Review: Bionicle Heroes

If you've ever played the LEGO games, more specifically the Harry Potter, Indiana Jones and Batman spin-offs, you'll remember them for their humour, construction and the collection of LEGO pieces or studs. The first LEGO game I owned was LEGO Racers and although that isn't very recent, I loved it to death and still do. The game which got me hooked to the adventure LEGO games however was LEGO Star Wars: The Video Game. It had everything: constructing and de-constructing with LEGO pieces, an array of different characters, re-playability and the massive amount of collectables to reach 100% game completion.

I can mess around here for hours. Oh how I love LEGO Racers.

To actually unlock and collect everything in the game you needed to first complete the game and then go back during 'Free Play' mode once you had other characters unlocked so you could go through pathways you originally couldn't. The Drop-in, Drop-out function was also a really good idea if the second player needed to leave every 5 minutes (perhaps to check on their baking muffins). All in all, I loved the game and the recent LEGO games are no different. Their system seems to work well with many different games and one such game is Bionicle Heroes.

Released on the same day as Eragon the game and a week after the release of the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, Bionicle Heroes went through to little fanfare. Face it, a new console will win over a LEGO game any day (So far. Please let this change in the future.) and it was Bionicle Heroes' turn. It was released on the PlayStation 2, Gamecube, Wii, PC and the Xbox 360 while a different game under the same name was release on the Gameboy Advance and the Nintendo DS. You might be thinking "I don't care about this game, why are you bothering to look at it?". My answer? It cost me $9 and because I can. Moving on...



From a distance, the game is repetitive. It is. You walk through the corridors, occasionally finding secrets to the sides, before reaching the boss or waves of enemies at the end of the level. However, although the gameplay is practically the same for every level, which game isn't? Anyway, if a game had completely different levels with different ways to play each one, it's reception would be horrible as it didn't follow the same mechanics throughout. But I suppose that it's meant for the 8-12 year old male demographic and they're stereotyped as just kids who don't really care. I may disagree with that (you find them on Call of Duty like bubbles in Coca-Cola) but that doesn't mean that it's not generally accepted as fact. One of my Xbox LIVE "friends" sent me a message while playing it saying "REALLY". Yeah, considering deletion.

I found a couple of bugs with this game. I have the Xbox 360 version and I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that it's almost entirely a port from the PlayStation 2 or something. For example, no less than five times out of six on the level Shattered Wreck did I get up to the end-of-level boss when all of a sudden he jumped up and away. Forever. Minions did not spawn and I was left waiting, which allowed me to see the details in the game the developers DID include, like a few different animations for the characters when you sit around idle waiting for a GLITCH TO FIX ITSELF. I was disappointed. I am yet to re-visit the level again to finish it and record me getting the gold and silver canisters.

I am sick of climbing up here to get to the boss, only for him to piss off and never return.

There was also one big peeve about this game. Now I loved the music to some of the levels. The Piraka Playground track is a fairly decent dance track and sounds like one of those remixes you'd find on YouTube of some movie's epic music and bass. However, every time you collected enough LEGO pieces to fill your Hero Bar and activate 'Hero Mode', the music changed to the Hero Mode music. I got sick of it and I'm one to listen to a song I like 500 times in a row. Also, Hero Mode is so cheap as it makes you invincible and trust me when I say: it's too easy! All you have to do is, at the start of each level, blow everything up and use your Bionicle powers and in about 2 minutes of clearing everything and killing what enemies decide to ruin your afternoon, you're invincible. You don't need it unless you're in a boss level or you're farming for LEGO pieces.

However, the bosses are derps. I find it humorous that the inhabitants of Mata Nui (the island the game takes place on) are scared to death of the Piraka (the main bosses besides their leader Vezon, who's some dude who rides some massive dog-thing which breathes fire. Mmmyep). Apart from the introduction movie, the Piraka are stupid and appear incompetent to run even a ticketing booth, let alone an entire island. Some of the unlockables for the Piraka Playground show this off as well, with the Piraka failing at working out, serving drinks and DJ-ing. LEGO humour is some of the best non-spoken humour in games.

They may look nasty, but the Piraka bosses are clumsy and absolutely hopeless. Joy will be taken from watching their failures in cut-scenes.

-- FINAL VERDICT --

Platform Used: Xbox 360

Score: 5/10

Recommendation: Try, but stay frosty.


Depending on what side of the fence you're on, you'll either like it or find it mind-numbingly boring. I thought it was alright and perfect if you were whoring for achievements. If Shattered Wreck works for me and I manage to defeat the boss, I'll have got every achievement in the game. =)

[EDIT]: Shattered Wreck managed to work for me when a friend was watching so now that's 100% completion. Fairly easy if you ask me. All you need to do is go through the game, then upgrade your characters and then go through each level again to get the canisters and kills you need. Simple really. =)