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If you can get over the bizarre concept of living robots made of Lego blocks who lead lives of strange, mythology-filled drama, then the Bionicle toys, movies, shows, and games might be for you. The latest game in this merchandizing extravaganza is the derivative shooting adventure, Bionicle Heroes. While the game won’t light the virtual world into a fiery fervor, Lego fans might find that Heroes steals enough from the right places to be worthwhile.

Building a Mystery

Bionicle Heroes comes from the same developer as the well-received Lego Star Wars game, and there are many similarities. Unfortunately, the simplistic gameplay isn’t nearly as engaging the second time around. Without the familiar likeable characters and humor to carry players through the otherwise standard gameplay, Bionicle has a distinct feeling of retread about it.

In Heroes, you play a mysterious Bionicle who arrives on the island of Voya Nui. It seems the naughty Piraka Bionicles are overwhelming this otherwise lush and tropical paradise and only you can stop them! To aid you, you’ll find various masks that give you a variety of different abilities and weapons. Overcoming the puzzles, enemies, and obstacles usually requires a specific mask, and you’ll need to purchase upgrades at the store to gain access to certain areas.

Building Blocks of Destruction

As usual for Traveller’s Tales Lego-based games, the currency of choice is Lego blocks, and you’ll find them everywhere—usually when you blow up the various objects that litter the levels. Earn enough blocks and you’ll become an invulnerable gold warrior, but dying is seldom a worry any time during the game. When you sustain too much damage, you actually just lose your current mask. Since masks are so easy to find, you’ll almost never truly die. The gold mode is really just a means to activate specific scripted events that act as gates in the level.

The gameplay itself is a rather simplistic take on Metroid-style design. Viewing your robotic warrior from an odd, rather restrictive over-the-shoulder view, you start in a central hub that holds portals to the various worlds and run through the many levels blowing away bad guys, collecting blocks, and unlocking new levels. Boss fights punctuate each world, but too often fall into a cycle of shooting enough minor bad guys to earn gold status, then throwing a large gold object at the boss. To say the least, this design doesn’t lead to particularly exciting boss battles.

Bionicle Heroes suffers from an overall lack of gameplay variety. The use of different masks to get through the levels is interesting at first, and the option to upgrade and then go back to a level to access new sections is welcome. Unfortunately, the run and gun, mask-switching gameplay just won’t hold the attention of older gamers, although Heroes could be the perfect primer for younger gamers to jump into the genre.

Cold and Mute

Visually, Bionicle is passably shining looking on the Xbox 360. The graphics aren’t great, but some of the levels are impressive, and there’s a variety of Lego sights. One aspect of the presentation that manages to hurt the entire game is the audio. There’s almost no voice work in the game beyond the intro, and the music just loops through the same selection through the whole adventure.

While there are some mildly comical movie sequences between levels, the characters just manage to feel cold and uninteresting. In fact, the whole game has a cold, by-the-numbers feel to it. Admittedly, no one is expecting Halo or Gears of War-level excitement in a game based on a toy, but the Bionicles world has enough bizarre and interesting elements to be more interesting than Heroes.

Lego My Controller

Bionicle Heroes is far from the worst example of a licensed game we’ve seen lately, and young fans of the toys might get a kick out of the repetitive shooting action. There’s a ton of unlockable mini-games, items, explosions, and levels. It’s hard to find shooters aimed at kids, so on that level, Bionicle is an ok choice. Older gamers, however, will want to pass this one by.

Article by: Jason D'Aprile
Video produced by: Tim Jennings