For more on LEGO City Undercover, check out our full LEGO City Undercover review. Or, for more of the best Playstation 4 games for an 8 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
What is LEGO City Undercover?
LEGO City Undercover is an open world, crime-fighting LEGO adventure that tells the story of Chase McCain, a famous cop who returns to LEGO City on a mission to bring the notorious (and recently escaped) criminal Rex Fury back to justice. An upgraded version of the Wii U original, LEGO City Undercover on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch has the same story, levels and challenges as the Wii U original, only this time there's a split-screen co-op mode too!
How do you play LEGO City Undercover?
Rather than being based on a film, LEGO City Undercover instead provides you with an original, and genuinely funny story to play through in one of the largest, most ambitious LEGO games to date. Telling its story over 15 traditional LEGO levels, each full of simple puzzle solving, bad guy bashing, and LEGO smashing/rebuilding fun, there's plenty of fun to be had here, and a whole cast of crazy characters to keep you laughing throughout. When you're not playing a level, you can spend hours exploring the vast LEGO City, with 20 unique districts to discover, oodles of collectables to find, and many a side-mission to complete. In fact, with over 300 characters and 120 vehicles to collect, not to mention the 39 cheat-enabling Red Bricks, and a whopping 450 Gold Bricks for you to earn, it's fair to say that if you like 100%ing your games, you'll be playing LEGO City for a while to come...
As an undercover cop, Chase is a master of disguise - and this is something that plays a key part in LEGO City. As you complete the main levels, you'll unlock brand new disguises, which in turn let you use all sorts of different abilities. From the miner, who can smash boulders with his pickaxe, and access dynamite vending machines (only in LEGO City...), to the farmer, who can use his trusty chicken to glide across large gaps, it's fair to say LEGO City is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously - and it's all the better for it. The fact the entire game, open world and all can be enjoyed in split-screen now is simply the icing on the cake - especially as there are two player vehicles to drive!
How easy is LEGO City Undercover to pick up and play?
As with the other LEGO games, LEGO City Undercover does its best to ease new players in, providing plenty of prompts, and frequent, yet non-intrusive tutorials to ensure you're rarely ever stuck. As most of the game's puzzles revolve around using one of Chase's many disguises (and their related abilities), the game will give you a handy pop up icon to tell you which disguise you need - try and track a trail, for example, and a picture of a police badge will pop up, letting you know you need to change to be Police Chase instead.
Getting around the city is pretty straightforward too - while it may be massive, you can bring up a handy sat nav style map at any point, letting you set waypoints, with the game giving you a handy trail straight down the middle of the road/pavement for you to follow. The game's similarly forgiving in terms of lives - with no game overs, you won't lose any progress should you be defeated, with the game instead simply plonking you straight back in the level where you left off for you to carry on!
For the youngest of players, while all the story cutscenes and many of the prompts are fully voiced and subtitled, there is still a bit of reading to do in LEGO City. Many of the game's tutorials (and most prompts) are delivered through text only at the bottom of the screen - and while none of these are essential to understanding how to play the game, a reading ability would certainly be helpful.
Sample sentences include:
- Use the train at Cherry Tree Station to continue the investigation.
- Meet Chan in the alleyway by the scrapyard.
- Only a torch can light this fuse. Find one to ignite it.
- Use (L) to move the Scanner to locate suspects
Aimed squarely at the family audience, there's little in the way of mature content in LEGO City Undercover, with no swearing, no sex, and only very slapstick violence. While you can slap, kick, and shoot at enemies with toy LEGO guns, there's nothing in the way of realistic impacts or gore, with enemies simply flashing red, then collapsing into their component parts when defeated. Although you can run people over in game, again, they simply get comedically flattened, before springing back to their feet like nothing happened.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Playstation 4
