LEGO® DREAMZzz is shaping up to be one of the most colourful and eclectic themes that we have seen for some time. So far, we have looked at sets focussing on Creatures and Vehicles imagined by some of our heroes: Bunchu, Z-Blob,Space Bus and the Croc Car, to say nothing of the evil Grimkeeper. Today, we look at one of the first sets based on LOCATIONS in the LEGO DREAMZzz range: the Stable of Dream Creatures brings us a farmhouse and stables, which at first inspection feels like it might have come from LEGO Friends. On closer inspection, however, we see imaginative creatures and a colourful building with a warm palette and magical touches.
With 681 pieces, 4 minifigures and 3 of the little guys, along with some brick-built magical creatures, this set brings us a place for our heroes to chill out without any of the Nightmare King’s forces anywhere in sight.
Ever since I first saw the previews for 2017’s Elves sets, I knew there was one set I would want to get ahead of all others: Aira’s Airship and Amulet Chase. This set features an Elven Airship, piloted by Aira Windwhistler; Emily Jones riding Shotgun Crossbow and Dukelin the Goblin, with his own magical flying post box…
There are two reasons I unpacked this set, and put it together quickly after bringing it home: the Goblin – this was my first experience with such a LEGO® character – and the airship, especially all of the new golden recolours. And the curlicue. It turns out however, that in my haste to get it put together, I failed to pick up on the elements in other colors which are relatively new. That said, these new golden elements could be well repurposed in to a steampunk construction. Continue reading →
Sorry about the relative quiet on the blog this last week: if you have been following the Rabling Brick on Instagram or Facebook, you would have noticed that I am currently away, and I have taken some minifigs with me… And then something happened:
There I was minding my business, and browsing the iTunes store, and I checked out this weeks updates. Two excited me. These include updates to LEGO Elves: Elvendale Adventures and LEGO DC Superheroes Mighty Micros. I reviewed both of these apps earlier in the year, and while both were enjoyable, Mighty Micros appeared to have a couple of bugs in it. Elvendale adventures was satisfying, but had limited content.
Elvendale Adventures 2.0
This is touted as a major upgrade: At the end of version 1, the Elves confronted Ragana Ragana the Evil Elf Witch who had kidnapped the Queen Dragon. There was some exciting dialog at the end of the four Elemental sequences, with Ragana capturing the dragon’s essences. I was hoping our new sequence would result in a greater revelation as to the underlying story. The levels involved here are of a higher difficulty than the previous levels. Some of the tiles to collect have special powers: one type clears portions of a row, another changing all of the tiles adjacent to a certain element: great for collecting that element, not so helpful if you have two or three of these elements close together, because they will turn the other to a simple elemental piece,losing its power, and ability to be collected. Both of these pieces are required to be the second or later tile collected in a move. Multiple ‘power pieces’ can be collected in the course of a turn, and this becomes necessary as the number of tiles needing to be collected increases significantly at the higher levels.
Oncompleting the leves, there are none of the conversation bubbles that occurred in version one, and unfortunately this continues through: when the levels are completed, there is no dialog, or expostition of the storyline. Which is a shame, because it did make completing the singleplayer game well worth while with version one.
A further upgrade in 2017 is also teased.
The opening screens have been updated
Some of the new action from version 2
All in all I enjoyed the upgrade to the game, but I do feel that removing the cartoon dialog boxes has detracted from the overall experience. My other gripe with the game is that while you are selecting the level to play, it is a little difficult to discern the ones you have completed, compared to those to be done. Still, if you like a casual game and have finished the first version, this will give you a couple of hours of diversion. All it will cost you is time…
LEGO DC SuperHeroes Mighty Micros 1.1.198
LEGO DC Superheroes Mighty Micros has one of the most unwieldy names of any App that I have seen. But it is fun, fast moving and a little bit amusing in all the right ways. It has
Hopefully I can unlock this soon! Let me know if you manage to.
Stickers! I am a little over stickers!
also been a bit bit buggy: I have been failing for months to unlock the final ‘sreet layout’ – this version promises bug fixes, as well as enhancing game play through the addition of stickers to unlock with achievements, including activities in the BatCave, as well as number of crashes into witches hats/ studs/ lamp posts and goodness knows what else. I am yet to unlock the elusive final level to complete… but if if fixes this problem, it will certainly be worth the bandwidth required to download it!
But will the addition of some additional achievements to unlock enhance its long term playability? It will become all about the grind, which could become fairly uninspiring for all but the most determinined completionist.
In Conclusion
Both of these games have been great little time wasters with different limitations: Elvendale Adventures is teasing to much towards unknown content at this stage at the end of the day, and LDCSHMM being to hard to pronounce or spell, plus the game feeling like it was only about 85% finished. These new updates improve functionality and hopefully allow the bugs to get ironed out. Time has prevented me from attempting to unlock the mystery street map at this time: we will see how we go with time.
Now if only the LEGO Marvel Superheroes Mighty Micros could be simply produced. I would never get productive work completed again…
Regular readers of this blog will be getting a little tired of its self referential nature. Sorry about that. New readers may find this to be a useful place to start (or not…)
The Story so Far:
I Like the Elves Dragons set, especially the Fire Dragon’s Lava Cave Set, but I am not a fan of the dedicated Dragon’s head mould, except for the obvious reason: great colors, printing, fits lot of detail into a small space. I looked at the Red Creatures Creator set, which was never really found in Australian Shops, as it gave me some ideas on how to approach a Dragon Head. In order to get a good supply of FYOBLO curves, bows and small arches, I picked up a copy of the McClaren P1 Speed Champions set. I found my self working through 5 drafts of dragons head, before being properly satisfied. Except that left me with some Light Stone Grey on view in the dragon’s snout. So I go a copy of Super Soarers (31042) because it had some FYOBLO brackets in it.
Now read on.
So I got myself some Flame Yellowish Orange/Bright Light Orange (FYO/BLO) brackets. They are inverted compared to the ones that I got in the McLaren set. So I needed to rebuild the dragon’s snout a little in order to accommodate the changed directions of brackets: this moved the cheeks back, and revealed a coloured plate holding on the 2x2x2/3 bow that makes up the forehead: so I replaced it with some small plates.
I also substituted two 1×1 tiles on the cheeks with 2x1x2/3 baby bows, just in from of the eyes, enhancing the curved structure of the head.
Here is the main hidden structure of the snout of the dragon, just in case you feel possessed by a desire to try recreating the effect. Other color palettes may allow different solutions, and I think that would be fantastic. Please share them here or on the Rambling Brick Facebook page.
Here is the main hidden structure of the snout of the dragon, just in case you feel possessed by a desire to try recreating the effect. Other color palettes may allow different solutions, and I think that would be fantastic. Please share them here or on the Rambling Brick Facebook page.
