the world is going and that’s why I picked up a PS3, so at least I could play games and watch movies.
I do like the exclusive figure, and I imagine that it will cost as much as the movie once it starts making its way to Bricklink. But if you are going to buy the movie any ways, you might as well get this one.
BrickCon isn’t the only time you can see awesome LEGO displays in Seattle. Emerald City Comic Con is just two weeks away and for the second year in a row SEALUG will have all kinds of LEGO coolness for attendees to see.
And that’s not all — several LEGO vendors will be there too, including your’s truly!
I will be partnering with BrickShirts and AltBricks. So if you are attending, stop and say hi.
Not only that, but I will be giving a presentation at 3:20 pm in Hall C all about my career as a Freelance LEGO Artist.
But if you want to attend the Con, buy tickets soon. The full Con passes and Saturday passes are already sold out but Friday and Sunday are still available.
Some said a collaboration between Marvel and TT Games could never happen. Apparently, nobody told the studio behind the popular series of Lego games. After all, Warner Bros. is the parent company of both TT Games and DC Comics, which made many people assume that a Marvel Lego game was off the table. As our cover story shows, those people were wrong.
Via: Gameinformer.com
Not much news is available yet, but just the name LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game conjures excitement! How can it be anything but cool? Especially after watching this video
LEGO Lord of the Rings Video Game was a pleasant surprise for me and I really enjoyed it. Of course to be honest I’ve enjoyed pretty much every Travler’s Tales LEGO game out there. But the Lord of the Rings story just isn’t my cup of tea. Marvel on the other hand — well lets just say I went and saw Avengers three times in theaters and leave it at that.
The one thing I’m hoping, and they probably have fixed this if LEGO Lord of the Rings is any indication, is that the Marvel game will be about more than one character. I loved LEGO Batman 2 but its one failure was that you only got to be Superman at the very end of the story portion of the game. Once you got into Free Play, it was much cooler. I mean who doesn’t want to fly around the city looking for citizens to save?
Lord of the Rings was very different, and had to be, since it was the Fellowship of nine characters traveling around together for the most part. So you got to use all the different characters with all their different abilities much more frequently, even if it that can also get a tad old after awhile. I have to admit, I still haven’t finished the game. A week is about my limit on playing a game constantly. I don’t know of any of the games that I’ve fully finished except maybe the old LEGO Star Wars video games, but that was many years ago when I didn’t have quite so much going on in my life.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video Game won’t be out till the fall, so we have a while to wait. LEGO City Undercover exclusively for the Wii U game console is set to come out March 1st and although it looks like fun, I don’t have a Wii U and don’t have plans to get one any time soon.
Even if we do have a bit of a wait I’m looking forward to being Iron Man, Spiderman, and Wolverine when it finally does come out. And of course as soon as I know more info I’ll let you know.
The new Legends of Chima theme is barely on the shelf but LEGO already has big plans for it. Warner Brothers Interactive has three games planed. A mini game for LEGO.com, one for Nintendo 3DS and PSP Vita, and a free to play online game.
London, UK – 2nd January, 2013 – Enter and explore the Kingdom of Chima™ in three gameplay experiences, offering something for all types of LEGO® gamers! Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and The LEGO Group today announced the LEGO ® Legends of Chima ™ videogames, scheduled to roar into 2013 for various platforms. The three videogames will each provide an entirely unique and exciting adventure that builds to the next experience and complement the just announced LEGO Legends of Chima™ universe of products, which includes construction sets, vehicles, TV content and more. LEGO Legends of Chima™ is a fantasy adventure set in land inhabited by different magical animal tribes and tells the classic story of good and evil, friendship and family.
“We are doing something innovative with LEGO Legends of Chima™ by making three distinct videogame experiences on a variety of platforms,” said Samantha Ryan, Senior Vice President, Production and Development, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. “By creating multiple LEGO videogame experiences for one brand, we are catering to today’s diverse gaming community, as well as establish a rewards system for players of all three games.”
LEGO® Legends of Chima ™: Speedorz ™, a racing mini-game produced by TT Games and 4T2, revs its way on to LEGO.com today and iOS tomorrow, 3rd January. Players will race against famous Chima™ characters, battle through iconic Chima™ locations, and unleash the power of CHI to boost their Speedorz, all while collecting studs and rewards to unlock more Speedorz and customize characters. The player’s goal is to become the ultimate champion and win Golden CHI, which transforms the world map and opens a new race level.
LEGO® Legends of Chima ™: Laval’s Journey, developed by TT Games, is scheduled to be available for the Nintendo 3DS™ hand-held system and for the PS®Vita system in summer 2013 and for the Nintendo DS™ hand-held system in autumn 2013. Players will embark on an amazing adventure into the world of Chima™ where the brave warrior Laval and his allies are called upon to fight for justice.
