Lego City Undercover blows the franchise wide open

Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan, creators of the classic sitcom Father Ted, were once asked why they'd chosen to make a comedy about priests. Was there, perhaps, some critical commentary on Catholicism at work? No, replied the writers. The jokes were just funnier when performed by priests.The same could be said of Lego minifigures. There's just something inherently daft and likeable about those yellow-faced fellows that highlights the absurdity of any situation, even if that situation involves driving a fire engine along the pavement, mowing down dozens of pedestrians. In a game like Grand Theft Auto, such a scene would be bleak, bloody and dripping with nihilistic catharsis. In Wii U exclusive Lego City Undercover's breezy free roaming world, it's a slapstick gag. Splattered pedestrians simply spring back to their feet and stagger away. Hero cop Chase McCain even apologises as he speeds on his way, leaving plastic carnage in his wake.It's one of many delightful details in a game that always finds a way to incorporate the transgressive thrills of more mature rated openworld city games, without ever losing its daft kid-friendly charm. In fact, according to developer TT Fusion, the words grand, theft and auto were never even part of the conversation."I don't think we ever really borrowed from that genre," insists Graham Goring, Lego City's scriptwriter. "We never said 'Oh, what have they done in that game? Let's do a family friendly version of that.' It was predicated on things we'd done in Lego games previously, and new ideas that the GamePad gave us. Internally, we could ignore other open world games because, thematically, they are so much darker."

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