It really captures the gleeful energy of a kid smashing their creations together. It’s an inversion of the usual racing game rulebook and one that fits the nature of the Lego brand. That makes reckless driving an appealing option, as skilled players can use destruction to their advantage to keep their momentum up at all times. Smashing items fills up a long boost meter that can be drained at any time. Where most racers penalize players for driving off-road or crashing into objects, 2K Drive both encourages and rewards those acts. It really captures the gleeful energy of a kid smashing their creations together.Ĭhaos is the name of the game here and that’s where Lego 2K Drive truly breaks away from the pack. It’s a fast, loud, and forgiving driving formula that’s particularly well-built for young kids or casual party-goers alike.

There are items like homing rockets that’ll blow other drivers’ Lego cars to smithereens, and an emphasis on drifting that gives players a lot of control over their turns. It’s a fast-paced racing game that combines Mario Kart’s tried and true driving mechanics with some of its own. When it comes to the fundamentals of a good kart racer, Lego 2K Drive fires on all cylinders. It’s just a shame that it’s saddled with some egregious microtransactions that should raise red flags for parents and competitive players looking to race online. Lego 2K Drive is a chaotically fun kart racer with a standout single-player mode that I hope to see become a new standard for the genre. It pulls from the Forza Horizon series to create an imaginative kart racer that should have the Mario Kart team taking notes - both on what works and what very much doesn’t. Lego 2K Drive, on the other hand, breaks away from the pack to chase its own imaginative vision of the kart racer’s future. While titles like Team Sonic Racing and Disney Speedstorm would provide fun versions of Mario Kart’s formula, they were iterations that couldn’t surpass their inspiration. For the past decade, Nintendo’s sales behemoth has felt like the final endgame for casual racing games.

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