Review: Hilarious ‘Lego Dimensions’ delivers big fun at a bigger price

You are going to love Lego Dimensions. Your wallet is going to hate it.

Lego’s toy-to-life debut sounds like a slam-dunk: Let players build little Lego minifigures and warp them into video games, just like Skylanders and Disney Infinity. And in some ways, it’s a hit. This is the smartest, funniest, and wildest Lego game yet, a mash-up that both kids and adults will dig. Until, that is, they dig into their bank statements.

It wastes no time making its case. The trio of heroes provided in the game’s Starter Pack — Batman, Gandalf and WyldStyle — are yanked out of their own cozy worlds and sent careening through Lego-licensed space and time when an evil wizard starts messing with inter-dimensional portals.

[Related: Review: ‘Skylanders’ spins its wheels with 'SuperChargers’]

The characters aren’t just slices of video game code: they’re real Lego minifigures, which you’ll be instructed to build at the game’s outset. Ten minutes later, you’ll need to snap a few hundred pieces together to create the game’s warping portal. While the toy building isn’t the star of the show, it’s smartly woven into the story and adds some real-world toy flair missing from the fixed figurines in the other toys-to-life games.

You don’t actually need the Lego bricks to get the game working, though. To clear up a misconception: Lego Dimensions doesn’t let you build whatever you want and then magically scan your unique creation into the game. It simply reads the little blue base your creation is standing upon, so even if you stick Homer Simpson on Batman’s base, it will read it as Batman and Batman will show up in your game. But even the grumpiest gamer will find themselves dutifully following the succinct on-screen building instructions. This is Lego, after all, and you’ll take pride in correctly placing every brick just so.

Lego Dimensions isn’t so much about its bricks, however, as its brand-mashing, fan-service backbone. This is a game that turns a preposterous fantasy situation — Gandalf driving the Batmobile down the Yellow Brick Road — into Level One. And it gets more awesome from there. Spanning properties like Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Jurassic World, Scooby-Doo and, in perhaps the game’s finest sequence, a spectacular take on the Portal game series, Lego Dimensions tosses beloved pop-subcultures into a blender and serves it up with unrestrained glee.

The gameplay is pretty much what you’d expect if you’ve played any Lego video game since 2005’s Lego Star Wars. The shoddy jumping, the button-mashing attacks, even the interface, are largely unchanged. But Lego Dimensions finds some life in the game’s warping portal. The base lights up in various colors, and you’ll frequently need to move characters to different sections to solve color-based puzzles, enlarge or shrink, open interdimensional rifts, and even wield elemental powers. It’s a clever gimmick that keeps you closely connected to your minifigs.

A terrific script performed brilliantly by the real-deal actors voicing many of these characters helps tremendously. Yes, that’s Elizabeth Banks as WyldStyle, and yep, the new dialogue during the Back to the Future bits was really recorded by Christopher Llyod and Michael J. Fox. Gary Oldman puts in the most work and effectively steals the show as the over-the-top bad guy, Lord Vortech, but cheers to Stephen Merchant for making me literally shoot grapefruit soda out of my nose over one of his lines as Portal 2’s unhelpful robotic helper, Wheatley.

The story mode is just the start of Lego Dimensions. Each character also unlocks an open-world sandbox version of their property. You can freely roam around these spaces, collecting studs or taking on challenges in search of elusive golden bricks. It’s extra icing on an already enormous cake.

Unfortunately, you don’t actually get the whole cake when you buy the Lego Dimensions Starter Pack. You get a slice, and it’s among the most expensive slices in contemporary console gaming.

The Starter Pack costs $100, a $30 step up from Skylanders: SuperChargers and Disney Infinity 3.0. That includes the game, the portal, three characters, and the Batmobile. Though you can technically complete the story using these tools, you’ll quickly learn that you’ve barely scratched the surface of Lego Dimensions. Want to scratch more? Then make sure your credit card info is up to date first, because it’s going to cost you.

[Related: Review: After sophomore slump, 'Disney Infinity 3.0’ strikes back]

Extra characters come in three flavors: Fun Packs ($15), Team Packs ($25), and Level Packs ($30). The first two include two or four characters, respectively, while Level Packs include a few characters and, more importantly, a bonus, hour-long side adventure. The whole Wave 1 collection will run you nearly $600.

Lego toy fans will make the argument that unlike other toys-to-life games, you’re buying more than access to a section of a video game: you’re buying a legit Lego toy, and Lego toys do not come cheap. And that’s a fair point. These are, after all, real Legos that can freely intermingle with the rest of your collection.

But Lego Dimensions goes off the rails in its brutal gating of content. Within moments of starting the story, you’re met with bricks that can’t be broken by the Starter Pack toys, pathways that you’ll never access unless you plunk down cash for some new bricks.

Skylanders does this sort of thing too, though the latest version of that series has seemingly learned its lesson. But Lego Dimensions cuts the other way. Not only do you frequently run into unbreakable bricks, but occasionally these require one specific character to unlock. Don’t have Chell from the Portal Level Pack? You will never get that secret brick. Can’t afford to pick up Unikitty from The Lego Movie? Then ignore those rainbow bricks, because she’s the only character who can interact with them. See a bunch of ghosts just asking to be busted? You’re going to have to wait until they release the Ghostbusters Level pack next year if you want Dr. Peter Venkman to do his thing. Only four Lego figures can hack terminals. Only Emmit from The Lego Movie can drill. It’s some of the roughest gating I’ve ever seen in a video game, exceeding even the punitive Skylanders Trap Team.

What makes this hurt the most is that past Lego games gave you tons of extra characters for free. Right, okay, you didn’t get minifigures with them. But you also got dozens of (or in the case of Lego Marvel Superheroes, 155) playable characters you could unlock through simply playing the game. In Lego Dimensions, you have three, unless you pay for more. That’s a tough Lego pill to swallow.

It’s also a little unclear who, exactly, this game is for. While kids will appreciate the presence of Ninjago and Chima, most of the expansion content seems geared toward an older crowd. Does any 10-year-old really care about The Ghostbusters, The Simpsons, Portal, Back to the Future and Doctor Who? Of course not. Those characters speak more to their parents, the ones who hold the keys to the family’s video game budget.

And therein lies Lego Dimension’s big conflict. It’s a good, well-written Lego video game, some of developer TT Games’ finest work yet. There’s a great deal of fun here, and the way it encourages you to actually build some real toys makes it more appealing than its competitors. But unless you’ve got a few golden bricks stashed away yourself, you might not be able to afford entry into its wonderful worlds.

What’s Hot: Main adventure is a blast; great writing and acting; real Lego toys; tons to do…

What’s Not: …if you buy more stuff; exorbitantly expensive; hides too much of its content behind pricey figure packs; dated Lego gameplay

Follow Ben Silverman on Twitter

For game news, free codes and more, Like us on Facebook, follow @yahoogames on Twitter and check out our Tumblr page!