Harvey Houston (a.k.a "HarvHouHacker") is an amateur musician, homebrew/mod user, and rhythm game player. He also is a libertarian Christian who speaks openly on his faith and talks on politics from a Biblical point of view.
This is perhaps my longest blog post ever, but despite its TL;DR format, it is based on hours of research and my own personal experiences.
NOTICE: This article has been cleaned up to remove invalid content. Also, TT Games may not be involved with LEGO much longer - read to the end to find out why.
Let me start by saying that I love LEGO. I am a big Bionicle and Ninjago fan, and I own many Bionicle sets. What's ironic is that when I was younger, I was more into Mega Blok Minis! However, as I've gotten older, my appreciation for LEGOs has grown, so much so that I've watched quite a few LEGO movies (including The LEGO Movie 2 - I saw it at the theater last year, the week it came). I own various different media regarding LEGOs - books, DVDs, promo material, songs, shirts, and of course genuine LEGO sets.
When it comes to their video games, however, I have to groan whenever my friends say "Let's play [insert LEGO game here]!" Why? Well, let me clarify by stating that it's not the graphics - they're excellent; even some of the older titles look great. The voice acting is superb - and it's got to be, when you have some of the best cartoon voice actors in the field who have voiced characters for such cartoons like Ben 10, Teen Titans and Teen Titans GO!, Batman: the Animated Series, The Nut Job 2, Angry Birds Movie, and even other video games like Xenoblade Chronicles and Batman: Arkham Asylum! This also includes recognized actors like Morgan Freeman, Christopher Lloyd, Charlie Schlatter, Chris Pratt, Frank Welker, Howie Mandel, and several others through various games. Even the stories are great, and make it enjoyable to play through to the end.
"So, what's the problem?" you ask. Have you ever played a LEGO video game? I have two words to describe my experience with LEGO video games: BROKEN GAMES. So many game-breaking glitches and bugs plague these LEGO games, it can easily turn a fun experience into a stressful, highly-frustrating one. What you hope would be fun to play actually turns into a nightmare.
However, like a madman possessed, I keep buying them, hoping in my heart "This game will be better. All those pesky bugs will be fixed, and I'll actually have a great playing experience!" NOPE! Each and every blankety-blank time (yes, I swear a lot when playing these games), my character gets stuck where it will never get out unless I drop out, or a race that should be easy has its problems magnified due to an unexpected invisible barrier that seems impossible to work around, or the amount of collectibles give an inaccurate number of how many are left, or something I'm doing cuts away to a scene which takes over the screen and interrupts both players, or worst yet, the game freezes the console or crashes and loses our progress! IT HAPPENS WITH NEARLY EVERY DAMN LEGO GAME!
But it hasn't always been this way. LEGO games used to be pretty decent, and not near as buggy. So, what went wrong?
LEGO Games on Consoles... Before TT Games Took Over
Image: The SEGA Pico, from Wikipedia. Is it fair to call this a game console?
The first official LEGO "video game", or what could be passed off as a video game, is the 1995 "Storyware" cartridge for the SEGA Pico, entitled "LEGO: Fun to Build". Although the Pico had roughly the same hardware as the SEGA Genesis, since it was marketed as a kids' laptop computer, it was seen more as a toy rather than a serious gaming console, and thus to call this a video game is really up for debate.
Image (Brickipedia): Castle level of LEGO: Fun to Build. This was pre-Nexo Knights.
However, it did spawn many computer games, such as LEGO Island, LEGO Chess, LEGO Creator, LEGO Univers, LEGO Minifigures Online, LEGO Cube... but I'm not here to talk about LEGO games you can play on a smartphone or laptop computer. I'm here to focus on console games - the ones released on dedicated gaming machines.
Like LEGO Racers. LEGO Racers is just what the title suggests - a car racing game featuring LEGO bricks and minifigures. This one I have for the Nintendo 64, and what's most interesting about this title is that you can actually customize your car with various bricks, which offers a lot more customization than the minifigure creator. The races are decent, albeit a bit hard to place first, even for me as an adult. However, the graphics, sounds, and music are "do-able", and the game works with little trouble.
Image left: Box art for the N64 version of LEGO Racers. Image right: One of the difficult racing tracks in the game... along with the rest of the races, which are just as difficult.
This title also came out on the original Playstation and Game Boy Color, and is the first video game for consoles that were NOT designed with just kids in mind! It later spawned several more titles that were LEGO properties, and not focused on any one theme.
LEGO Bionicle for the Game Boy Advance (also known as LEGO Bionicle: Quest for the Toa) would be the first one that was theme-based. The first licensed game, LEGO Creators - Harry Potter, would be second. These two games started LEGO on a path that would boost its popularity in the entertainment world for life.
TT Games' Games... Before Making LEGO games
Image: Gameplay of Leander on the Amiga 500. Leander was Traveller's Tales first game, which was co-developed with Psygnosis. Funny, it doesn't look very Lemmings-like!
