Is it wrong to hope the sequel will be Lego Sin City?

It’s a simple fact that Legos are awesome, but not one that’s got much to do with video games. Licensed gaming product has sucked for years, completely independent of the quality of the license, so the Lego video game series is something of a small miracle. Even when an individual series entry might not be particularly great it’s still funny and clever, and on average the games are solidly entertaining. Nearly challenge-free, of course, and dependent on following a set formula that involves even more collecting than Rare’s Nintendo 64-era titles, but still a large helping of comfortable, all-ages gaming. The latest entry in the series is Lego City Undercover, and it’s easily the best one yet.

Chase McCain is a police officer returning to Lego City after leaving town disgraced for accidentally outing the identity of a key witness to the crimes of Rex Fury. Now Fury has escaped, Chase is back in town, and the plot is afoot! It’s time for Chase to redeem himself by going undercover and taking on one mission after another while exploring every nook and cranny Lego City has to offer. Along the way he’ll gain new outfits that correspond to new jobs, adding to Chase’s abilities and opening up more areas for exploration.

At the game’s start Chase has his civilian outfit and cop uniform. The civilian has no special talents, but cop-Chase has a grappling gun that can hook on to special blocks. It doesn’t take long to open up several new jobs, such as the Thief who has a crowbar to pry open certain doors, color gun to paint background objects, and can crack safes to earn extra goodies. The farmer can glide by holding a chicken above his head, the astronaut can use teleport pads, the fireman puts out fires, etc. Chase has eight incarnations that open up as missions are completed, but the quest to complete the game 100% doesn’t even begin until the story missions are complete.

Once the final story mission is over and Chase has the last ability, the game completion will probably be at about 30% or so, depending on how much you explored Lego City’s huge open world. The missions have multiple goals to chase after, generally involving finding and breaking all of a certain item in a level- put out all the fires, break all the satellite dishes, etc. Each goal earns one quarter piece of a police shield, plus there are two character disguises and two vehicles to find, and a Lego stud collection goal to meet. Do all that, which requires going back after the game is over after you’ve earned all the abilities, and you’ve completed a level 100%. It’s not that hard if you’re thorough, but that still leaves the city untouched.

Lego City is a giant, open world with a huge amount of things to do in its many and varied districts. Each new job opens up one or two new mini-missions, ranging from finding pigs on top of buildings and firing them back home in a pig-cannon, to rescuing cats, to taking a coffee break. Many of them are pretty simple, just a matter of donning the correct outfit and hitting the A button, but the trick is to find them in the first place. Lego City’s buildings are loaded with drain pipes and wall jumps, and there’s a lot of vertical exploration to play with. Not all missions are as simple as finding them, though, and anything involving the huge number and variety of vehicles available is bound to be a good time. Boats, cars, helicopters, and even a jetpack and skateboard show up, and can be called up for instant use at an appropriate station. You’ll have to find them first, though.