I’ll be the first to admit it: I missed out on LEGO Bricktales when it first launched late last year on most platforms. Still, if there is one thing I can say about LEGO Bricktales on the Meta Quest, it is that the game fixes the originals’ biggest issue—no more wonky or cumbersome controls!
LEGO Bricktales on the Meta platform is very much the same game that came out last year but reworked with brand-new motion controls, VR and optional AR/pass-through modes in mind for Meta Quest 3 users. I played LEGO Bricktales on my Meta Quest 3, almost exclusively sticking to its pass-through mode during my time with the game. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of mixed reality, augmented reality, or whatever else you want to call it, but I must admit, LEGO Bricktales makes excellent use of the feature.
Simply holding both touch plus controllers in hand while squeezing the triggers allows the player to easily grab and resize levels or the diorama set pieces in LEGO Bricktales. This not only feels natural and intuitive but opens up the possibility to quickly and effortlessly superimpose the game world on top of real-world environments in pass-through mode, making for a truly novel way to play the game not possible on other platforms.
This granular level of control also translates to gameplay, with the player now able to circumnavigate every nook and cranny of the overworld and individual puzzle challenges with ease, alleviating some of the frustration of having to redo sections due to not clearly seeing points of architectural weakness in a given build.
“LEGO Bricktales on the Meta platform is very much the same game that came out last year but reworked with brand-new motion controls, VR and optional AR/pass-through modes in mind for Meta Quest 3 users.”
If you’re unfamiliar with the original game, the Quest version of LEGO Bricktales, unlike the action-based licensed game tie-ins, is a closer approximation of actually playing with LEGOs in real life. You play as a young LEGO person helping out his mad scientist of a grandfather in restoring his amusement park, which ultimately boils down to exploring different unique LEGO biomes, solving brick-based puzzles and finding secrets scattered throughout the diorama-like stages.
Graphically, LEGO Bricktales on Meta takes a slight hit, particularly in the aliasing and lighting department, but due to its inherently simple design, the title still looks fantastic, and features like the pass-through mode on Quest 3 more than makes up for the lack of visual parity with its initial release.
The initial release of LEGO Bricktales was a novel idea that successfully translated the childhood favourite of many to a digital platform while stumbling due to its reliance on conventional controls. LEGO Bricktales‘ Quests’ debut fixes this and delivers a truly mesmerizing experience that not only has that cool factor from playing it in augmented reality but is, by and large, the definitive version of an already fun-to-play game.
