LEGO The Incredibles (Nintendo Switch) Review

Perhaps counterproductively, LEGO The Incredibles begins by adapting the second film before allowing players to move on to the first. In a way, this makes sense. The second film is far more relevant than the first, having just been released, but it does hurt the overall cohesion of the plot as there's really no benefit in moving backwards chronologically. Again, it makes sense in context, but it's a rather awkward start that will only get more awkward with the passage of time once The Incredibles 2 is out of theatres.

If nothing else, the opening's off-kilter presentation does act as an omen of sorts for what's to come. LEGO The Incredibles is, at its core, an awkward game. It has awkward level design, an awkward roster, awkward technical issues, and awkward presentation. There is a noticeable lack of polish in just about every area of development and, while all its failings make sense in context, just like the opening, it does not justify just how shoddily built everything feels.

Stages are about par for the course for a LEGO videogame, with characters needing to use their own unique abilities to make progress. Conceptually, this is a rather nice way of implementing some puzzle solving elements into the core gameplay, but the intended demographic is skewed so young that puzzles rarely, if ever, offer any semblance of a logical challenge.

Outside of the occasional puzzle-esque roadblocks, most of the gameplay consists of simply mindlessly whacking enemies until they break apart. There's honestly very little to the combat, which is a shame considering how technically varied the Parr family is. The characters themselves play well, with enough novelty between each main member to offer some engaging play, but the enemy design fails to take advantage of their natural abilities.

Given how closed off in scope The Incredibles is as a franchise, with only two movies to pick characters from, the roster ends up feeling rather random, with all sorts of Pixar characters stepping in to widen the playable character count. For the most part, it's charming way to offset the fact that there's really not much content in the source material to play around with, but it does shine light on the underlying issues of adapting a story lacking in material into such a format. Previous LEGO games have capitalised on their source series' rich histories to cater to fans, but such a feat is just not possible in a small scoped, two-movie franchise.

On a technical level, LEGO The Incredibles is lacklustre. It's certainly not unplayable, but there's a noticeable amount of slowdown during combat, rather annoying load times, and the controls sometimes feel unresponsive, albeit that's more of a design issue than a technical one - whether it be the result of a technical issue or not, the sound design also suffers immensely throughout.

Background music and dialogue are simply not on the same wavelength when it comes to volume. One is always overpowering the other to the point where they feel at odds with one another. It's nice to hear The Incredibles soundtrack in the game itself, but it's lacking in serious polish. It feels tossed in haphazardly rather than carefully placed into each scene or stage. The clumsy sound design outright ruins scenes that would otherwise be great recreations of their film counterparts.

Speaking of the film counterparts, LEGO The Incredibles struggles to adapt all its material throughout the course of the game. The main story is painfully short, clocking in at roughly five hours, spread across twelve stages. Realistically, given the short lengths of both films, six stages per movie should work, but the campaign takes a very pick-and-choose approach to what it adapts. Of course, this could be due to the fact that both movies feature quite a bit of downtime, making it difficult to adapt just about everything, but it will still come off as a disappointment to most fans. In general, that's what LEGO The Incredibles seems destined to be: a disappointment.