Traveller's Tales had humble beginnings, first developing games with Psygnosis (who are best known for the Lemmings series). Their first games included Leander, later released on the SEGA Genesis as Galahad, and a video game adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. During these early years, they teamed up with Sony Imagesoft and Disney Interactive to make games like Toy Story, Mickey Mania, A Bug's Life, and Finding Nemo.
Image: The first level in Sonic 3D Blast. Aww, aren't the Flickies just sooo adorable in this game!
However, Sonic fans should like at least two of TT's games on SEGA consoles - Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R. That's right, Traveller's Tales was working with SEGA before LEGO! They also had several of their early games ported to SEGA consoles, including the aforementioned titles.
Traveller's Tales, later going by TT Games in 2005, created various original and licensed properties before LEGO - and most of them did not glitch or cause the consoles to freeze!
Introducing LEGO Games by TT Games... And Bugs
Video: Playstation 2 trailer of the first LEGO Star Wars game. Courtesy of IGN. This is where the bugs begin... on a (LEGO) galaxy far, far away!
TT Games began going down the LEGO-only path when they partnered with LEGO Interactive to make LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game, the first ever LEGO game made by TT Games. After buying LEGO's subsidary Giant Interactive, they began to make LEGO games for consoles exclusively. It wouldn't be until LEGO Indiana Jones 2 that they would only make LEGO games for consoles.
In regards to the original LEGO Star Wars, I've done searches to find out whether bugs and glitches exist in this first LEGO game of TT's. What I've found is that they do, but most have remedies or patches which can be applied, and there are troubleshooting guides which seem to resolve any of the major issues. The glitches that are being reported seem to not be game-breaking, and don't particularly interfere with game play.
Video: The trailer for Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Courtesy of Gamehelper. May the glitches be with you!
Upon further research, the glitches seem to start with the sequel LEGO Star Wars II - The Original Trilogy (one of the posts):
Several of those glitches can be tested to see if they are replicated on each platform the game was released on.
Video: Trailer for BIONICLE Heroes for Playstation 2. Courtesy of IGN. "Use the powers that the masks will grant you, to save Voya Nui!"
TT Games' only Bionicle game, BIONICLE Heroes, was a big game for the Wii, Nintendo GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows. It also had Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance releases, but those were not as well received as the one for TV consoles and PC. Having played the GameCube and Windows versions myself, I have yet to find major bugs and glitches. The sounds and music are not programmed in well - some examples:
- if pressing a button to try to skip the screen where it shows what you got at the end of the level, an irritating noise can be heard before the screen vanishes - noticed on the GameCube version.
- Sound effects at the end of a cutscene (especially in the Piraka Playground) can be repeated shortly after the cutscene ends.
- Cutscenes are not muted, even if bringing both the music volume and sound effect volume to zero - noticed on the Windows version.
Warner Bros.' Acquisition - TT Games' Demise?
What's interesting to note is that Warner Bros. bought TT Games in 2007, in order to expand their Interactive division. That was shortly before people started complaining about TT Games' games having major problems. In fact, it started with LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga.
Video: LEGO Star Wars Complete Saga glitch. A player finds a glitch where one can become a remote control car - I assume this is the Wii version. Submitted by "pizza2005".
Then continued with LEGO Batman: The Video Game. Having played that game for the Wii, there was one area in the Batmobile level where if you hang around there too long, the entire console froze. Despite that, and some frustrating game play mechanics which made the game difficult to complete, that was all I noticed. However, others reported different things on different platforms - check out this bug fix for the Steam version:
There's also a troubleshooting guide on PCGamingWiki that talks about this. Some of these fixes work on consoles, too.
LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The "Buggy-ness" Continues - With Frequent Console Freezes!
According to IGN's Wiki Guide for LEGO The Lord of the Rings:
This apparently is true, as in their Wiki Guide for LEGO Indiana Jones 2, we come across what is likely the first frequent (but possibly not THE very first ever) game-breaking glitch that apparently has no workaround:
It increasingly gets worse after that. Not only are there more glitches having to do with cosmetics of the console/PC versions, the Nintendo DS game is not without faults:
And then there are these bugs, in various games.
LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes Video: YouTuber Zelabeb compiles a series of glitch videos that can be replicated.
LEGO The Lord of the Rings Video: YouTuber Katno compiles a handful of bugs, including a flying Ent and a pedestal moving out of its path, nearly breaking the game.
LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Video: A+Start showcases a series of glitches in this title, in their 60th episode of Son of a Glitch (yep, that title is appropriate, considering some of these bugs!).
LEGO DC Super Villains Video: YouTuber Darth Whiner shows that the fall-through-the-ground glitch carries on to later TT Games!
