When I first saw LEGO City Undercover , the first thing that came to mind was the music video for the Beastie Boys' Sabotage: fictional cops with over-the-top car chases, disguises, and ridiculous hair.

Tons of places to explore, puzzles to solve, and things to collect; Great humor

Excruciatingly long load times

It's like James Bond with Legos! Lego City Undercover is the first new Nintendo series in a long time. And since it's an open-world game, you can go where you want in a city inspired by San Francisco (and later Miami and Manhattan).

Open world for kids; scanner mode feels real; sometimes really funny

Terribly long load times; needs better writing; sometimes really unfunny

After 10 years of adapting movie and comic book properties, Lego is finally letting its own original products tell a story. Just as you would use your imagination to conjure plot lines with your Lego playsets, Lego City: Undercover takes a ton of familiar Lego City toys and presents a comedic tale...

Pop culture references; Inventive use of occupations; Rewarding puzzle solving

Long load times; Limited backstory; No co-op

But in the grand scheme of things, these are all flaws Lego fans have grown used by now, leaving the justified lack of cooperative play and somewhat-excessive load times as the sole detractions from an otherwise insane sandbox title with a great story and mostly smooth gameplay.

Great sandbox gameplay filled with surprises; an engaging story and characters

Load times are hard to ignore; the usual LEGO platforming issues; no co-op play

We finally get a chance to review this massive open-world LEGO game. How does it stack up?

+ Some solid humor; + Tons to see and do; + Post game

Controls are still cumbersome; Some humor falls flat; No offTV play

As long as you're cool with waiting for it to load, LEGO City is a cool place to be.

Extremely well polished; Great presentation; Lengthy; fun campaign; Lots of collectables

Shallow gameplay and exploration; Stupidly long; recurring load times

Lego video games are huge here at Family Friendly Gaming. So we were all very stoked to play and review Lego City Undercover. So much so that I was willing to pay two and a half times what I normally spend on a video game. I was worried that Nintendo may have injected too much input into this game.

A solid game that definitely has an audience. Might lack replay value, could be too short or there are some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.

To be completely honest, I could never really get into the previous Lego games based on popular franchises such as Star Wars and Batman. The games looked great and enjoyable enough, but for some reason I could never see myself spending good money on Lego versions of such games.

I remember when the Wii U wasn't even announced yet that there was some excitement surrounding Nintendo's next console. One of the first games to be announced for the Wii U, LEGO City: Undercover was a game that I knew I would have absolutely no interest in.