Why the LEGO Incredibles Game Plays It Too Safe With Pixar’s Family

LEGO The Incredibles turns Pixar’s superhero family into plastic bricks, and the result is a game that knows exactly what it is: a family-friendly action-adventure built for two players on a couch, not for anyone chasing a challenge. TT Fusion developed it, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment published it, and it landed on PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in 2018. Feral Interactive handled the macOS version that arrived on 21 November.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

The game opens with the second film

The most interesting structural choice in LEGO The Incredibles is the order of its story. The game starts with the events of Incredibles 2, and you have to finish that before you unlock the first film’s plot. That is a strange way to introduce a franchise to a younger player, and it means the game assumes you already know who these people are.

The plot follows both films closely, with plenty of jokes layered on top. Some deviations are large. Mr. Incredible gets help from Frozone in the fight against the first Omnidroid on Nomanisan island, and the boss battle there throws two Omnidroids at you instead of one. Gazerbeam survives in this version and helps Mr. Incredible sneak into the secret room. Syndrome does not die after being sucked into his jet’s engine — Jack-Jack’s power activates, Syndrome is simply defeated, and he goes into hiding.

Those changes are the game’s best argument for existing. A straight retelling of two films you have already seen would be pointless. Rewriting the beats gives returning players something to notice.

Municiberg and New Urbem are one open world

The open world spans two fictional cities from the films, Municiberg and New Urbem, sitting very close to each other. You move between them as you take on gold brick puzzles, quests and challenges, the standard loop that Traveller’s Tales has been refining for years.

The new addition here is the Crime Wave. You travel to a specific area of one of the cities that is under assault from a super-villain and their minions, then complete every quest the people in that area give you. The last quest usually means defeating the supervillain. There are ten Crime Waves in total and five supervillains to beat, three of them from the films — Syndrome and Bomb Voyage among them.

It is a clean structure. Each Crime Wave gives you a reason to learn a district, and the final fight gives the whole thing a point. The problem is that the quests feeding into that fight rarely ask much of you.

Every Parr plays differently

The roster is the strongest part of LEGO The Incredibles. You can control heroes and villains from across the franchise, including supers who never appeared in either film but are listed in the National Supers Agency database in the special features of the first film’s DVD release. Each character carries their own abilities.

Mr. Incredible has super-strength and invulnerability. Elastigirl can shape her body in many ways. Violet Parr turns invisible and creates force fields. Dash runs at incredible speeds. Jack-Jack has a large variety of powers, just like in the films — he can turn into a being of pure fire, use telekinesis, and teleport, among others.

The game also pulls in characters from other Pixar properties: Flik from A Bug’s Life, Merida from Brave, Lightning McQueen from Cars, James P. “Sulley” Sullivan from Monsters, Inc. and Woody from Toy Story. That crossover casting is fan service, and it works, but it also underlines how thin the actual puzzle design is.

Puzzles built for younger players

Gameplay follows the previous LEGO installments closely. Puzzles are designed for younger players, combat arrives in waves of enemies, and two-player cooperative play runs through the whole thing. The perspective is third person, and the modes cover single player, multiplayer, co-operative and split screen.

Here is how the core abilities line up against what each one actually demands of you:

That table is also the game’s ceiling. Every character maps to a lock, and once you have seen the lock, you have seen the puzzle. The game is not trying to surprise an adult here, and it never pretends otherwise.

Release dates spread across four months

LEGO The Incredibles did not arrive everywhere at once. It rolled out across regions and platforms over roughly four months, timed to the theatrical release of Incredibles 2.

The Switch version landing in Japan in August, two months after the North American launch, is the kind of staggered rollout that was normal for the era and still frustrating for anyone who wanted to play on the console they owned on day one.

The Crime Wave formula runs out of road

Ten Crime Waves and five supervillains sounds like a lot until you play them. Each one repeats the same shape: arrive in a district, take every quest from the people standing around, then beat the villain at the end. The supervillain fights are the only places the game asks you to use the roster in combination rather than one ability at a time, and there are only five of them.

The Pixar cameos — Flik, Merida, Lightning McQueen, Sulley, Woody — are a nice touch that never becomes a mechanic. They are collectibles with legs, not characters with a role in the puzzles.

What the game gets right, and what it does not

LEGO The Incredibles is a licensed tie-in that understands its audience and refuses to punch above it. The rewritten plot beats are genuinely clever, the character roster is generous, and the Crime Wave structure gives the open world of Municiberg and New Urbem a spine. Two-player split screen still matters, and this game supports it without fuss.

What holds it back is ambition. The puzzles are simple even by LEGO standards, and the combat is wave after wave of the same enemies until a supervillain shows up. The story order is the boldest thing here, and it is also the most debatable. Opening with Incredibles 2 means a young player meets these characters in the middle of their lives, then goes backward. It works if the player has seen the films. It is confusing if they have not.

This is a good game for the family it was built for and a thin one for everybody else. It does not waste your time, and it does not challenge you either. The craft is solid, the license is handled with care, and the whole thing lands exactly where a LEGO game usually lands: pleasant, forgettable, and better with a second player beside you.

co-op games · game review · LEGO The Incredibles · Nintendo Switch · Pixar games · TT Fusion