The game is genuinely a lot of fun, it feels like a carefully balanced mix of mario kart & forza, while having the charm that all lego games do. It's childish sure, but quite honestly its a blast.

So why the negative review?

To sum it up, 2K's executives have decided to prey on children - this games monetisation is extremely toxic & should not be legal. It is by design made to siphon money from you and wear down at your mental health all in the name of profit. This is a scam dressed up as a game.

The monetization practices are at best predatory, and at worse abusive. This is a full-price game, the full version costing £104 . The executives that manhandled this game to be somehow more predatory than EA need to be fired & removed. Do not support this game anymore than you already have, if you've bought it and can't refund, do NOT give in to the microtransations, they will take advantage of you if you are not able to resist temptations. It is designed meticulously in a way to appeal to impulses.

I keep using the word "predatory", and thats for good reason. This is a game marketed towards children, and its built around a microtransation system that hides & obfuscated information. You do not see the price of the coins anywhere in the game, preying on children whose parents aren't tech-savvy enough to have parental locks on steam. They will make purchases outside their means, and that is BY DESIGN. The obfuscation of the price of coins means that ANY CHILD will just pick the biggest number not realising that what they are doing is making a purchase. I was a kid once, I know damn well that 13 year old me would not have been aware enough to stop before making a purchase. Once that "buy" screen is up, its over, that child will put down any information they could to get that skin they want.

It is so extremely predatory it should be on a list..

The progression after completing 1/3rd of the game with time spent searching for collectables is BY DESIGN made to frustrate you into getting those coins to get the currency used in the game. After 6 hours I do not have enough of said currency to buy *ONE* vehicle, so you are either forced to pay up more on a full priced game, or spend the next week of your life wittling away at getting a SINGLE VEHICLE. And keep in mind, I did the game at the designed pace, the story is 18 hours, I did a third of it in 6 - you cannot buy one thing in the shop with 1/3 of the games length and thats unacceptable.

That is not even beginning to mention the mental games it starts to play with you right from the beginning, it toys with you at the beginning trying to make these "cool items" seem easy to get. The game constantly shoves advertising for its in-game shop, slowly wearing you down until you go "fine, i'll take a look" just to shut the character up. It is made this way to annoy you enough, to overwhelm you enough, to break through any fortifications you've built up to get you to give in. Everything about this game is designed to push you into that shop. It locks what could be a very good vehicle creator behind tons of gates & hidden stuff because they want you to be frustrated, you don't have every brick you would need right away, you don't have every vehicle base you would need to make something you want to. You can't even make a completely custom vehicle despite the game very much having the capability to do so.

This is the game that defines the state that gaming has become, its no longer about making a good game - now its about taking as much money as possible. Do. Not. Buy.

This game is predatory
This game is abusive
This game is 2K

Avoid at all costs... Click the ignore button.
Play literally anything else

You either have a 60-120 dollar price tag and no micro transactions, or you make it free with microstransactions. You can't have both, and I hope that LEGO decides to put their foot down on this absolutely disgusting practice being used.

Also does anyone else feel like the time requirements for the side challenges is too damn strict?

I like this game. It's a fun game, and it's got a lot of character. I can't recommend it in good conscience. It's another live service game by none other than 2K Games, the forever runner-up in the "Worst game company of all time" competition.

If you're ok with grinding or spending money on a game you already paid premium full price for, by all means this game is for you. If you have enough creativity to work with a limited parts pallette out of the gate, you can have plenty of fun with this game without grinding for even a moment. If you want to just play the story mode, sure, go for it! But I can't in good conscience say "This is a game for everybody and should be given praise for everything it does right" because the one thing it does wrong it does to an egregious extent, and will likely only get worse over time.

Overall, it's a fun game marred eternally by Microtransactions and a pretty apparent lack of single player content (which the game expects you to grind pretty endlessly to buy the items in the shop since multiplayer races are worth a fraction of the payout).

In summation: LEGO Racers 3, but at what cost?

I want to recommend this game. So badly. But I cant in good conscience. I know this is published by 2K games but, the microtransaction situation in this game is absolutely abysmal. And horrifically predatory. Especially for a full price game aimed at kids. The first time you load into the main menu, after you make/login to your 2K account, you will likely be immediately greeted by a prompt to buy the "battlepass", just to give you an example. You earn a decent amount of currency doing the campaign but once you finish everything your essentially forced to open your wallet if you want anything. As multiplayer races give chump change (Around 10 bucks per race if you win, when cars cost 10k and above). The thing I was most excited for, the vehicle building, is really awesome. But if your given a relatively limited selection of parts to begin with. And you cant make your own chassis. And even more disappointing still, the vehicles you unlock during the campaign dont unlock the bricks used on them for you to use on your own vehicles. And if you want to get more parts, your going to have to buy them from the store. Same with buying the engines that dictate how fast or strong your vehicle is. Which makes your own homebrew vehicles useless if you cant afford a good engine.

