Lego City Undercover

Taking place in the vast Lego City, players control an undercover cop named Chase McCain. Chase goes on the hunt for criminals, with various moves at his disposal, such as swinging across poles and performing wall jumps. He can also gain disguises that give him additional abilities, such as a robber disguise that lets him break locks. Chase can also pilot vehicles, such as cars and helicopters, and use loose bricks to build various objects. Other characters can be playable once unlocked, but they'll still talk with Chase's voice (except in cut-scenes where Chase can still be seen). Custom characters are also playable. The Wii U GamePad can be used as a device including a communicator and as a scanner to locate criminals.[2]

Lego City Undercover's gameplay borrows heavily from the Grand Theft Auto series. However the game is role-reversed with the player taking on the role of a police officer enforcing the law, rather than a criminal committing crime, although the player is required to commit criminal acts on some occasions in order to infiltrate criminal gangs.[3]

In 2011, Police officer Chase McCain (Joseph May) comes back to Lego City, after being sent away two years ago in the aftermath of an important case, at the request of Mayor Gleeson. Upon his return, Gleeson reveals the city is in the grips of a crime wave, which she suspects to be the work of Rex Fury - a notorious criminal that Chase helped to arrest, who had recently escaped from prison - and asks Chase to find him and stop him once again. To assist him in his work, Chase is joined by dim-witted rookie Frank Honey, and assisted by police technician Ellie Phillips, though his return is not welcome news for Natalia Kowalski (Jules de Jongh), Chase's ex-girlfriend, who was forced into the witness protection program after he inadvertently revealed her as the witness in Fury's trial, nor Marion Dunby (Kerry Shale), the city's new Chief of Police, who had Chase sent away because of his mistake as well as always having a giant dislike to him.

The development team at TT Fusion had been wanting to create a video game based on the Lego City theme for some time, but the available technology and the fact that most staff were working on existing IPs limited their ability to create such a game. Prototyping for what would become Lego City Undercover began in 2010, and lasted roughly twelve months. As they did not have a solid idea of what the game would be, the team began with creating a small environment with drivable vehicles and Lego buildings. In 2011, Nintendo approached the company and showed them the Wii U hardware, asking whether they would like to develop a game for it. Having already had good experiences with Nintendo with successful ports of their previous titles and liking the platform's specs, the team agreed to work with Nintendo.[4][5] Developing a game not tied to a movie license gave the team a degree of freedom previously unavailable, while also presenting difficulties with multiple aspects including the story, gameplay and general mechanics of the game. Due to the high compatibility between the team's concept and its prospective hardware, ports to other consoles were not seriously considered, until a few years after the game was released. They were also able to integrate the Gamepad functions into the game, making part of Undercover's world. Nintendo generally left the team to develop the game as they pleased, though they received regular updates on the project and would notify them if they saw anything as a problem.[6] One of the early gameplay challenges was the combat, which needed to fit into the story context of the lead character being a policeman. Instead of a simple brawling style, the team designed the battle system to allow for defensive gameplay and not involve an equivalent to lethal take-downs.[5]

While designing the setting, the team used elements from multiple locations, including New York City, San Francisco and London. As the game was being developed for a Nintendo console, the team included multiple Nintendo-themed Easter eggs for players to find.[7] The team had to create a new game engine as previous ones were not able to cope with the scale of the environments.[5] They also wanted the main character, Chase McCain, to have depth as they knew both children and adults would play the game. Undercover features full voice acting, which at the time development started was a first for the series, although due to development time, others featuring voice acting were developed and released ahead of it. For the voice casting, the team used voice casting and recording company Side UK. A large voice casting session was held, and several established comedians were specifically asked to come in as the team wanted good delivery for the funny sections of the script.[5] By the time the script writer, former stand-up comedian Graham Goring, was brought on board, a rough outline of the story had been created. His main role was to fill in the gaps and put in as much humor as possible. Goring was given a lot of freedom when it came to the parodies, although the team were regularly consulted on the suitability of the material and a script editor was assigned to check his work.[4] Drawing on his former profession, Goring included a large amount of one-liners and humor intended for both children and adults. Following the template of The Simpsons, the game contains a high number of family-friendly parodies, referencing movies such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Matrix, and TV series such as Starsky & Hutch. The game's story took a while to write, as the team wanted to give it depth.[5][8]

Lego City Undercover was announced during Nintendo's press conference at E3 2011 on 7 June 2011 under the tentative title Lego City Stories. At Nintendo's press conference at E3 2012 on 5 June 2012, the game was revealed to have had a name change to Lego City Undercover.[9] The game's debut trailer was shown during that event, revealing game footage for the first time. During Nintendo's 13 September events, some new trailers detailing the story were shown, along with the announcement that a Chase McCain minifigure would come with the game as a pre-order bonus on North America and Australia while stocks last, and be included in the first copies of the game on Europe.[10] A police high speed chase toy was also released and includes a code for additional in-game content.[11] Nintendo also published the game in Japan on 25 July 2013.[12]

On 22 November 2016, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced that a remaster would be released for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in April 2017, which introduced split-screen cooperative support.[13]

Reception
Aggregate score Aggregator Score Metacritic (Wii U) 80/100[14] (NS) 78/100[15] (PS4) 77/100[16] (XONE) 77/100[17] Review scores Publication Score Eurogamer 9/10[18] Game Informer 8.50/10[19] GameSpot 8.0/10[20] GamesRadar+ [21] GameTrailers 8.4/10[22] IGN 8.0/10[23] ONM 90%[24] Nintendo Insider 85%[25]

With a Metacritic score of 80 on the Wii U version,[14] reviews were largely positive, praising the humour and design, but generally criticizing lengthy loading times and a lack of co-operative multiplayer, the latter of which is a staple in most Lego titles. Official Nintendo Magazine awarded the game 90%,[24] making it the magazine's third highest rated Wii U game at the time. IGN gave the game 8 out 10, praising its huge open world while criticising its generic gameplay.[23] Eurogamer gave the game a score of 9 out of 10, saying the game features "a mixture of great writing, twinkling level design and laudable values that keep you coming back".[18] GamesRadar gave the game 4 out of 5 stars, praising the inventive use of occupations and rewarding puzzles but criticising the lack of co-operative multiplayer.[21] GameTrailers gave the game a score of 8.4, calling it "the best game in the series so far."[22] Nintendo Insider awarded the game a score of 85%, writing that it "signals a bold new direction for TT Fusion’s creativity."[25]

• Official website