In autumn 2013, LEGO® Legends of Chima ™ Online , a free-to-play, online world developed by WB Games Montréal, will provide kids with a safe and incredibly immersive connected game experience. Players will be able to build and customize their kingdom in the world of Chima™, explore massive environments like the Falling Leaves Forest, take on missions to help Laval and his friends, uncover hidden secrets and treasures, earn rewards, and use LEGO bricks to build weapons, gadgets, and more!
The Chima™ Vault, which houses an exclusive reward system, will be accessible to players on LEGO.com/chima. While playing LEGO Legends of Chima™: Speedorz ™ and LEGO Legends of Chima™: Laval’s Journey , players will be able to earn points. These points can be redeemed through the Vault for a variety of unique content that players can use to enhance their experience in LEGO® Legends of Chima ™ Online.
Not to be out done, Cartoon Network is starting a whole new series based off the toys. The first episode will be aired on January 16th.
I’m still on the fence with these sets. I’m personally not too keen on the whole animal figs, but I do like all the new parts and colors. Olive green and bright light orange any one? Not to mention the awesome new wing elements.
I’m hoping the Nintendo 3 DS game will be fun and plan on picking that up when it becomes available.
So I’ve been playing LEGO Lord of the Rings the Video Game for about a week now. I’ve beaten the story portion and I’m making my way through gathering all the extras. I’m playing it on PS3, as that’s my console of choice. First impression — Awesome!!!!
Before I played it, I was a little hesitant with this game. Some of you might cringe when I say this, but I’m not a fan of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy. I love the Hobbit, which I’ve read several times, but the LOTR is just a little too heavy and depressing (if I want to be perfectly honest). Sure it has a grand sweeping story of power, tragedy and good triumphing over evil but I just can’t get into it.
I couldn’t even get excited about the sets too much. Somewhat because of my lack of interest in the subject matter, but also because there isn’t all that much in the way of parts that interests me in the sets. Yes, it is a bevvy of castle parts, and I used to be almost exclusively castle when I was younger. I just don’t build castles much anymore. And of course there are the minifigures but I don’t need to collect every figure either.
Putting all of that aside, I wanted to get the game and see for myself what it was like. And of course I wanted to share my opinion of the game with all of you.
Now after LEGO Batman 2 I wasn’t sure how TT Games could top it. Being able to traverse all of Gotham was simply awesome, especially flying around as Superman. There’s no flying in this game (or if there is, I haven’t found it yet ) and like the books you are walking around Middle Earth — all of Middle Earth.
Take that in for a moment. All of Middle Earth. Peter Jackson may have opened the window into the world, but running around a LEGO version of it is simply cool. Its all there — the Shire, Mines of Moria, etc. And you get to bash all sorts of things for golden coins to your hearts content. Its all laid out on the familiar map of Middle Earth and as you go through the different stages you unlock more of the world. The initial playing of the game as I beat each “story” version of the levels really kept me wanting to play till I beat the whole thing.
The Fellowship characters are all used with pretty equal amounts of time, which is nice. Giving even Pippen and Merry specific tasks that only they can do. Although I’ve found that Legolas is one of my favorite to play. Is that on purpose I wonder?
One thing I like even better than LEGO Batman 2 is that it is much easier to find the special silver bricks and items. In Batman I got a little tired of trying to find all the specials. I didn’t completely finish it after I went around the city for what felt like the 50th time.
You will probably get a little tired of traveling around here too as there is a vast assortment of items you need to collect. It is a little tiring traveling around all over. I feel as if I’ve gone on the long journey that the fellowship took. Here its easy to go on the map and actually select where you want to go and have the helpful transparent travel studs to show you the way. The only time I’ve found it hard to see them is in the snowy mountainous areas.
If you don’t want to wait for the game, but want to see all the “mini movies” you can see it here:
If you aren’t familiar with the story (and who isn’t really?) then there might be a few spoilers. There’s the now classic TT Games humor as well. But I have to warn you, it is an hour and a half long. So in essence, its really a full length movie.
So my over all opinion — get it! It might be a tad scary for the little ones, although they’ve skipped over a lot of the truly scary parts of the story. It would be a great Christmas gift for any little (or big) kids to play.
Here’s hoping (and I bet it will) that there will be a LEGO Hobbit the Video Game in the future.
I'm Mariann Asanuma, a former LEGO Master Model Designer and now a Freelance LEGO Artist and Author. Thanks for checking out my blog dedicated to all things LEGO. ;)
Feel free to contact me if you are interested in a custom LEGO model.
Via FBTB
