Hi!
Welcome to the first video game review on the site! Today, we’re covering the fabled LEGO Island 2 for the Gameboy Color. I’ll try to be unbiased as possible, given this is my favorite GBC game!
STORY
Picking up from the last LEGO Island game, The Brickster escapes from prison yet again. You would expect that the Brickolinis and especially Pepper would know better by now, but eh.
What’s interesting about LEGO Island 2 GBC’s story is it deviates from the core plotline from the PC version quite quickly. One example is the addition of a cavern dungeon.
Was it really necessary to change the plot? It doesn’t bother me too much, but a lot of the plot changes happen without much build-up. The way you enter the caverns is through a trapdoor built by The Brickster’s new minions, the Bricksterbots. While it does make the Brickster seem slightly more competent than he usually is, all it does is drag down the game a little for me.
The character writing is fun, there’s bits in there that made me chuckle, including an X-files spoof during the Brickster’s escape. If there’s anything this game does right, it’s how it manages to recapture LEGO Island’s quirky writing.
Since this is LEGO Island 2, Pepper visits numerous other islands across the LEGO Universe – Adventurers’ Island, Castle Island and eventually The Brickster’s base, OGEL.
Adventurers’ Island is completely different from its PC counterpart, opting to go for a Metal Gear Solid-style stealth section inside a prison tower (apparently the people of AI are the only ones who take offense to Pepper and The Brickster’s shenanigans across the entire game) and lest tosses you into an extremely short Jungle section.
Castle Island is easily the worst part of the game for me. The beginning portion is a fetch quest as you have to go back & forth between the courtyard and castle, rescuing the princess from a maze(?) and interrogate the only prisoner inside the dungeons.
It eventually picks up steam again when Pepper goes to the Dark Forest to confront Cedric the Bull and The Brickster, but the boss battle here is super underwhelming.
In conclusion: The story while serviceable, has many shortcomings. It feels like the game was rushed through the door, leaving many plot threads untied.
GAMEPLAY
The controls aren’t too exciting – Pepper can walk around in eight directions, ride his skateboard and shoot pizzas. The maps are designed to be maze-like, any exploration between locations are nonexistent and I think that’s a huge negative. Being able to explore islands at your own pace would’ve been neat or some kind of overworld that connects each island together.
Dungeons and boss battles are commonplaces in RPG-lite games, LEGO Island 2 isn’t too out of the ordinary in that regard. LEGO Island has the Rock Monster battle down in the caverns alongside Cedric the Bull in the Dark Forest, but Adventurers’ Island shockingly has no boss battle. You can tell this game was rushed + designed for toddlers in mind.
Whether that’s a positive or negative, I don’t know. I personally think Adventurers’ Island was too short and it left a bad taste in my mouth, especially after multiple playthroughs.
What’s interesting about the game though is the trading card system – scattered around the Islands are cards you can collect, some of them being rarer than others. I think this is the game’s strongest suit as for me, that’s the main reason why I come back to it. Collecting all of the cards as bragging rights is great!
Graphically the game is colorful and represents the LEGO brand faithfully. Some of the cutscenes can look a bit janky, however the in-game art is decent.
MUSIC
Composed by Rockett Music, the tracks in the game are great – notable tracks include The Caverns, OGEL and the Space Port.
It’s some great chiptune and I still listen to it on occasion.
VERDICT
While in many areas the game under-performs significantly and offers next to no enjoyment for those who don’t care about the LEGO brand, LEGO Island 2’s visuals and music remain it’s strongest points.
Coming from an artistic background myself, there’s plenty of bits in LEGO Island 2 that I wholeheartedly enjoy. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who isn’t a LEGO fan unfortunately, but it’s still a serviceable game for children curious to try out their first retro game.
The score for LEGO Island 2 is…
JOM 