I couldn’t stay mad at LEGO: The Hobbit, though. I also died for no reason at all a few times - twice in the same level, which caused me to repeat it more times than I’d have liked to. My 3DS froze twice while I was playing, once after opening it during sleep mode and once in the middle of a level. I was also frustrated and slowed down quite a bit by glitches.
I often found myself in front of an object I could act on, pressing A, and watching my character move around it without doing anything (presumably because he wasn’t in the exact right position). However, the controls to use each ability don’t work quite as well as they should, and it’s frustrating. It was confusing at first to try to remember which dwarf did what, but there’s a quick-switch option that helps quite a bit. Each dwarf has a unique ability - you can bounce off Bombur or use Dori’s grappling hook-type weapon to swing from place to place - and each ability is highly specific. It’s also just pretty, with LEGO pieces included cleverly in the non-LEGO scenery. The levels are short and often action-packed, and the button-mashy combat is as fun as always. There’s something supremely satisfying about hacking at LEGO-made barrels and shrubs to watch them explode into a shower of valuable studs, and LEGO: The Hobbit’s system of resources - which you can use to build things like bridges in order to access extra areas - adds another reward for breaking everything in sight. Level design, while not particularly challenging or surprising, was key to keeping me engaged. I occasionally found myself thinking, “Wait, how did I get here all of a sudden? I was just fighting orcs! And now I’m fighting goblins?” (It only adds to the confusion that orcs and goblins make the same noises when you fight them.) More importantly to me, however, was that I went from the Battle of Moria to Bag End to Rivendell to Lake-town and didn’t feel dragged along like I sometimes did when watching the films. The downside to a fast-paced story is, of course, that some details and transitions are lost. During the main adventure - which took me just under 10 hours to complete - you hit the major events from the first two films in bite-sized level form, with much of the less-important plot elements cut to make time for combat. Unlike director Peter Jackson’s overlong movies that stretch the story of the book to its limits, I found the pacing of the story to be refreshing.
LEGO: The Hobbit does a great job of incorporating storytelling into its gameplay.
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