The racing is enjoyable, aside from the rubberbandy catchup mechanics. Which remove the skill element of the game, and makes it more based on RNG. And the story is fun. Its got the signature lego humour and jokes which will give you a good chuckle. However the story is very very short. You could probably get it done in one sitting if you tried.

Overall I really wish I could recommend the game, but I just cant in its current state. The game itself feels like it has passion put into it. But having to pay full price, only to have to open my wallet again to get the other half of the game in terms of vehicles and building parts, is just ridiculous. This games probably going to have a short life unless something changes. Im hoping Lego will step in and tell 2k to calm the farm a bit and make things actually earnable in a reasonable time. Cause Im not spending hundreds of hours grinding multiplayer just to get 1 car, that Im likely not going to use anyway aside from the parts it has.

This games likely going to just sit on the shelf once I finish finding all the collectables, and be a waste of my money. Which is really sad, because this was the first game I was actually kind of hyped for in a very long time. But I got burned for it thanks to what I mentioned above. If you really like lego, stick around and see where things go. But I wouldnt jump in and buy it now.

This game at base value is fun but the micro-transactions ruin it. I played it for about 9 hours as of this review, and crashed 3 times. Every crash removed 20k from my currency that you use to buy cars. The game is literally stealing money from you. Thankfully I didn't spend anything on micro-transactions and lost no real money but this is a huge problem. As of now I can't recommend this game and if you do get it, don't spend money.

Edit: My game crashed 9 Times. The new battlepass takes to long to level. You need to get in 1st like 6/7 times just to level once. The game currently has no replay value and I think I'm done playing it at this point.

Never, in all my years, have I been so glad that a game has received little-to-no attention. This crock of wasted potential is insulting not just to LEGO fans who have long-waited for a spiritual successor to the Racers series, but to anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex, and it's all to do with its disgusting, predatory monetisation system.

LEGO 2K Drive is out to get your money in any way shape or form in what is quite possibly the most exploitative microtransaction system I have ever seen for a game which costs anywhere from £50 to a LAUGHABLE £105 at launch.

First of all, the game is literally designed to have no replay value – not only do many of the single player activities serve no purpose other than to frustrate you for single-digit payouts (cars in this game cost anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 Brickbux) but rewards for races and quests that are actually worth anything drop significantly in value after the first go-around, meaning that, once you've completed all the races, there is virtually no point in playing the game anymore.

Multiplayer payouts are even worse – players have claimed it can take at least 167 hours of multiplayer matches to buy a single car in LEGO 2K Drive, but in reality it's likely much longer thanks to its dwindling player base.

I'd also like to remind you that this is a game targeted at kids. Even the premium shop, dubbed "Unkie's Emporium" is designed to look welcoming and inviting to young people in the way it shows off its premium currency and the LEGO cars which, if bought with premium currency, can reach up to £10 for ONE vehicle.

It's a buggy mess, too. Several of the bricks don't have studs for some reason, it crashes frequently, the premium shop is often non-functional, and it has soft-locked so many times it's not even funny.

What's truly upsetting is that there is a fantastic arcade racing game underneath all of this mess, with tight controls, an interesting power-up system, and an enthralling car-building mechanic which would be something to cherish if it wasn't in this game.

Do not buy this game even if it is discounted, the intentionally frustrating mechanics designed to split you with more of your money are not worth it. This game should remain a monument to 2K and Visual Concept's disgusting business practices and LEGO should be ashamed it ever allowed these notoriously deceitful companies to sully its brand even further.

I really didn't wanna leave a review, let alone a bad one, but at this point, I feel it's safe to say the game has lost it's charm to me.
I pre-ordered the game as soon as the trailers dropped cause I bought in to the hype cause the autism in me needed this game, after a childhood of playing Lego Racers 1, 2 and Lego Island 2, I got super excited for a new Lego game that wasn't the usual Travellers Tale's style or a minimalistic puzzle game. I was so excited in fact, that I chose to ignore the fact that 2K were publishing it, and forcing their name in the title.

Then I got to play the game and I loved it! It feels great to play and the customisation is so in-depth yet easy to control! I wonder if I can get more pieces from the store so that I can... Oh... The in-game store. And that's where it goes downhill. Where some of the odd features start to make sense. To get a brick pack that will contain 3 or 4 bricks or so is 6000 bux, I believe the highest paying race, the last one in the game, gives a one time payout of 2500 on the highest rank, after which the bux reward for the race is significantly dropped, removing any desire to want to do it again. Although you can complete it on the lower ranks for lower one time payouts, they too, drop their cash rewards immediately, this applies to every race in the game... We can agree this discourages you from racing and replaying the game right?