Some of the absolute worst glitches are in LEGO Dimensions - which is unfortunate, because if it weren't for those, it would be the most fun game I've ever played. I've contacted Warner Bros. Support on this, and they implicated everything having to do with me - my Wii U, the ToyPad hardware being defective, the game save, DLC not having downloaded correctly, and even a scratched disc - of which I've tested all of it, and it turned out to be none of those. Every time I reported something, however, WB Support kept implicating one of those, on which I eventually gave up and quit playing, because I was tired of the BS that they kept giving me.
Yet I wasn't the only one with some of these problems:
Video: YouTuber HoarderGamer experiences the very same glitch I had with Gozer in the Ghostbusters level, thus preventing the level's completion. Glitch happens at the very end of this video.
Video: Twitch streamer Pimpsc00by encounters a glitch in her PS4 copy. At the beginning of the game where the vehicle instructions are supposed to be given, they never popped up. She keeps trying to figure out the problem for at least ten more minutes before stopping the video. Courtesy of Bifuteki.
Other glitches I had that were not reported (taken from my conversations with WB Support):
- The Final Dimension Level: On Foundation Prime, in the foreground section where you use a Ninjago character's Spinjitsu, if you don't have the minifigure you're supposed to be able to Hire-A-Hero for a number of studs for about 90 seconds or so to do the task. For me, it glitched to where the prompt disappeared too fast, so I wasn't able to hire the hero needed.
- Ghostbusters (2016) World: In Aldridge Mansion, you can hire Harry Potter to do magic spells. Whenever I did it, Harry Potter would fall to hell - er, through the floor into infinity!
- Ghostbusters Character Ability: I ran across an irritating, non-recoverable glitch where the Ghost Trap would stop trapping ghosts even though it was empty, and would produce hearts as if something was in there.
- LEGO City World: An odd bug that has happened in several LEGO games I've played, I would run across some bad guys who I'd then attack, but then they'd suddenly disappear. After leaving and coming back, they'd reappear!
Those are just a few things, and they're not word-for-word, as I don't want to bore you all with what happened, but let's just say that support wasn't too helpful.
In Conclusion - TT Games' Fault?
As I pointed out earlier, TT Games' earlier games were not as bad as when they started getting into making LEGO games. So, what started the downhill slope of buggy games?
Video: Trailer for Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal. Yes, this game has bugs, and I don't mean the rabbit! Courtesy of the Gamers' Temple.
My theory is that it's Warner Bros. mismanagement of their games. Remember Superman 64? Warner Bros. gave a license to Titus Interactive to that game, and well, you know how that went. Maybe not the perfect example, but it had to get Warner's approval.
Better yet, what about Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal? It apparently has a few problems of its own, as stated by IGN:
It's just my personal theory, but I think that after Warner Bros. bought TT Games, they've been putting TT under a lot of pressure. They've not had the chance to change game engines since they started using the broken one in 2009, because of contractual restrictions with Warner Bros. Interactive. Therefore, I don't think it's LEGO's fault, nor TT Games'. It's Warner Bros. Big surprise, huh?
Problem is, when you work for a big company that doesn't give you enough elbow room on the clock for improvements, you're in the position where you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you break away from the big company, you might as well go out of business, because there won't be enough money nor support to keep your products going. If you stay, you're bound to contracts that demand more products, regardless of whether they are well done. It's a clear case of commercialization gone wrong.
Yet, people (like me) continue to buy LEGO games, because we hope that the next game will be better - and oh, how disappointing it is when we find out how wrong we are. Heck, because of so many glitches and freezes, guides are being made in an attempt to work around these problems! People don't want to stop, because they like LEGO. I like LEGO. I even like these games... I just wish they weren't so broken.
UPDATE 1/1/2024 - TT Games Going Under?
So, a bit of an update since I wrote this article initially...
In January 2022, the developers got tired of using the old TT engine that was causing a lot of problems with their game development (all the buggy games mentioned above), and they really wanted to switch to the Unreal Engine. Instead, they were handed the NTT (Literally "New TT") game engine for their next game going forward, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. It turned out to be a nightmare to use, taking hours longer to develop scenes and characters than with using the old engine. It turns out that TT Games had done what no company should have - hired friends to help out.
As late as November 2023, it is being surmised that LEGO is now relying on other studios to develop their games, and with games like LEGO Bricktales, LEGO 2K Drive, and LEGO Brawl all having been released since Skywalker Saga without TT Games' development involved in any way, it appears that this really is the case. While I am a bit sad to not see any more originality in LEGO games anymore (2K Drive reminds me too much of the aforementioned LEGO Racers), it's also a bit of relief as it's more likely for LEGO games to not be as buggy moving forward. Unless TT Games can get their act together and use Unreal for something that won't be game-breaking, yet still original and fun, it's quite possible that TT Games' relevance may be no longer, as even Warner Bros. is deciding to commission other departments for their games, and is focusing more on what is called "live-service" games, like Gotham Knights.
If there's more on this, I'll update this article again. In the meantime...
What LEGO games have been giving YOU problems? Is there a TT Games story that you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments below!