At the 30hr mark, I have 100% in all but one area, each having their selection of quests and array of collectables(from which I'm missing 7 bux), got gold on every on-the go challenge and completed every race on each difficulty/rank, and believe me, everything rewards you money, however the most I got for collecting all the collectables or finishing a quest was 1,000 bux. In this time, of doing everything I can to complete all this game has to offer, I have bought about... 2 cars? Why? cause they cost 20k each, 10-15k if you want a more simple one. You'd have to replay the last race, the final boss of this game, the Sky Cup, 8 times to buy one car, but that's not even true since after the first time you'll only get around 800 bux for doing that race, so really the maths would be... 23 times, to buy a car, you would need to play the same race 23 times, since that race gives you the most "bang for your bux".

This is why I spent my time making my own cars which is great! However you can't even have that for free since you have brick packs you need to buy, so that you can have the freedom of choice. And When I say buy, I do say buy, because a lot of the brick packs have seemed to been withheld so that they can be put in the Drive Passes! Woo! Now you can pay real life money for the ability to earn your digital plastic bricks! And how do you earn them you ask? By playing the games that has a short lifespan by design.

I must confess, I bought the Awesome Rivals edition of the game, and I'm ashamed, not even my humble choice discount could make the purchase cheaper, the £90 it cost me ain't coming back. I should have paid more attention, read the signs. Because this wasn't gonna be a Forza Horizon, where buying the special edition with all the DLC nets you with new areas to explore, hundreds of cars to pick from the get go, cosmetics, No. This edition of the game gets you 4 Drive Passes, 500 coins (which gets you 10k bux, enough to buy a cheap car), a Pizza Oven car, that's already in the game in a different category, and 3 days early access (void now). The kicker is that you have to wait for these drive passes to come out, the main DLC for this game, and that's normal, DLC has staggered releases. But these drive passes don't add new stuff to do, just new rewards to the base game. And I'm already done with the base game. Before Drive Pass 1 even started.

The game has too many issues and caveats. I feel sorry for the Dev team behind the game, since the base game, and story were incredible, it's just 2K's interference, and monetisation tactics that have soured the experience.
I paid £90 for this game, and all it told me was that it wasn't enough :(


ADDENDUM/EDIT/POSTMORTEM: It's been close to a month since the first Drive Pass dropped, no one plays the multiplayer still, I just got around to playing the game again to see what it has to offer and... my opinion of the game has worsened.
They did in fact add new things to do in the open world, roughly 2 On-The-Go Challenges and 3 World Challenges, all of which aren't particularly new or rewarding, they're the same as all the other challenges in game, other than a couple world challenges taking place on floating platforms above the map, which I'll give them, is more than nothing, but that's not saying much.

We now have a separate form of XP for the Drive Pass levels, it's not as common as the plain ol' XP and you need a lot more of it.
I had saved my last few achievements in this game for when the Drive Pass came out, so that I could have something to do while trying to level this damn thing up. But I didn't foresee two quite important things:
1. The achievements I have left are just meaningless tedium, e.g. Drive 3,000 miles, Drive 6,000 miles, Talk to 150 people.
2. I don't want 99% of the rewards from the Drive Pass anyway...
So I gotta say, as a freak for achievements, these are wild, I've played this game for 40 hours (it took like 12-15 hours to complete the story, for reference) and I haven't driven 3,000 miles. The only way you can move is driving, the only thing you do in this game is drive. After 40 hours of driving, I haven't driven 3,000 miles, and they want me to double that afterwards? Do they want me to play this game for 80-100 hours? I mean I knew they put too much faith in this game when they sold 4 Drive Passes, but to drive for 80 hours in a game that has like 20-30 hours of content is insane.
I dread to think how long it would take to get all 400 levels of these drive passes. Not that I think anyone could want to do that. As the only real value is the levels that give brick packs, just because they at least serve a purpose. I don't know why I'd want a Lego Dodge Charger? If I wanted to drive a Dodge Charger I'd play any other racing game? And that's the final reward of the Drive Pass, level 100, along the way you might get the odd thing of note, like a boat that kinda looks like a train, but really you'll only care about the brick packs. You won't care about engine noise #45, or Boy Wearing Red Baseball Cap, or even the odd 1,000 Brick Bux that they kindly bestow every now and then as it's own level, which just sorta says it all really. Some levels give you a car, others give 10% the cost of one.
What f***s me off is that I still can't play as a Lego Skeleton, although really, thinking about it, the real Lego Skeleton was the game I played along the way.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the long edit to essentially say, the DLC we knew was gonna suck, sucks, but I just felt some might care to know the details.

The game is genuinely a lot of fun, it feels like a carefully balanced mix of mario kart & forza, while having the charm that all lego games do. It's childish sure, but quite honestly its a blast.

So why the negative review?

To sum it up, 2K's executives have decided to prey on children - this games monetisation is extremely toxic & should not be legal. It is by design made to siphon money from you and wear down at your mental health all in the name of profit. This is a scam dressed up as a game.

The monetization practices are at best predatory, and at worse abusive. This is a full-price game, the full version costing £104 . The executives that manhandled this game to be somehow more predatory than EA need to be fired & removed. Do not support this game anymore than you already have, if you've bought it and can't refund, do NOT give in to the microtransations, they will take advantage of you if you are not able to resist temptations. It is designed meticulously in a way to appeal to impulses.

I keep using the word "predatory", and thats for good reason. This is a game marketed towards children, and its built around a microtransation system that hides & obfuscated information. You do not see the price of the coins anywhere in the game, preying on children whose parents aren't tech-savvy enough to have parental locks on steam. They will make purchases outside their means, and that is BY DESIGN. The obfuscation of the price of coins means that ANY CHILD will just pick the biggest number not realising that what they are doing is making a purchase. I was a kid once, I know damn well that 13 year old me would not have been aware enough to stop before making a purchase. Once that "buy" screen is up, its over, that child will put down any information they could to get that skin they want.

It is so extremely predatory it should be on a list..

The progression after completing 1/3rd of the game with time spent searching for collectables is BY DESIGN made to frustrate you into getting those coins to get the currency used in the game. After 6 hours I do not have enough of said currency to buy *ONE* vehicle, so you are either forced to pay up more on a full priced game, or spend the next week of your life wittling away at getting a SINGLE VEHICLE. And keep in mind, I did the game at the designed pace, the story is 18 hours, I did a third of it in 6 - you cannot buy one thing in the shop with 1/3 of the games length and thats unacceptable.

That is not even beginning to mention the mental games it starts to play with you right from the beginning, it toys with you at the beginning trying to make these "cool items" seem easy to get. The game constantly shoves advertising for its in-game shop, slowly wearing you down until you go "fine, i'll take a look" just to shut the character up. It is made this way to annoy you enough, to overwhelm you enough, to break through any fortifications you've built up to get you to give in. Everything about this game is designed to push you into that shop. It locks what could be a very good vehicle creator behind tons of gates & hidden stuff because they want you to be frustrated, you don't have every brick you would need right away, you don't have every vehicle base you would need to make something you want to. You can't even make a completely custom vehicle despite the game very much having the capability to do so.

This is the game that defines the state that gaming has become, its no longer about making a good game - now its about taking as much money as possible. Do. Not. Buy.

This game is predatory
This game is abusive
This game is 2K

Avoid at all costs... Click the ignore button.
Play literally anything else.

Cant share vehicles with others. I was under the impression it would be added shortly after launch. also microtransactions... in a lego game. If it wasn't called 2k drive id have thought it was an ea game :(


edit: Save game issue still exists and I lost around 10 hours of progress. Do not buy. They wont fix it

edit 6/28/2023: game save issue still isnt fixed and they added a battle pass with almost 100 pieces and parts locked behind it. Please DONT buy this game

edit 7/22/2023: this will be my final edit. After loosing significant progress and facing so many issues it's tough to come back and play. I tried really hard but I can't make enough progress to verify wether or not the save issues were actually fixed. (Wouldn't be an issue if races weren't level gated. Doing menial tasks to simply level up to RACE in a RACING game is ridiculous) Not to mention promised features are still missing such as sharing and downloading vehicles. But hey at least we have a battle pass 🙄. I simply lost the drive to play this game and I recommend you pass this one and move onto better games.

edit 7/30/2023: The promised creator hub came out July 26th shortly after my last update. The creator hub has no working content as nothing new has been added since day one. I cant get vehicles approved for online races anymore which is a huge issue because thats part of the fun. They had no qa testers test this update before they rolled it out and Im convinced they ship unverified code changes like Elon musk. the creator hub broke the game more than it already was. To many things to list here. Dont play this hot garbage unless its free...

Solid 1/10 would not recommend

You either have a 60-120 dollar price tag and no micro transactions, or you make it free with microstransactions. You can't have both, and I hope that LEGO decides to put their foot down on this absolutely disgusting practice being used.

Also does anyone else feel like the time requirements for the side challenges are too damn strict?